John Adams for reelection in 1800. Thereafter, the party unsuccessfully contested the presidency through 1816 and remained a political force in some states until the 1820s. Its members then passed into both the Democratic and the Whig parties.
Although Washington disdained factions and disclaimed party adherence, he is generally taken to have been, by policy and inclination, a Federalist-and thus its greatest figure. Influential public leaders who accepted the Federalist label included John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Rufus King, John Marshall, Timothy Pickering, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. All had agitated for a new and more effective constitution in 1787. Yet, because many members of the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had also championed the Constitution, the Federalist party cannot be considered the lineal descendant of the pro-Constitution, or ‘federalist,’ grouping of the 1780s. Instead, like its opposition, the party emerged in the 1790s under new conditions and around new issues.
