Essentially my teacher said that when John Adams was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson it was the first time executive power was peacefully transferred between two groups of differing ideologies. I am assuming she was lumping George Washington in as a Federalist for the purposes of this statement although he wasn't officially a member of the party.
I understand this is a little vague and I'm also a decade late on asking this so there's a good chance I'm forgetting a qualifier but are there reasonable interpretations where this statement is true?
I remember this from my own high school history course, the teacher said something about "ballots triumphed over bullets."
There is, of course, another qualifier not often included in this particular statement, and that is "electoral." This additional-but-left-out qualifier is a loophole big enough to drive a truck through.
I'm sure other cases abound, but I can tell you that in England, at least, the Tory government of Bute displaced Newcastle's Whig government without violence in the early 1760s. In that case it was pretty much entirely because King George hated Pitt and Newcastle.
Well I hate to burst your history teachers bubble but USA missed the mark on being first by About 2000 years. In the great city state of Athens. They held elections for governing positions and actually quite often a ruler would not win more then 1 to 2 terms in office. Greece did not have such staunch political political parties but there were very differing views about how the government should act, how much it should get involved in other wars, it's role it should play in other areas of the peloponnese, how big of tariffs they should impose on foreign goods. Along with this came 2 types or people in the greek agora started to form. those for direct rule stating that all decisions should be made by a vote and those that supported elected official are given the mandate and once elected could do as they pleased.
I hope this helped.