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The Presidential Election of 1800: A Story of Crisis, Controversy, and Change
By Joanne B. Freeman
Professor of History, Yale University
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| Resolutions
for amending the Constitution on Election of the
President, 1800. (GLC00927.02) |
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Nasty political mud-slinging. Campaign attacks and counterattacks. Personal insults. Outrageous newspaper invective. Dire predictions of warfare and national collapse. Innovative new forms of politicking capitalizing on a growing technology. As much as this seems to describe our pending presidential contest, it actually describes an election more than two hundred years past.
The presidential election of 1800 was an angry, dirty,
crisis-ridden contest that seemed to threaten the nation's
very survival. A bitter partisan battle between Federalist
John Adams and Republican Thomas Jefferson, it produced
a tie between Jefferson and his Republican running mate,
Aaron Burr; a deadlock in the House where the tie had
to be broken; an outburst of intrigue and suspicion as
Federalists struggled to determine a course of action;
Jefferson's election; and Burr's eventual downfall. The
unfolding of this crisis tested the new nation's durability.
The deadlock in the House revealed a constitutional defect.
It also pushed partisan rivalry to an extreme, inspiring
a host of creative and far-reaching electoral ploys. As
a sense of crisis built, there was even talk of disunion
and civil war, and indeed, two states began to organize
their militias to seize the government if Jefferson did
not prevail.
Oddly enough, this pivotal election has received relatively
little scholarly attention. Much of it is recent, possibly
inspired by the presidential election of 2000. One recent
study -- Adams vs. Jefferson, by John Ferling
-- does an excellent job of tracing the contest's many
twists and turns. (Judging from its title, Jefferson's
Second Revolution, by Susan Dunn, to be released
in September 2004, promises to do the same). A recent
collection of articles, The Revolution of 1800: Democracy,
Race, and the New Republic, edited by James Horn,
Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, offers an excellent
survey of different historical approaches to the election,
such as the study of constitutional realities, political
culture, or the influence of slavery. Garry Wills's Negro
President: Jefferson and the Slave Power focuses
on the influence of slavery on Jefferson's politics, including
his election as president. And yours truly examines the
election as a prime example of the period's political
culture in the final chapter of Affairs of Honor:
National Politics in the New Republic. Older studies
that discuss the election include Noble E. Cunningham,
Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of
Party Organization, 1789-1801 (1957); Daniel Sisson,
The American Revolution of 1800 (1974); Stanley Elkins
and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (1993);
and James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early
Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (1993).
Why so little scholarship? In part, because of our tendency
to view the election of 1800 as a victory for our modern
two-party system -- the first such victory in American
national politics. As the nation's constitutional framework
dictated, Federalist Adams handed the presidency to Republican
Jefferson, a new regime took command, and the nation endured.
Viewed in this light -- as a neat and tidy stepping-stone
to modern party politics -- the election doesn't seem
to merit further analysis.
This is not to say that the calm transferal of power from
one regime to another is not noteworthy. It was certainly
a powerful endorsement of our Constitution. But envisioning
the election as the birth of our modern political system
masks the many ways in which it was distinctly not modern.
In fact, in 1800, there was no modern party system. The
Republicans and Federalists were not parties as we now
understand them. An institutionalized two-party system
would not be accepted for decades to come. And events
were far more uncertain and crisis-ridden than the idea
of a "system" allows; there was no telling what would
happen or why. Similarly, participants operated according
to ideas and assumptions very different from our own.
In short, the election of 1800 transpired in a world with
its own culture and contingencies.
To recapture the contingency of this historical moment,
we have to look through the eyes of our historical subjects
and understand them in the context of their own world.
In 1800, the American Constitution had been in effect
for only eleven years. The national government was still
a work-in-progress, a political experiment with no model
of comparison in the modern world. A republic was supposedly
superior to its Old World predecessors, but this assumption
had yet to be tested. Political parties were not an accepted
part of this picture: instead they were viewed as illicit
groups of self-interested men intent on winning power
and position in the next election. The stability and long-term
practicability of a republic was likewise a question,
every political crisis raising fears of disunion and civil
war. This tense, tenuous political environment produced
anxiety, bitterness, and high emotion for good reason.
Given America's survival for more than two hundred years,
it is easy to forget this central political reality of
the early Republic: The United States was new, fragile,
shaky, and likely to collapse, a prevailing anxiety that
could not help but have an enormous impact on the period's
politics. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the two
driving forces behind the Constitution, went to their
deaths with the Union's vulnerability on their minds.
Both men wrote final pleas for its preservation on the
eve of their demise, Madison composing a memorandum entitled
"Advice to My Country," and Hamilton writing one last
letter on the night before his duel with Aaron Burr, urging
a friend to fight against the "Dismemberment of our Empire."1
Indeed, Hamilton fought the duel in part to preserve
his reputation for that future time when the Republic
would collapse and his leadership would be in demand.2
Virginian Henry Lee's offhand comment in a 1790 letter
to James Madison is a blunt reminder of the tenuous nature
of the national Union. "If the government should continue
to exist..." Madison wrote in passing, offering evidence
of a mindset that is difficult to recapture.3
Witness the period's political chronology. In 1790, the
controversy over the location of the national capital
and Alexander Hamilton's financial plan convinced many
that the Union was not long for this world. In 1792, partisan
conflict exploded into the newspapers, threatening, as
George Washington put it, to "tare the [federal] Machine
asunder."4 In 1793, the inflammatory activities
of "Citizen" Edmond Genet threatened to spread French
revolutionary fervor to American shores, prompting even
Francophile Republicans to abandon his cause. In 1794,
when western Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay a national
whiskey tax, President George Washington called an armed
force of 15,000 soldiers to the field.5 In
1795, the lackluster Jay Treaty with Britain provoked
angry public protests around the nation; thousands of
people gathered in New York City alone, a handful of them
reputedly throwing rocks at Alexander Hamilton's head.
In 1796, with George Washington's retirement, the nation
had its first real presidential election, Washington's
departure alone prompting many to fear the nation's imminent
collapse. The 1797-98 XYZ Affair (prompted by a French
attempt to get bribe money from American diplomats), the
Quasi-War with France (stemming from French seizure of
American ships and the XYZ Affair), the 1798 Alien and
Sedition Acts (wartime measures to deport threatening
aliens and silence attacks on the government), the Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions (recommending that state governments
interpose their authority over the Alien and Sedition
Acts), Fries's Rebellion (a revolt against wartime taxes),
and finally, the presidential election of 1800 -- these
are only the most prominent of the period's many crises,
each one raising serious questions about the survival
and character of the national government and its relationship
to the body politic.
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