Thomas Jeffersons Election in 1800 Peer Reviewed Articles

In the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson, left, and Aaron Burr each received 73 balloter votes, just public opinion sided with Jefferson. The Granger Collection, New York—2

On the afternoon of September 23, 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson, from his Monticello dwelling house, wrote a alphabetic character to Benjamin Rush, the noted Philadelphia physician. I matter dominated Jefferson's thoughts: that year's presidential contest. Indeed, December 3, Election Solar day—the date on which the Balloter College would meet to vote—was only 71 days away.

Jefferson was i of 4 presidential candidates. Equally he composed his letter to Blitz, Jefferson paused from time to time to gather his thoughts, all the while gazing absently through an side by side window at the shimmering oestrus and the foliage, at present a lusterless pale dark-green afterwards a long, dry summer. Though he hated leaving his hilltop plantation and believed, equally he told Blitz, that gaining the presidency would make him "a constant butt for every shaft of calumny which malice & falsehood could grade," he nevertheless sought the office "with sincere zeal."

He had been troubled by much that had occurred in incumbent John Adams' presidency and was convinced that radicals inside Adams' Federalist Party were waging war confronting what he chosen the "spirit of 1776"—goals the American people had hoped to attain through the Revolution. He had earlier characterized Federalist rule as a "reign of witches," insisting that the political party was "adverse to freedom" and "calculated to undermine and demolish the republic." If the Federalists prevailed, he believed, they would destroy united states and create a national authorities equally every bit oppressive as that which Keen Britain had tried to impose on the colonists earlier 1776.

The "revolution...of 1776," Jefferson would later say, had determined the "course" of America'southward government; he believed the election of 1800 would decide its "principles." "I have sworn upon the chantry of God eternal hostility against every course of tyranny over the mind of Man," he wrote.

Jefferson was not alone in believing that the election of 1800 was crucial. On the other side, Federalist Alexander Hamilton, who had been George Washington's secretary of treasury, believed that it was a competition to save the new nation from "the fangs of Jefferson." Hamilton agreed with a Federalist paper essay that argued defeat meant "happiness, constitution and laws [faced] countless and irretrievable ruin." Federalists and Republicans appeared to hold on i thing only: that the victor in 1800 would set America'due south form for generations to come, perhaps forever.

Only a quarter of a century afterward the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first election of the new 19th century was carried out in an era of intensely emotional partisanship among a people deeply divided over the scope of the government's authority. Merely information technology was the French Revolution that had imposed a truly hyperbolic quality upon the partisan strife.

That revolution, which had begun in 1789 and did not run its course until 1815, deeply divided Americans. Conservatives, horrified past its violence and social leveling, applauded Great U.k.'due south efforts to stop it. The nigh conservative Americans, largely Federalists, appeared bent on an alliance with London that would restore the ties between America and Great britain that had been severed in 1776. Jeffersonian Republicans, on the other hand, insisted that these radical conservatives wanted to turn back the clock to reinstitute much of the British colonial template. (Today'south Republican Party traces its origins not to Jefferson and his allies but to the party formed in 1854-1855, which carried Lincoln to the presidency in 1860.)

A few weeks before Adams' inauguration in 1796, French republic, engaged in an all-consuming struggle with England for world domination, had decreed that information technology would not allow America to merchandise with Great Britain. The French Navy soon swept American ships from the seas, idling port-urban center workers and plunging the economy toward depression. When Adams sought to negotiate a settlement, Paris spurned his envoys.

Adams, in fact, hoped to avoid state of war, but found himself riding a whirlwind. The most extreme Federalists, known as Ultras, capitalized on the passions unleashed in this crisis and scored great victories in the off-year elections of 1798, taking charge of both the political party and Congress. They created a provisional army and pressured Adams into putting Hamilton in charge. They passed heavy taxes to pay for the army and, with Federalist sympathizers in the printing braying that "traitors must be silent," enacted the Conflicting and Sedition Acts, which provided jail terms and exorbitant fines for anyone who uttered or published "whatever false, scandalous, and malicious" statement against the U.s. government or its officials. While Federalists dedicated the Sedition Deed as a necessity in the midst of a grave national crunch, Jefferson and his followers saw information technology as a ways of silencing Republicans—and a violation of the Bill of Rights. The Sedition Act, Jefferson contended, proved at that place was no step, "however atrocious," the Ultras would non take.

All forth, Jefferson had felt that Federalist extremists might overreach. By early 1799, Adams himself had arrived at the same conclusion. He, too, came to suspect that Hamilton and the Ultras wanted to precipitate a crisis with France. Their motivation perchance had been to get Adams to secure an alliance with Peachy Great britain and accept the Ultras' program in Congress. But avowing that there "is no more prospect of seeing a French Army here, than there is in Heaven," Adams refused to go along with the scheme and sent peace envoys to Paris. (Indeed, a treaty would be signed at the stop of September 1800.)

It was in this bitterly partisan atmosphere that the election of 1800 was conducted. In those days, the Constitution stipulated that each of the 138 members of the Electoral Higher cast two votes for president, which allowed electors to cast 1 vote for a favorite son and a 2d for a candidate who really stood a chance of winning. The Constitution also stipulated that if the candidates tied, or none received a bulk of electoral votes, the House of Representatives "shall chuse past Election one of them for President." Unlike today, each party nominated two candidates for the presidency.

Federalist congressmen had caucused that spring and, without indicating a preference, designated Adams and South Carolina's Charles Cotesworth Pinckney every bit the political party's choices. Adams desperately wanted to be re-elected. He was eager to see the French crisis through to a satisfactory resolution and, at age 65, believed that a defeat would mean he would exist sent home to Quincy, Massachusetts, to die in obscurity. Pinckney, born into Southern aristocracy and raised in England, had been the last of the four nominees to come up around in favor of American independence. Once committed, however, he served valiantly, seeing action at Brandywine, Germantown and Charleston. Following the war, he saturday in the Constitutional Convention; both Washington and Adams had sent him to France on diplomatic missions.

In addition to Jefferson, Republicans chose Aaron Burr as their candidate, but designated Jefferson equally the party's first choice. Jefferson had held public part intermittently since 1767, serving Virginia in its legislature and as a wartime governor, sitting in Congress, crossing to Paris in 1784 for a five-year stint that included a posting equally the American minister to French republic, and acting equally secretary of state under Washington. His 2d place stop in the election of 1796 had made him vice president, as was the custom until 1804. Burr, at age 44 the youngest of the candidates, had abandoned his legal studies in 1775 to enlist in the Continental Army; he had experienced the horrors of America's failed invasion of Canada and the miseries of Valley Forge. After the state of war he expert constabulary and represented New York in the U.Southward. Senate. In 1800, he was serving equally a fellow member of the New York legislature.

In those days, the Constitution left the style of selecting presidential electors to the states. In 11 of the 16 states, state legislatures picked the electors; therefore, the party that controlled the state assembly garnered all that state'southward electoral votes. In the other five states, electors were chosen by "qualified" voters (white, male person belongings owners in some states, white male taxpayers in others). Some states used a winner-take-all system: voters cast their ballots for the entire slate of Federalist electors or for the Republican slate. Other states split electors amidst districts.

Presidential candidates did non osculation babies, ride in parades or milkshake easily. Nor did they even make stump speeches. The candidates tried to remain above the fray, leaving campaigning to surrogates, particularly elected officials from within their parties. Adams and Jefferson each returned habitation when Congress adjourned in May, and neither left their abode states until they returned to the new capital of Washington in November.

Simply for all its differences, much about the entrada of 1800 was recognizably modern. Politicians carefully weighed which procedures were most likely to advance their party'south interests. Virginia, for instance, had permitted electors to exist elected from districts in three previous presidential contests, but after Federalists carried 8 of 19 congressional districts in the elections of 1798, Republicans, who controlled the state assembly, switched to the winner-take-all format, virtually guaranteeing they would go every one of Virginia'southward 21 electoral votes in 1800. The ploy was perfectly legal, and Federalists in Massachusetts, fearing an upsurge in Republican strength, scuttled commune elections—which the land had used previously—to select electors past the legislature, which they controlled.

Though the contest was played out largely in the print media, the unsparing personal attacks on the character and temperament of the nominees resembled the studied incivility to which today's candidates are accustomed on television. Adams was portrayed equally a monarchist who had turned his back on republicanism; he was called senile, a poor judge of grapheme, vain, jealous and driven by an "ungovernable temper." Pinckney was labeled a mediocrity, a homo of "limited talents" who was "illy suited to the exalted station" of the presidency. Jefferson was accused of cowardice. Non only, said his critics, had he lived in luxury at Monticello while others sacrificed during the War of Independence, just he had fled similar a jack rabbit when British soldiers raided Charlottesville in 1781. And he had failed egregiously equally Virginia'south governor, demonstrating that his "nerves are besides weak to bear feet and difficulties." Federalists further insisted Jefferson had been transformed into a unsafe radical during his residence in French republic and was a "howling atheist." For his part, Burr was depicted as without principles, a man who would do annihilation to get his easily on ability.

As well similar today, the election of 1800 seemed to last forever. "Electioneering is already begun," the first lady, Abigail Adams, noted xiii months before the Electoral College was to meet. What made it such a protracted affair was that state legislatures were elected throughout the yr; every bit these assemblies mostly chose presidential electors, the state contests to make up one's mind them became part of the national campaign. In 1800 the greatest surprise amid these contests occurred in New York, a large, crucial land that had given all 12 of its electoral votes to Adams in 1796, assuasive him to eke out a 3-vote victory over Jefferson.

The battle for supremacy in the New York legislature had hinged on the issue in New York City. Thanks largely to lopsided wins in two working-class wards where many voters endemic no property, the Republicans secured all 24 of New York'due south electoral votes for Jefferson and Burr. For Abigail Adams, that was enough to seal Adams' fate. John Dawson, a Republican congressman from Virginia, declared: "The Republic is safe....The [Federalist] party are in rage & despair."

But Adams himself refused to surrender hope. Afterward all, New England, which deemed for most one-half the electoral votes needed for a majority, was solidly in his military camp, and he felt sure he would win some votes elsewhere. Adams believed that if he could go S Carolina's eight votes, he would exist virtually certain to garner the same number of electoral votes that had put him over the meridian iv years earlier. And, at kickoff, both parties were thought to accept a shot at carrying the state.

When Southward Carolina's legislature was elected in mid-October, the final tally revealed that the assembly was virtually evenly divided between Federalists and Republicans—though unaffiliated representatives, all pro-Jefferson, would make up one's mind the effect. Now Adams' hopes were fading fast. Upon hearing the news that Jefferson was assured of South Carolina's eight votes, Abigail Adams remarked to her son Thomas that the "upshot to united states of america personally is that nosotros retire from public life." All that remained to be determined was whether the assembly would instruct the electors to cast their second vote for Burr or Pinckney.

The diverse presidential electors met in their respective state capitals to vote on Dec 3. Past law, their ballots were not to be opened and counted until February eleven, merely the outcome could hardly be kept secret for x weeks. Sure enough, only nine days afterward the vote, Washington, D.C.'southNational Intelligencer newspaper broke the news that neither Adams nor Pinckney had received a single Due south Carolina vote and, in the voting at large, Jefferson and Burr had each received 73 balloter votes. Adams had gotten 65, Pinckney 64. The House of Representatives would have to make the concluding decision between the two Republicans.

Adams thus became the first presidential candidate to fall victim to the notorious clause in the Constitution that counted each slave as three-fifths of one individual in computing population used to allocate both Firm seats and electoral votes. Had slaves, who had no vote, not been so counted, Adams would have edged Jefferson by a vote of 63 to 61. In improver, the Federalists vicious victim to the public's perception that the Republicans stood for democracy and egalitarianism, while the Federalists were seen as imperious and disciplinarian.

In the Firm, each land would cast a single vote. If each of the xvi states voted—that is, if none abstained—9 states would elect the president. Republicans controlled viii delegations—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The Federalists held 6: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware and Southward Carolina. And 2 delegations—Maryland and Vermont—were deadlocked.

Though Jefferson and Burr had tied in the Electoral College, public stance appeared to side with Jefferson. Not but had he been the choice of his party's nominating conclave, only he had served longer at the national level than Burr, and in a more exalted capacity. But if neither human was selected past noon on March 4, when Adams' term ended, the state would be without a chief executive until the newly elected Congress convened in December, nine months later. In the interim, the electric current, Federalist-dominated Congress would be in control.

Faced with such a prospect, Jefferson wrote to Burr in December. His missive was ambiguous, only in it he appeared to suggest that if Burr accustomed the vice presidency, he would be given greater responsibilities than previous vice presidents. Burr'south response to Jefferson was reassuring. He pledged to "disclaim all competition" and spoke of "your administration."

Meanwhile, the Federalists caucused to discuss their options. Some favored tying up the proceedings in club to concord on to power for several more months. Some wanted to try to invalidate, on technical grounds, enough electoral votes to make Adams the winner. Some urged the party to throw its back up to Burr, believing that, as a native of mercantile New York City, he would be more friendly than Jefferson to the Federalist economic programme. Not a few insisted that the party should support Jefferson, as he was clearly the pop option. Others, including Hamilton, who had long opposed Burr in the rough and tumble of New York Urban center politics, thought Jefferson more trustworthy than Burr. Hamilton argued that Burr was "without Scruple," an "unprincipled...voluptuary" who would plunder the land. But Hamilton also urged the party to stall, in the hope of inducing Jefferson to make a deal. Hamilton proposed that in return for the Federalist votes that would make him president, Jefferson should promise to preserve the Federalist fiscal organisation (a properly funded national debt and the Bank), American neutrality and a stiff navy, and to agree to "keeping in office all our Foederal Friends" beneath the cabinet level. Fifty-fifty Adams joined the fray, telling Jefferson that the presidency would be his "in an instant" should he accept Hamilton's terms. Jefferson declined, insisting that he "should never become into the office of President...with my hands tied past any weather which should hinder me from pursuing the measures" he thought best.

In the finish, the Federalists decided to dorsum Burr. Hearing of their determination, Jefferson told Adams that any attempt "to defeat the Presidential election" would "produce resistance past strength, and incalculable consequences."

Burr, who had seemed to disavow a fight for the highest role, now permit information technology be known that he would accept the presidency if elected by the Business firm. In Philadelphia, he met with several Republican congressmen, allegedly telling them that he intended to fight for it.

Burr had to know that he was playing a dangerous game and risking political suicide by challenging Jefferson, his party's reigning power. The safest class would have been to acquiesce to the vice presidency. He was even so a swain, and given Jefferson's penchant for retiring to Monticello—he had done then in 1776, 1781 and 1793—at that place was a practiced adventure that Burr would be his party's standard-bearer as early as 1804. Simply Burr as well knew there was no guarantee he would live to come across future elections. His mother and begetter had died at ages 27 and 42, respectively.

Burr's was not the only intrigue. Given the high stakes, every believable pressure was applied to change votes. Those in the deadlocked delegations were courted daily, but no one was lobbied more aggressively than James Bayard, Delaware's lone congressman, who held in his hands the sole determination of how his land would vote. 30-two years old in 1800, Bayard had proficient police force in Wilmington before winning election to the House as a Federalist four years earlier. Bayard despised Virginia'southward Republican planters, including Jefferson, whom he saw as hypocrites who endemic hundreds of slaves and lived "like feudal barons" every bit they played the role of "high priests of liberty." He announced he was supporting Burr.

The metropolis of Washington awoke to a crippling snowstorm Wednesday, February xi, the mean solar day the House was to begin voting. Nevertheless, only one of the 105 House members did not make information technology in to Congress, and his absenteeism would non alter his delegation's tally. Voting began the moment the House was gaveled into session. When the scroll call was complete, Jefferson had carried viii states, Burr 6, and two deadlocked states had bandage uncommitted ballots; Jefferson still needed 1 more vote for a majority. A second vote was held, with a similar tally, so a third. When at three a.m. the wearied congressmen finally chosen it a day, 19 scroll calls had been taken, all with the aforementioned inconclusive result.

Past Saturday evening, three days later, the House had cast 33 ballots. The deadlock seemed unbreakable.

For weeks, warnings had circulated of drastic consequences if Republicans were denied the presidency. Now that danger seemed palpable. A shaken President Adams was sure the 2 sides had come up to the "precipice" of disaster and that "a civil war was expected." There was talk that Virginia would secede if Jefferson were not elected. Some Republicans declared they would convene another constitutional convention to restructure the federal regime so that it reflected the "democratical spirit of America." It was rumored that a mob had stormed the arsenal in Philadelphia and was preparing to march on Washington to drive the defeated Federalists from power. Jefferson said he could not restrain those of his supporters who threatened "a dissolution" of the Union. He told Adams that many Republicans were prepared to use strength to prevent the Federalists' "legislative usurpation" of the executive branch.

In all likelihood, it was these threats that ultimately broke the deadlock. The shift occurred one-time after Sabbatum's final ballot; it was Delaware's Bayard who blinked. That night, he sought out a Republican shut to Jefferson, almost certainly John Nicholas, a member of Virginia's House delegation. Were Delaware to abstain, Bayard pointed out, only xv states would ballot. With eight states already in his column, Jefferson would have a majority and the elusive victory at last. But in return, Bayard asked, would Jefferson accept the terms that the Federalists had earlier proffered? Nicholas responded, according to Bayard's later on recollections, that these conditions were "very reasonable" and that he could vouch for Jefferson's acceptance.

The Federalists caucused backside doors on Sunday afternoon, February xv. When Bayard'south decision to abjure was announced, it touched off a firestorm. Cries of "Traitor! Traitor!" rang downwardly on him. Bayard himself later wrote that the "clamor was prodigious, the reproaches vehement," and that many former colleagues were "furious" with him. Two matters in item roiled his comrades. Some were aroused that Bayard had cleaved ranks before information technology was known what kind of bargain, if any, Burr might have been willing to cut. Others were upset that nothing had been heard from Jefferson himself. During a second Federalist caucus that afternoon, Bayard agreed to take no action until Burr's reply was known. In addition, the caucus directed Bayard to seek absolute assurances that Jefferson would go along with the deal.

Early the next morning, Monday, February 16, according to Bayard's afterwards testimony, Jefferson made information technology known through a tertiary party that the terms demanded by the Federalists "corresponded with his views and intentions, and that we might confide in him appropriately." The bargain was struck, at to the lowest degree to Bayard's satisfaction. Unless Burr offered even ameliorate terms, Jefferson would be the third president of the The states.

At some point that Monday afternoon, Burr's messages arrived. What exactly he said or did not say in them—they likely were destroyed soon afterward they reached Washington and their contents remain a mystery—disappointed his Federalist proponents. Bayard, in a letter written that Monday, told a friend that "Burr has acted a miserable paultry role. The election was in his power." Just Burr, at least according to Bayard's interpretation, and for reasons that remain unknown to history, had refused to reach an accommodation with the Federalists. That same Monday evening a dejected Theodore Sedgwick, Speaker of the House and a passionate Jefferson hater, notified friends at home: "the gigg is upwards."

The post-obit mean solar day, Feb 17, the House gathered at noon to cast its 36th, and, every bit it turned out, final, vote. Bayard was true to his word: Delaware abstained, ending seven days of contention and the long electoral battle.

Bayard ultimately offered many reasons for his alter of middle. On one occasion he claimed that he and the five other Federalists who had held the ability to make up one's mind the ballot in their hands—four from Maryland and one from Vermont—had agreed to "give our votes to Mr. Jefferson" if it became clear that Burr could not win. Bayard as well later insisted that he had acted from what he chosen "imperious necessity" to preclude a civil war or disunion. Still later he claimed to have been swayed by the public's preference for Jefferson.

Had Jefferson in fact cut a deal to secure the presidency? Ever afterward, he insisted that such allegations were "admittedly imitation." The historical testify, however, suggests otherwise. Not just did many political insiders assert that Jefferson had indeed agreed to a bargain, merely Bayard, in a alphabetic character dated February 17, the very day of the climactic House vote—as well as five years later, while testifying nether oath in a libel adapt—insisted that Jefferson had most certainly agreed to accept the Federalists' terms. In another letter written at the fourth dimension, Bayard assured a Federalist officer, who feared losing his position in a Republican assistants: "I take taken good care of you....You are safety."

Fifty-fifty Jefferson'due south actions as president lend credence to the allegations. Despite having fought confronting the Hamiltonian economic system for nearly a decade, he acquiesced to it once in office, leaving the Bank of the United states in identify and tolerating continued borrowing past the federal government. Nor did he remove near Federalist officeholders.

The mystery is not why Jefferson would deny making such an accord, simply why he inverse his mind after vowing never to bend. He must have concluded that he had no choice if he wished to become president by peaceful means. To allow the balloting to continue was to risk seeing the presidency sideslip from his easily. Jefferson not merely must have doubted the constancy of some of his supporters, but he knew that a bulk of the Federalists favored Burr and were making the New Yorker the same offer they were dangling earlier him.

Burr's behavior is more enigmatic. He had decided to make a play for the presidency, merely patently to refuse the very terms that would accept guaranteed it to him. The reasons for his activeness have been lost in a misreckoning tangle of furtive transactions and deliberately destroyed evidence. It may have been that the Federalists demanded more than of him than they did of Jefferson. Or Burr may have constitute it unpalatable to strike a bargain with ancient enemies, including the human being he would kill in a duel 3 years later. Burr may also have been unwilling to embrace Federalist principles that he had opposed throughout his political career.

The final mystery of the election of 1800 is whether Jefferson and his backers would take sanctioned violence had he been denied the presidency. Shortly subsequently taking office, Jefferson claimed that "in that location was no idea of [using] force." His remark proves footling, yet during the ongoing battle in the House, he alternately spoke of acceding to the Federalists' misconduct in the hope that their beliefs would ruin them, or of calling a second Constitutional Convention. He probably would take called one, or both, of these courses before risking mortality and the end of the Union.

In the days that followed the House boxing, Jefferson wrote messages to several surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence to explain what he believed his election had meant. Information technology guaranteed the triumph of the American Revolution, he said, ensuring the realization of the new "chapter in the history of man" that had been promised by Thomas Paine in 1776. In the years that followed, his thoughts often returned to the election's significance. In 1819, at age 76, he would characterize information technology every bit the "revolution of 1800," and he rejoiced to a friend in Virginia, Spencer Roane, that it had been effected peacefully "by the rational and peaceful instruments of reform, the suffrage of the people."

American History American Presidents Thomas Jefferson

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Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thomas-jefferson-aaron-burr-and-the-election-of-1800-131082359/