Jefferson was the kooky one. He wanted the United States to be run by patrician "gentleman farmers" like himself with no central government at all, a la the Holy Roman Empire.
It's funny how people start just making things up because...well, I dunno your particular reason, but still funny.
Jefferson's concept of 'ward republics', his belief in meritorcracy, and his agrarianism do not come together at all into a belief in patrician rule. If I had to guess you're one of those people who has to imagine that Jefferson's commitment to democracy (of a particular sort -- 'natural aristocracy' leading a democratic polity with most actual government done by participatory democracy at the lowest possible level) is some kind of farce and turn him into an elitist he only ever showed the barest glimmerings of towards the end of his life because it helps you feel a little bit better about Hamilton's unabashed elitism.
I hate this 'Jefferson v Hamilton' thread that runs through history writing about the early United States. It completely ignores how close to the center of contemporary American politics Jefferson rested: He was in favor of the Constitution with some amendments, for instance, rather than being in favor of the Articles of Confederation as they stood (as some people were). His belief in the virtue of the independent, land-owning farmer was
directly in line with existing republican ideology of his time period (something most of his contemporaries adhered to one shade or another of -- in fact, of one of the things that makes Hamilton stand out so greatly is how deep his abandonment of it went over the course of the 1780's and 1790's). His belligerency with Great Britain, his pursuit of economic coercion during his presidency, were all things for which he had wide backing within his party and within wider American society at the time.
I'm not the biggest fan of Jefferson for a couple different reasons. But the reasons people invent to dislike him bother me to no end.
EDIT: And, just to further drive home that I'm not looking at this from either side of the bullshit false dichotomy that the 'Jefferson v Hamilton' idea presents, how about I compliment Hamilton some?
Hamilton was almost certainly a genius. The kind of things he did as Treasury Secretary demonstrate an understanding of finance that can only be described as deeply, naturally talented. His response to the 1792 Panic -- regardless of his own role in causing it -- invented Open Market Operations a century and a half before anyone called them that, and he did it with a set of policy tools that were downright primitive in comparison to what modern Federal Reserve Chairmen have available to them. To repeat myself for emphasis, he was probably the single most naturally talented central banker we've ever had and he never actually ran a central bank. I don't LIKE central banks, I don't think they're necessary, but if you're going to HAVE one then you want one run by somebody who knows what he's doing as well as Alexander Hamilton did.
And nothing like macro-economic theory existed during Hamilton's time, he was doing all the things he did off the cuff, with his own knowledge and instincts. He
knew what he was doing better than any Fed Chairman we've ever had, even supposed maestros like Greenspan or Volcker. While men like those two are supposedly excellent users of the existing policy tools our central banking system has available to it, Hamilton invented many antecedents of those policy tools on the fly and used them extremely well.
I just think his vision of a hierarchical society of proprietary aristocrats lording it over a dominated population of laborers and peasants to be abhorrent. He may have genuinely THOUGHT it worked really well, he may have really THOUGHT that everyone would have been better off for it, but I disagree.