October 30, 2023: Contested Elections: 1800

[75 yearsago this week, Dewey didn’t defeat Truman—but the 1948 election was close andcontested enough that onenewspaper famously reported he did. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that electionand a few other hotly contested ones (not including 2020, because itreally wasn’t), leading up to a special Guest Post from an FSU alum andtalented young journalist who would never get it so wrong!]

On the momentthat definitely changed things in post-Revolutionary America—but also,inspiringly, didn’t.

It’d be anoverstatement to say that the first decade of post-Constitution America wasdevoid of national or partisan divisions—this was the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts and their responses, after all; also of that little rebellion up in Pennsylvania—but I don’t think it’s inaccurate to see the first threepresidential terms (Washington’s two and John Adams’s one) as among the mostunified and non-controversial in our history. That’s true even though Adams’s Vice President was his chief rival in the 1796election, Thomas Jefferson; Jefferson hadgained the second-most electoral votes, which in the first constitutional modelmeant that he would serve as vice president (an idea that itself relfects astriking lack of expected controversy!). There were certainly two distinctparties as of that second administration (Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’sRepublicans), and they had distinct perspectives on evolving nationalissues to be sure; but there doesn’t seemto be much evidence of significant partisan divisions between them in thatperiod.

To say thatthings changed with the presidential election of 1800 would be to drastically understate the case. Once againAdams and Jefferson were the chief contenders, now linked by the past fouryears of joint service but at the same time more overtly rivals because of thatprior election and its results; moreover, this time Jefferson’s running mate, Aaron Burr, was a far moreprominent and popular candidate in his own right. And this combination ofcomplex factors led to an outcome that was divisive and controversial onmultiple levels: Jefferson’s ticket handily defeated that of his boss, greatlyamplifying the partisan rancor between the men and parties; but at the sametime Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson, an unprecedented (then or since) tie between two Republicans that sent the election into thehands of the Federalist-controlled Congress. Although most Federalists opposedJefferson (for obvious reasons), through a murky and secretive process (onelikely influenced by Alexander Hamilton) Jefferson was ultimately chosen on the 36th ballot as the nation’s third president.

Four years later Burr shot Hamilton dead in the nation’s most famous duel, and it’s entirely fair to say that, inthe aftermath of this heated and controversial election, the nation could havesimilarly descended into conflict. But instead, Burr and Hamilton’s eventualfates notwithstanding, the better angels of our collective nature rose to theoccasion—Adams peacefully handed over the executive to Jefferson, all those who had supported Burr recognized the newadministration, and the parties continued to move forward as political but not social or destructive rivals. Ifand when the partisan divisions seem too deep and too wide, and frankly toomuch for me to contemplate, I try to remember the election of 1800; not becauseit went smoothly or was perfect (far from it), nor because the leaders in thatgeneration were any nobler or purer (ditto), but rather precisely because itwent horribly and was deeply messed-up and the leaders were as selfish andhuman as they always are, and yet somehow—as untested and raw as we were—wecame out on the other side. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a way to do the same.

Nextcontested election tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?