Students of politics and American history frequently point to the pivotal election of 1800 as the most significant in the story of American campaigns. The eventual winner of the election, Thomas Jefferson, once remarked that this election was “as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.” This election was marked, even more than the previous one, by the kind of sharp theoretical disagreements that we would in our day call ideological, and the campaign that ensued reopened and then widened the deepening political and social rifts that had already been glimpsed in 1792 and still more noticeably in 1796. Once again, the election squared off John Adams, now the incumbent president, against Jefferson, his old friend and now the incumbent vice president. Few Americans were more important to the political leadership of the American Revolution than these old comrades and rivals. In 1776, they followed in essence the same ideals, agreed fully on their objectives, served as allies on the same revolutionary committees, took the same potentially deadly risks, and collaborated together on the Declaration of Independence (which, as it is well known, was largely written by Jefferson under the advice of Adams and Benjamin Franklin). But 1800 was not a year of political concord for these erstwhile allies. Even though the election of 1796 ended amicably, their philosophical differences had clearly sounded during the Washington administration, becoming further amplified during the campaign that followed Washington’s retirement. This mutual support, freely given and enjoyed in the spirit of goodwill upon the outcome of the previous election, soon dissipated as events proceeded and philosophical differences further crystallized.
The disagreements of the 1790s were still there: reconciliation with England versus allegiance to France, centralized versus localized government along with federal versus state power, Hamilton’s economic activism versus governmental minimalism, protectionist tariffs favored by commercial interests versus the disdain for tariffs felt by farming interests—especially, but not exclusively, in the South—and modernizing commerce, urbanization, and manufacturing industry versus a deep agrarian tradition, a division that also had North-South undercurrents even though the agrarian culture was also strong in the rural North and West. Soon, the rift was widened as the Jeffersonian Republicans excoriated President Adams for the Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of laws enacted by Congress with Adams’s endorsement in an effort to quell anti-administration criticism and punish “Jacobin” newspapers. Naval hostilities, this time between the United States and France (in what has since been deemed the “Quasi War” pitting America against France), drew still further recriminations from Francophile Republicans, and the confusion surrounding the “XYZ Affair” raised nagging questions about the administration’s diplomatic skills. Jefferson and the Republicans were infuriated by these events and sought a dramatic change in the upcoming election. Even some Federalists found the last four years under Adams distasteful and were reluctant to support a second term. The aggravated policy disagreements between Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans guaranteed a bruising campaign and, in some quarters, raised new doubts about the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power between the two factions. All conditions were ripe for a heated and, as it would turn out, momentous contest.
During Adams’s administration, the naval war with France put the United States in a potentially perilous position. The French government was insulted by Jay’s Treaty, signed between the United States and Britain, which had seemed to the French a clear indication that the United States was now leaning its allegiance toward Britain, which to the French was regarded askance given their substantial aid to the Americans against Britain in their war for independence. President Adams attempted to defuse the situation by sending three emissaries, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, to France to work toward a resolution. Represented by three French agents (later to be known anonymously as X, Y, and Z), the French demanded to be paid a large amount of money before they were to agree to any treaty that would resolve the growing hostilities between the two countries, a sum that included what was in effect a large (and embarrassing) bribe. Repulsed by such presumption, Pinckney’s reaction came in his famous response: “No, no! Not a sixpence!” Later that summer, Rep. Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina is said to have echoed and further fortified this sentiment by declaiming a still more famous phrase, which was at one time well known to nearly all American elementary school students, “Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!” It was now clear that any agreement between France and the United States was, at least momentarily, unattainable. The Quasi War between the former allies continued for two more years without a formal declaration of hostilities from either side. Politically, this hurt the Republican cause given their long and public sympathy for France, the effects of which were felt in the off-year elections of 1798. But any advantage held by the Federalists was soon negated by their actions.
In 1798, under this political climate and with Adams’s support, the Federalist-dominated Congress passed four laws—soon to be together known as the Alien and Sedition Acts—designed to address domestic security in response to the growing threat of a belligerent France. Three laws addressing aliens and primarily directed at French and Irish (who were viewed as sympathetic to France) residents changed the requirements for naturalization, making it easier to deport and imprison aliens deemed to be a potential danger to domestic safety. Ominously, the Sedition Act broadened the definition of treason to include any publication of “false, scandalous and malicious writing.” The execution of this act resulted in the arrests of twenty-five men, the majority of them being editors with Republican allegiances. This included Republican firebrand Benjamin Franklin Bache (a strident critic of both President Washington and President Adams), who was charged with seditious libel, an indictment that resulted in his being physically assaulted, his home and family threatened, and his office vandalized by a mob. (Bache died of yellow fever before his case went to trial.) Needless to say, the focus of the arrests led to the impression that the Sedition Act was aimed not so much at domestic security against potential French encroachments as it was at the discrediting and elimination of Republican opposition to Federalist policies. Response to the Alien and Sedition Acts also prompted Jefferson and his closest political ally, friend, and neighbor, James Madison, to anonymously write the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, documents used by Republicans in the campaign of 1800 but that would become more prominent as important theoretical arguments in the still more substantive debate over constitutional interpretation and the relationship between the several states and the federal government.
Such was the situation as the Campaign of 1800 drew close. Both parties prepared for a far more vigorous, polarized, and acrimonious contest than the Campaign of 1796. Because of this, the parties each began to exhibit more coherent organization than in the previous elections. While the true beginnings of the modern political party as we know it in America were still two or three decades away, party politics in some states began to show organizational characteristics that would later develop on a national scale. Formal party organization and structure emerged in those states in which allegiances were divided between the two factions. What can now, in retrospect, be identified as one of the earliest “party machines” was in operation in Virginia, the state with the most electoral votes at the time, as well as New York (which was becoming increasingly subject to the growing influence of the Tammany Society), with the Republicans being particularly diligent in incubating these formative versions of the political machine in the Empire State. New laws in the Old Dominion required voters to cast votes for all twenty-one electors instead of the previous practice of choosing one elector per voting district, a practice that encouraged statewide organization. The January before the election, Republican Party leaders—most (but not all) of them state legislators—met in Richmond in what was essentially a party caucus charged with establishing tighter organization throughout the commonwealth. The Federalists followed suit, although at least in Virginia, they operated on a smaller scale.
Organizing and electioneering in other states was far more effective than it had been in any previous campaign season. Party networks were becoming more sophisticated, especially in New York and Pennsylvania. As the party out of power, Republicans, by the virtues inspired by necessity, proved more adept at learning this new political game. One consequence of this was increased criticism of the congressional nominating caucus, which was the first formal presidential nominating instrument but was now, even at this early stage in the growth of the republic, being accused in some quarters of violating the constitutional rights of voting citizens. From all of this, it became apparent that the partisan politics so despised by Washington was in reality a political inevitability built into the structure of the political edifice. But caution must be added here to check exaggeration: The Electoral College was still selected by the various state legislatures in eleven of the now sixteen states, with only Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virginia choosing electors through popular vote (a popular vote not nearly as inclusive as that which we are accustomed to today); and given this control in the state legislatures, the type of political canvassing and stumping with which we are now familiar was still a distant development.
During the campaign, Republicans distributed their positions on policy in what could be called a forerunner to the party platform, with particular use of the friendly elements of the press in Virginia and Pennsylvania. In the Examiner of Richmond, several policy points formally adopted by state activists were published in the form of negative resolutions opposing current Federalist programs. Included among these resolutions were the Republican opposition to a standing military, reaffirmation of the need for neutrality in foreign affairs, criticism of the national debt, and denunciation of the Alien and Sedition Acts. In Philadelphia, the pro-Republican Aurora, now managed by Bache’s widow Margaret, published a catalog of eleven antinomies punctuating the differences between “things as they have been” under the Federalists and “things as they will be” under the Republicans. Under this catalog, Republicans reaffirmed their dedication to the principles of the Revolution and further advocated peaceful neutrality abroad and domestic unity at home, fair and tolerant government separated from church hierarchy, elimination of public debt, reduction of taxes, a free press, and freedom of religion. By implication, the Federalists were depicted as opponents of these unassailable principles. In response, the Federalists stood their ground, choosing to claim their achievements rather than respond directly to Republican charges. They emphasized their proven experience in statesmanship earned through twelve years of predominantly Federalist government, the overall prosperity enjoyed under Federalist policies, and the need for continuity and stability in the face of incessant international tumult. One pro-Federalist address in Rhode Island pointedly asked why the nation should follow the lead of “aristocratic” Virginia, a state haughtily proud of its undemocratic class structure and institutionalized slavery. Through newspapers, pamphlets, posters, and handbills, both sides addressed the issues of the day with sincerity and offered their reasons as to why one party was superior to the other in the task of shaping the destiny of the young republic. But, inevitably and almost irresistibly, the question of character was also broached, lending to a particularly tense mood throughout the campaign.
Despite their genteel posture of civility, the Federalists were not above vituperation, describing Jefferson as cowardly, mean, the son of a “half-breed,” a phony Southern rube who fed on coarse cornmeal and “fricasseed bullfrog,” a robber of widows, and a profane threat to Christian civilization whose administration would foster fearsome crime and wretched malfeasance, in addition to the old charge of Jacobin heresy. In what nearly amounts to the coining and circulation of an early political slogan, Philadelphia’s Gazette of the United States boldly and repeatedly framed the alternatives in the upcoming election as choosing between “God—and a religious president; or impiously declare for Jefferson—and no God!!!” Adams, of course, was in the eyes of the Gazette the “religious” president, in contrast to the “atheist” radical of Monticello.
Returning such verbal fire, personal insult was also heaped upon Adams by the Republicans. Tyrant, fool, and intemperate whirlwind of “malignant passions” were epithets hurled at Adams and now added to the old accusations of monarchism and aristocratic ambition. To further this tired canard charging Adams with blind devotion to the British monarchy, rumormongers disseminated a madcap fiction that the president was hatching a scandalous plan to reunite Britain and the United States through an arranged marriage between a scion of his household and a daughter of King George III. According to this fabrication, it was Washington himself who saved the country from the clutches of such cynical treason. With brandished sword, the story went, he was to have forced Adams to abandon his royalist ambitions. Preposterous as this all seems today, the story was for a while taken seriously by the Federalists’ more gullible enemies.
Significantly, Alexander Hamilton’s former ambivalence toward President Adams had degenerated into unequivocal dislike. Hamilton now regarded Adams as vain, self-promoting, and unpredictable. Indeed, Hamilton appeared to entertain some respect for his other rival, Jefferson, at least when compared to his assessment of the president, complaining, “If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish bad measures.” Hamilton, the true leader of the early Federalists and a stalwart of their principles, saw Adams as far too moderate in his attitudes toward the rabble-rousing Republicans and their dangerous French sympathies. Rejecting Adams outright, Hamilton supported Charles Pinckney, the elder Pinckney of South Carolina—famously and favorably associated with the XYZ Affair—whom he saw as decidedly truer to the party’s principles and a person of stronger character. In a private letter addressed to South Carolina Federalists, Hamilton vilified Adams’s record and character. A copy of this letter mysteriously fell into the hands of Republican Aaron Burr, and soon “Hamilton’s Thunderbolt” decrying the meanness, incompetence, and petty egotism of Adams was widely circulated. Adams fueled this intraparty vitriol by sternly and publicly denouncing Hamilton as an unscrupulous “bastard” greatly schooled in cunning intrigue.
But in the end, in spite of the objections raised against President Adams by influential figures within his own party such as Hamilton, the popular candidates for the presidency were seen to be the incumbent president against his incumbent vice president, Jefferson. What was thus needed was to establish a pool of reasonable choices for vice president. This comparatively—by the standards of the times—tighter political organization provided for broader consensus in selecting candidates for the vice presidency. The Federalists, now generally committed to a second term for the president, threw in behind Hamilton’s favorite, the elder Pinckney, for the vice presidency, while Burr was tapped by the Republicans. In doing so, both parties followed the North-South strategy (Massachusetts-South Carolina for the Federalists and Virginia-New York for the Republicans) that had been in practice since the first election (i.e., Washington of Virginia in the South and Adams of Massachusetts in the North). As the campaign unfolded, New York soon drew considerable attention from the Republicans, who believed they had a solid chance of securing a majority in the state legislature and thereby winning the twelve electoral votes that went to the Federalists in the previous election. Republicans also realized that victory in New York’s elections for the state house would provide momentum that might influence other states as well. For Jefferson, New York was decisive, especially New York City, but victory would not come easy as Hamilton, a New Yorker, led the Federalist charge there. But the Republicans were better organized and led by Burr, a rising star in state and national politics and now Hamilton’s greatest nemesis. Burr proved energetic, determined, savvy, and perceptive, conducting the New York campaign for the state house with the expertise of a modern campaign manager. While Burr commonly has been associated with Tammany, in this election at least, he worked directly with state party committees and independently of the nascent machine’s growing sway. Burr managed to deliver New York, a hard blow to the Federalists who had carried it for Adams in 1796. In a close election of this nature, a victory of this size proved the difference.
And the election was close—to this day the closest electoral vote in American history (the only tie in the history of the Electoral College). But in the end, the decision was not between Adams and Jefferson but between Jefferson and Burr, an outcome that some leading Republicans had actually anticipated but did little to prevent. To the contrary, their electoral strategy, particularly in Virginia and New York, seemed to guarantee it. President Adams won sixty-five Electoral College votes, sustaining his unanimous support in New England and New Jersey. (Pinckney received sixty-four, with one vote in Rhode Island going to New York’s John Jay.) However, both Jefferson and Burr exceeded the president, each winning seventy-three electoral votes (taking the same electors in the same states, notably winning thirty-three of their seventy-three votes from Virginia and New York combined). The Federalists made inroads in Pennsylvania, which had favored Jefferson in 1796 by a margin of fourteen to one, in 1800 losing there by a margin of only eight to seven. Jefferson’s position in North Carolina was also weakened by three votes, but Adams and Pinckney split Federalist loyalties, thus nullifying any gains. Significantly, Jefferson and Burr both managed to sweep Pinckney’s home state of South Carolina, depriving the Federalists of any votes there. They also enjoyed unanimity in Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Maryland was an even split between the two parties.
While it was widely presumed that Jefferson was the party’s candidate for president, under the Constitution, Burr’s seventy-three votes were technically for president as well, not for vice president, the Constitution still at that time only stipulating that the candidate with the second-most votes was elected vice president (soon to be amended as a result of this election). Under the stipulations of the Constitution, any tie between presidential candidates in the Electoral College was to be resolved in the House of Representatives, who could decide for themselves—the intent of the electors, the preferences of the party, and the sway of public opinion notwithstanding—who should be elected president. Thus, entirely by accident, Burr was in a position to become the next president of the United States, even though from the outset, it was clear in everyone’s mind that Jefferson was the intended Republican candidate for the presidency. It was therefore a matter now left to the members of the House, which at that time was still controlled by the Federalists, as the transition to the newly elected Republican majority had not yet transpired. In a twist of political fortune, the Federalists thus held the key to the immediate future of Republican leadership. As Jefferson dryly observed, the Republicans were “in the hands of the enemies.”
Out of a sense of decorum, Burr publicly demurred to compete against Jefferson for the high office, stating that he did not desire to deprive the people of their first choice. And yet, it has been noted that he also failed to promise that he would refuse the presidency should the vote in the House go his way, and as such, he may have subtly encouraged a degree of uncertainty regarding his own ambitions. The Federalists in particular read it this way, and many interpreted Burr’s lack of forthcoming clarity to be a sign that he did in fact seek the presidency for himself, and there were many Federalists who actually desired an outcome favoring Burr. For his part, Burr deflected offers of Federalist support in exchange for his allegiance to their policies. Hamilton was one Federalist who absolutely refused to make any such advances to Burr, for as much as Hamilton opposed Jefferson, he deeply dreaded a Burr presidency, referring to his fellow New Yorker as an unprincipled “American Catiline.” Hamilton thus threw his considerable influence against Burr and, swallowing hard while holding his nose, worked for the election of the “contemptible hypocrite” Jefferson.
To complicate matters further, the voting in the House was by state, not by individual member; so the electoral vote tally could not supply any insight into what the House would in the end decide. A majority vote in the state delegation within the House carried the state. Ties did not count. On the first ballot, it was close; Jefferson received the votes of eight states, with six voting for Burr. Two states were deadlocked, delaying the needed majority and thus prompting further balloting. The balloting continued for six days, thirty-five ballots in all, before Jefferson finally emerged the winner, carrying ten states on the thirty-sixth and last ballot, cast on February 17, 1801. On that ballot, James A. Bayard, a Federalist and Delaware’s sole representative to the House (Delaware at that time being allotted only one member in the House of Representatives), had prior to the voting announced his intention to abstain, and his example prompted other Federalists from Vermont, Maryland, and South Carolina to submit blank ballots. Although the actual facts are unclear, Hamilton appears to have played a key role in the outcome, convincing Bayard and at least some of the erstwhile pro-Burr Federalists to submit the blank ballots, thereby neutralizing the support that Burr needed from the Federalists in the House in order to win the presidency. Thus, by a vote of ten states to four in favor of Jefferson, Burr was to become vice president (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island voted for Burr; Delaware and South Carolina cast no vote due to the submission of blank ballots). Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s statute for religious freedom as well as the founder of the University of Virginia, was now to become the third president of the United States. Personal animosities festered. Within four years, Alexander Hamilton, a true giant of the American founding, would be dead, mortally wounded by gunshot in a duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton would openly oppose Burr’s run for governor in New York in 1804, thus adding further fuel to their smoldering mutual enmity. Upon receiving news of a vigorous denunciation of Burr by Hamilton at a dinner party, Burr felt driven to resolve the issue once and for all by other, more final, and less forgiving means.
The election of 1800 and the subsequent peaceful transition of power from Federalists to Republicans represented a remarkable achievement, one that Jefferson, as stated above, considered an achievement as revolutionary as the American Revolution itself, an assessment that is not without support among historians today. As important as the election of 1796 was, the transition of power that occurred then was between members of the same faction or party. In 1800, power was exchanged between parties with which no love was lost, under conditions of deep, polarizing, and intensifying division within the republic. And yet the transition occurred, one party resigning power and another assuming it, without resorting to threat or violence. The election of 1800 also prompted the passage and ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, which solved the election confusion in Article II as it was originally written, by adding language explicitly separating the selection of the president from that of the vice president.
Finally, the election of 1800 foreshadowed in notable ways the emergence of modern political parties and even anticipated the influence of the political machine, which would dominate much of the political direction of the republic throughout the nineteenth century and even well into the twentieth. As an increasingly larger percentage of states were soon to move from legislative selection to the popular election of presidential electors, political parties became necessary to mobilize support for presidential tickets. While still lacking sophistication compared to the modern party apparatus that we today take for granted, political parties had, by 1800, become a durable feature in American society; and the politics of the boss-driven machine, while still in its earliest stages in the early 1800s, would grow up with the two-party system to expand and thrive for at least a century and a half. As the political world that beats within American democracy continued to reveal its competitive and antagonistic dimensions, James Madison’s observation in Federalist 10 proved again vividly insightful; faction is indeed “sown in the nature of man.”
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