This is sort of a bizarre claim to make. What made the Federalists wrong was more a question of sentiment than policy. They were associated - and frequently associated themselves - with Roman boni or the British Lords. They appeared to be less stridently democratic-acting than the Republicans did. But as far as what each group actually did, one cannot say that the Republicans were any more meaningfully 'democratic' than were the Federalists. Democracy at that point was an issue of state and local government anyway, and on that level Federalists did as much as Republicans to extend the franchise and ensure the proper working of the electorate. I suppose if one had to point to something, one might argue that Hamilton's efforts to seize control of the Additional Army might be seen as a threat of Caesarism, but the Additional Army was a paper army anyway and nothing Hamilton would try to do could change that: he was not a serious threat to the republic.
What made the Republicans ultimately victorious was not a question of Federalist popularity or lack thereof, either. Look at the general reaction to the Quasi War and the XYZ Affair in American papers and letters: people were outraged, the French-boot-licking Republicans were mercilessly mocked, and His Rotundity was catapulted into the unlikely position of being one of the most popular men in the country, alongside the likes of Captain Truxtun. The Alien and Sedition Acts were a reflection of what the general politically oriented public supported at the time - the vituperations of Republican newspapermen and politicians notwithstanding. (Some of those laws are still on the books!)
What torpedoed the Federalists in 1800 was a combination of infighting among the party (insofar as it can even be called a party) between Hamilton and more or less everybody else, the decidedly non-democratic political machinations of Aaron Burr in New York, and the three-fifths clause in the Constitution that gave the Republican-voting southern states juuuust enough electoral votes to put the issue in doubt. That last one especially is the kicker: had the three-fifths clause, one of the most blatant antidemocratic stipulations in the American Constitution, not existed, the Republicans would not have had enough votes in the Electoral College to prevent Adams' reelection. The so-called "Revolution of 1800" occurred because of the institution of slavery.
A Louisiana Purchase that, as I noted, was never originally intended to have the effects it did by anyone, least of all the Republicans themselves, and which, if viewed in the context of the times, chiefly amounted to the Republicans giving Napoleon a colossal amount of cash in violation of their own ostensible interpretation of the Constitution in order to secure a bunch of empty territory that Napoleon didn't have any meaningful control over anyway.LouisXXIV said:
Texan.
