In 1789, Jackson was elected to the First United States Congress. Prior to his election, though, Jackson had to fight an uphill battle in one of Georgia's most contentious districts. The First District was the least populated district in the state, and the three-fifths ratio in counting slaves, the district was considered to have a population of over 16,000 individuals. The district in which Jackson ran for Congress was one of the most contested in the state. During the election, Jackson had to campaign against two popular people who had all served in Congress, William Houston and Henry Osborne. Jackson won the seat for the first district by a narrow margin, and the result was unsuccessfully challenged by Osborne. As a Jeffersonian Republican, he vigorously opposed Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's financial plans for federal assumption of the states' debts from the Revolutionary War. Jackson opposed many of Hamilton’s plans on how to relieve the states of their debts from the Revolutionary War. One of the first plans that Hamilton proposed was that of placing a tax on spirits. The proposition received a resounding rebuttal from Jackson who said that it would "deprive the mass of the people of almost the only luxury they enjoy, that of distilled spirits."