ded to impeach two federal justices who had openly attacked the administration from the bench. The first federal justice, John Pickering of New Hampshire, was mentally deranged presenting a constitutional predicament - “His incompetence fell short of the requirement for removal (high crimes and misdemeanors)”. He was nevertheless convicted by the Senate and removed in 1804.Complaining that few died and none resigned, Jefferson removed some Federalists who had been assigned to high offices by George Washington and John Adams. He appointed no Federalists to high office and when there was a vacancy to fill, he instinctively named a trustworthy Republican. However, he resisted the demands of the more radical members of his party for wholesale removals and rarely discarded the competent moderate Federalists. Of course those were the type that he largely succeeded in converting to the Republican cause. In the four years of his first term he was able to replace about half of the Federalist leftovers with Republican appointees. Although the Federalists party made some inroads bye approaching popular appeals to the electorate, their gains were limited to a few states and posed no national threat to Jefferson’s leadership. Soon after taking office, Jefferson took steps to repeal Alexander Hamilton’s financial program and to reduce and eliminate the national debt. At this time the national debt. was “$83,038,051”. He gained congressional repeal of internal or domestic taxes, including the infamous excise tax. The federal government was to be solely funded from duties on imported goods and from the sale of western land. To reduce government expenditures, Secretary Albert Gallatin proposed sharp cuts in spending by means of “( 1 ) reductions in military and diplomatic expenditures; ( 2 ) strict accounting in the expenditure of all appropriations ; ( 3 ) and a rapid reduction on the principal of the nat...
