In this lecture from Yale's DeVane course America at 250: A History, Professor Joanne Freeman traces the transition from Jeffersonian Republicanism to the rise of Jacksonian populism, discussing the impact of the contested election of 1800 along the way. Recorded in Yale's Sprague Hall as part of this one-time-only course tracing United States history from the 1770s forward, the session examines how expanding, though still limited, democratic participation reshaped American politics in the early nineteenth century. It closes out Freeman's sequence of lectures before the course transitions to David Blight's section on the road to civil war.