*John Adams by Samuel F.B. Morse, who was a painter before he developed the telegraph and Morse code in the 1830s.* Westward expansion and war between Great Britain and France in the 1790s shaped early United States foreign policy. As a new, indebted, and weak militarily power, the American republic had no control over European events and little leverage to obtain its goal of trading freely in the Atlantic. [[George Washington]], who had been reelected in 1792 by an overwhelming majority, refused to run for a third term, eliminating the threat that his presidency would become a monarchy and setting a precedent for future presidents. In the presidential election of 1796, the [[Federalist]] and [[Democrats|Democratic-Republican]] parties competed for the first time. Although the leaders of both parties claimed this was their greatest fear about the new system of government, partisan battles over the [[NOTES/French Revolution]] and the [[Whiskey Rebellion]] fueled the divisiveness and Washington’s vice president, Federalist [[John Adams]], defeated his Democratic-Republican rival [[Reading Notes/Thomas Jefferson]] by only three electoral votes. Adams won the New England and Mid-Atlantic states and Jefferson took the South and Pennsylvania. As loser in the presidential race, Jefferson became Adams’s Vice President. “Tickets” including both the presidential and vice-presidential candidate began in 1800 and a separate ballot for Vice President was implemented in 1804.  ---- Next: [[9.2 - XYZ, Sedition]]