It is February 22nd. Welcome to Episode 53 of History in a Year. Today, the gloves come off. With George Washington gone, the United States descends into the most venomous, chaotic, and consequential presidential election in its history. It is a rematch between President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. But the real drama happens behind the scenes: Alexander Hamilton commits political suicide to destroy his own party, and a massive blunder in the Electoral College creates a terrifying tie between Jefferson and the ruthless Aaron Burr. We watch the young nation hover on the brink of civil war during a agonizing six-day deadlock in the House of Representatives.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 22nd. Welcome to Episode 53. Over the last few days, we’ve seen the United States pushed to the absolute breaking point.
LEAH:
The Federalists passed the tyrannical Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison secretly drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, threatening nullification. And then, in December 1799, George Washington died.
STEPHEN:
Washington was the only thing keeping the two political parties from ripping each other’s throats out. Once he was buried, the guardrails completely fell off.
LEAH:
Which brings us to the Presidential Election of 1800. It is a rematch.
STEPHEN:
In the Federalist corner: the incumbent President, John Adams.
In the Democratic-Republican corner: the Vice President, Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
If you think modern politics is dirty, you have never looked at the Election of 1800. This campaign makes modern attack ads look like polite dinner conversation.
STEPHEN:
Because of the Sedition Act, the Federalists had thrown most of the Republican newspaper editors into jail. But that didn’t stop the mudslinging.
LEAH:
The Federalists attacked Thomas Jefferson with everything they had. They called him an atheist. The president of Yale College famously preached that if Jefferson won, the Bible would be cast into a bonfire, and “our wives and daughters would be the victims of legal prostitution.”
STEPHEN:
They told voters that Jefferson was a radical Jacobin who was going to bring the French Reign of Terror to America and set up a guillotine in the capital.
LEAH:
The Republicans gave it right back. They hired a vicious pamphlet writer named James Callender to absolutely destroy John Adams.
STEPHEN:
Callender wrote that Adams was a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” He accused Adams of secretly plotting to start a war with France just so he could crown himself King of America.
LEAH:
But John Adams actually had a much bigger problem than Thomas Jefferson. His biggest enemy was inside his own party.
STEPHEN:
Alexander Hamilton. LEAH:
Hamilton hated John Adams. He had tried to control Adams’s cabinet, but Adams had finally caught on and fired Hamilton’s loyalists. Hamilton was furious. He wanted a puppet he could control, and John Adams was too stubborn for that.
STEPHEN:
So, in October 1800, right before the election, Alexander Hamilton did something completely insane. He committed political suicide just out of spite.
LEAH:
He wrote a 54-page pamphlet attacking the President of his own party. It was supposed to be a private letter to Federalist insiders, but of course, it leaked to the press. Aaron Burr actually got a copy of it and gleefully handed it over to the Republican newspapers.
STEPHEN:
In the pamphlet, Hamilton tore Adams apart. He said Adams had “great and intrinsic defects in his character,” was prone to “disgusting egotism,” and was completely unfit for the office of Chief Executive.
LEAH:
It was a disaster. The leader of the Federalist Party was publicly telling people that the Federalist President was a lunatic. It completely split the Federalist vote and doomed John Adams’s chances of winning a second term.
STEPHEN:
But to win the election, Thomas Jefferson needed to win the state of New York. And to win New York, he needed the help of a man who was arguably the slickest, most brilliant, and most dangerous politician in America.
LEAH:
Aaron Burr. STEPHEN:
Aaron Burr was Jefferson’s running mate. He was a New York lawyer who had essentially built the very first modern political machine. He organized the workers in New York City, turning a social club called Tammany Hall into a ruthless political operation.
LEAH:
Burr delivered New York for the Republicans. It was a massive victory. John Adams was defeated.
STEPHEN:
But then… disaster struck.
LEAH:
We have to talk about the massive flaw in the original Constitution regarding the Electoral College.
STEPHEN:
Under the original rules, every elector got two votes. They didn’t cast one vote for President and one for Vice President; they just cast two votes for President. The guy with the most votes became President, and the runner-up became VP.
LEAH:
The Republicans had a plan. All 73 of their electors were supposed to vote for Thomas Jefferson. And 72 of them were supposed to vote for Aaron Burr. The plan was for one elector to throw his second vote away—maybe vote for Samuel Adams or someone else—so that Jefferson would end up with 73, and Burr would have 72.
STEPHEN:
But someone messed up.
LEAH:
No one threw a vote away. When the electoral votes were counted in the brand-new, half-finished Capitol building in Washington D.C., the result was a shock.
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson: 73 votes.
Aaron Burr: 73 votes.
It was a dead tie.
LEAH:
Now, everyone knew that Jefferson was the top of the ticket. He was the one running for President. Burr was supposed to be the Vice President.
STEPHEN:
All Aaron Burr had to do was stand up and say, “I concede to Mr. Jefferson. I will happily be Vice President.”
LEAH:
But Aaron Burr didn’t say a word. He just smiled. He looked at the Constitution, which said that in the event of a tie, the election goes to the House of Representatives to decide.
STEPHEN:
And this is where it turns into a horror story for Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
The newly elected Congress—which was controlled by Jefferson’s party—didn’t take office until March. That meant the tie was going to be decided by the lame-duck Congress.
STEPHEN:
The Congress that was controlled by the Federalists. The people who absolutely hated Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
The Federalists looked at the situation and realized they had a golden opportunity to cause absolute chaos. They couldn’t elect John Adams—he was out. But they could choose Aaron Burr over Thomas Jefferson.
STEPHEN:
Many Federalists loved this idea. They thought Jefferson was a dangerous fanatic with deep ideological beliefs. Burr, on the other hand, didn’t really believe in anything except himself. The Federalists thought they could make a deal with Burr and control him.
LEAH:
On February 11, 1801, the House of Representatives began to vote. To win, a candidate needed a majority of the states—which meant 9 out of the 16 states.
STEPHEN:
They cast the first ballot. Jefferson got 8 states. Burr got 6 states. Two states were tied and cast blank ballots.
LEAH:
Nobody won. So they voted again. And again. And again.
STEPHEN:
They voted 35 times over the course of six agonizing days. Congressmen were sleeping on the floor of the Capitol on cots. One representative from Maryland was so sick he had to be carried into the chamber on a stretcher just to cast his vote and keep his state tied.
LEAH:
Outside the Capitol, the country was descending into a panic. Republican militias in Virginia and Pennsylvania began to arm themselves. They threatened to march on Washington D.C. if the Federalists stole the election for Aaron Burr.
STEPHEN:
There was very real talk of a civil war.
LEAH:
And then, the most unlikely person in the world stepped in to save Thomas Jefferson.
STEPHEN:
Alexander Hamilton.
LEAH:
Hamilton and Jefferson had fought bitterly for a decade. But Hamilton hated Aaron Burr even more. Burr was from New York, just like Hamilton, and they had been fierce rivals for years.
STEPHEN:
Hamilton began writing frantic letters to his Federalist allies in the House of Representatives. He begged them not to vote for Burr.
LEAH:
He wrote: “If there be a man in the world I ought to hate, it is Jefferson. With Burr I have always been personally well. But the public good must be paramount to every private consideration.”
STEPHEN:
He argued that Jefferson, as much as he disagreed with him, was at least a man of principle. He had a philosophy. He had character.
LEAH:
But Burr? Hamilton called Burr a “Catiline”—referencing the famous Roman traitor. He said Burr was bankrupt, corrupt, and completely devoid of morals. He warned that if they gave Burr the presidency, he would use the army to turn himself into an emperor.
STEPHEN:
“Mr. Jefferson,” Hamilton wrote, “is a safe man. Mr. Burr is one of the most unprincipled men in the United States.”
LEAH:
Hamilton’s lobbying worked. On February 17, 1801—on the 36th ballot—a Federalist from Delaware named James Bayard finally broke the deadlock. He submitted a blank ballot, which shifted the state’s vote to Jefferson.
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson was finally declared the third President of the United States. Aaron Burr became the Vice President.
LEAH:
Burr never forgave Alexander Hamilton for interfering. That hatred would simmer for three years until it finally exploded on a dueling ground in New Jersey.
STEPHEN:
But for the moment, the crisis had passed. John Adams quietly packed his bags and left Washington D.C. on a 4:00 AM stagecoach on the morning of Jefferson’s inauguration. He didn’t stay to watch his rival take power.
LEAH:
Despite the bitterness, what happened in 1800 was a miracle. Jefferson called it the “Revolution of 1800.”
STEPHEN:
And he was right. Because for the first time in modern human history, a government in power was defeated by an opposition party, and they handed over the keys to the kingdom without shedding a single drop of blood.
LEAH:
John Adams had the army. He had the Navy. He had the Sedition Act. He could have fought to stay in power. But he respected the Constitution more than his own pride. He walked away.
STEPHEN:
The United States had survived its first great stress test. The system worked.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 54. The Midnight Judges. John Adams might have left the presidency peacefully, but he left a ticking time bomb behind for Thomas Jefferson. We watch the dramatic final hours of the Adams administration as he frantically packs the federal courts with his allies, setting up the most important Supreme Court case in American history.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.