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1800 United States presidential election

The 1800 United States presidential election was the fourth quadrennial presidential election. It was held from October 31 to December 3, 1800. In what is sometimes called the "Revolution of 1800",[2][3] the Democratic-Republican Party candidate, Vice President Thomas Jefferson, defeated the Federalist Party candidate and incumbent, President John Adams. The election was a political realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican leadership. This was the first presidential election in American history to be a rematch.


138 members of the Electoral College
70 electoral votes needed to win

32.3%[1] Increase 12.2 pp

Adams had narrowly defeated Jefferson in the 1796 election. Under the rules of the electoral system in place before the 1804 ratification of the 12th Amendment, each member of the Electoral College cast two votes, with no distinction made between electoral votes for president and electoral votes for vice president. As Jefferson received the second-most votes in 1796, he was elected vice president. In 1800, unlike in 1796, both parties formally nominated tickets. The Democratic-Republicans nominated a ticket consisting of Jefferson and Aaron Burr, while the Federalists nominated a ticket consisting of Adams and Charles C. Pinckney. Each party formed a plan by which one of their respective electors would vote for a third candidate or abstain so that its preferred presidential candidate (Adams for the Federalists and Jefferson for the Democratic-Republicans) would win one more vote than the party's other nominee.


The chief political issues revolved around the fallout from the French Revolution and the Quasi-War. The Federalists favored a strong central government and close relations with Great Britain. The Democratic-Republicans favored decentralization to the state governments, and the party attacked the taxes the Federalists imposed. The Democratic-Republicans also denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts, which the Federalists had passed to make it harder for immigrants to become citizens and to restrict statements critical of the federal government. The Democratic-Republicans were well organized at the state and local levels, while the Federalists were disorganized and suffered a bitter split between their two major leaders, Adams and Alexander Hamilton. According to historian John Ferling, the jockeying for electoral votes, regional divisions, and the propaganda smear campaigns created by both parties made the election recognizably modern.[4]


At the end of a long and bitter campaign, Jefferson and Burr each won 73 electoral votes, Adams won 65, and Pinckney won 64. The Federalists swept New England, the Democratic-Republicans dominated the South, and the parties split the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.


The Democratic-Republicans' failure to execute their plan to award Jefferson one more vote than Burr resulted in a tie, known as the Burr dilemma. It necessitated a contingent election in the House of Representatives. Under the terms laid out in the Constitution, the outgoing House of Representatives chose between Jefferson and Burr. Burr was accused of campaigning for the presidency himself in the contingent election despite being a member of Jefferson's party. Each state delegation cast one vote, and a victory in the contingent election required one candidate to win a majority of the state delegations. Neither Burr nor Jefferson was able to win on the first 35 ballots of the contingent election, as most Federalist representatives backed Burr and all Democratic-Republican representatives backed Jefferson. Hamilton favored Jefferson over Burr, and he convinced several Federalists to switch their support to Jefferson, giving Jefferson a victory on the 36th ballot. Jefferson became the second consecutive incumbent vice president to be elected president. This is one of two presidential elections (along with the 1824 election) that have been decided in the House.

General election[edit]

Campaign[edit]

While the 1800 election was a re-match of the 1796 election, it ushered in a new type of American politics, a two-party republic and acrimonious campaigning behind the scenes and through the press. On top of this, the election pitted the "larger than life" Adams and Jefferson, who were formerly close allies turned political enemies.[6]


The campaign was bitter and characterized by slander and personal attacks on both sides. Federalists spread rumors that the Democratic-Republicans were radical atheists[7] who would ruin the country (based on the Democratic-Republican support for the French Revolution). In 1798, George Washington had complained "that you could as soon scrub the blackamoor white, as to change the principles of a professed Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country".[8] Meanwhile, the Democratic-Republicans accused Federalists of subverting republican principles with the Alien and Sedition Acts, some of which were later declared unconstitutional after their expiration by the Supreme Court, and relying for their support on foreign immigrants; they also accused Federalists of favoring Britain and the other coalition countries in their war with France in order to promote aristocratic, anti-democratic values.[9]


Adams was attacked by both the opposition Democratic-Republicans and a group of so-called "High Federalists" aligned with Alexander Hamilton. The Democratic-Republicans felt that the Adams foreign policy was too favorable toward Britain; feared that the new army called up for the Quasi-War would oppress the people; opposed new taxes to pay for war; and attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts as violations of states' rights and the Constitution. "High Federalists" considered Adams too moderate and would have preferred the leadership of Alexander Hamilton instead.[10]


Hamilton had apparently grown impatient with Adams and wanted a new president who was more receptive to his goals. During Washington's presidency, Hamilton had been able to influence the federal response to the Whiskey Rebellion (which threatened the government's power to tax citizens). When Washington announced that he would not seek a third term, the Federalists and Adams regarded himself as next-in-line.[11]


Hamilton appears to have hoped in 1796 that his influence within an Adams administration would be as great as or greater than in Washington's. By 1800, Hamilton had come to realize that Adams was too independent and thought the Federalist vice presidential candidate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, more suited to serving Hamilton's interests. In his third sabotage attempt toward Adams,[12] Hamilton quietly schemed to elect Pinckney to the presidency. Given Pinckney's lack of political experience, he would have been expected to be open to Hamilton's influence. However, Hamilton's plan backfired and hurt the Federalist party, particularly after one of his letters, a scathing criticism of Adams that was fifty-four pages long,[13] fell into the hands of a Democratic-Republican and soon after became public. It embarrassed Adams and damaged Hamilton's efforts on behalf of Pinckney,[4] not to mention speeding Hamilton's own political decline.[13]


The contemporarily unorthodox public campaigning methods employed in 1800 were first employed by Jefferson's running mate and campaign manager, Aaron Burr, who is credited by some historians with inventing the modern electioneering process.[14] Yet, throughout this entire process, the candidates themselves were conspicuously missing from the campaigning, at least publicly, due to fears that they may otherwise be tagged as "demagogues." Even a visit John Adams made to Washington was made into a public point of contention.[15]

Maryland

New York

In popular culture[edit]

The election's story and the eventual reconciliation between Jefferson and Adams was also retold in a second-season episode of Comedy Central's Drunk History, with Jerry O'Connell portraying Jefferson and Joe Lo Truglio as Adams.[85]


The election was featured in the HBO miniseries John Adams.


In the 2015 musical Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda, the contest between Jefferson and Burr is recounted in "The Election of 1800."[86] The song focuses on Alexander Hamilton's role in deciding the outcome of the 1801 contingent election. The musical simplifies the complicated multiple elections somewhat, portraying Adams's unpopularity as making the real choice between Jefferson and Burr. Historians wrote that Adams did not lose that badly in the original election, with the musical inflating the size of Jefferson's victory. It implies Hamilton's support for Jefferson over Burr was the catalyst for the Burr–Hamilton duel; in fact, while that helped sour relations between Burr and Hamilton, the duel was ultimately provoked by Hamilton's statements about Burr in the 1804 New York gubernatorial election.[87]


The story of the 1801 contingent election between Burr and Jefferson is told in Gore Vidal's 1973 novel Burr.

First inauguration of Thomas Jefferson

Bibliography of Thomas Jefferson

1800–01 United States House of Representatives elections

1800–01 United States Senate elections

History of the United States (1789–1849)

(editor of the Aurora, a Philadelphia newspaper Jefferson credited for his victory in 1800)

Stephen Simpson (writer)

Burr dilemma

, Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1834–1856, pp. 10:1028–1033

Annals of the Congress of the United States

. The Green Papers. Retrieved March 20, 2005.

"A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College"

; Oberg, Barbara B., eds. (1999), Federalists Reconsidered, University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-1863-1

Ben-Atar, Doron

(1915), The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, ISBN 978-1-146-80267-3

Beard, Charles A.

Bowling, Kenneth R.; Kennon, Donald R. (2005), Establishing Congress: The Removal to Washington, D.C., and the Election of 1800, Ohio University Press,  978-0-8214-1619-8

ISBN

Buel, Richard (1972), Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815

Chambers, William Nisbet (1963), Political Parties in a New Nation: The American Experience, 1776–1809

(2005), Alexander Hamilton, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-303475-9

Chernow, Ron

Cunningham, Noble E. Jr. (1965), The Making of the American Party System 1789 to 1809

Der Linden, Frank Van. (2000) The Turning Point: Jefferson's Battle for the Presidency. (Washington D.C.: Robert B. Luce).

Dunn, Susan (2004), , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 978-0-618-13164-8

Jefferson's second revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism

; McKitrick, Eric (1995), The Age of Federalism

Elkins, Stanley

(2004). Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516771-9.

Ferling, John

(1965), The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy

Fischer, David Hackett

Freeman, Joanne B. (2001), Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic

Freeman, Joanne B. (1999), , Yale Law Journal, 108 (8): 1959–1994, doi:10.2307/797378, JSTOR 797378

"The election of 1800: a study in the logic of political change"

Goodman, Paul (1967), "The First American Party System", in Chambers, William Nisbet; Burnham, Walter Dean (eds.), The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, pp. 56–89

(1970), The Idea of a Party System

Hofstadter, Richard

Horn, James P. P.; Lewis, Jan Ellen; Onuf, Peter S. (2002), The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic

Lepore, Jill (2018). These truths: a history of the United States (1st ed.). New York (N. Y.): W.W. Norton & Company.  978-0-393-63524-9

ISBN

(2001), John Adams

McCullough, David

Miller, John C. (1959), Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox

Pasley, Jeffrey L.; et al., eds. (2004), Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, University of North Carolina Press,  978-0-8078-5558-4

ISBN

Roberts, Cokie (2008), Ladies of Liberty

Schachner, Nathan (1961), Aaron Burr: A Biography

, ed. (1986), History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1984, vol. 1, essay and primary sources on 1800.

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier

Sharp, James Roger. The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance (University Press of Kansas; 2010) 239 pages;

(2003), "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Houghton Mifflin Co., pp. 47–89, ISBN 0-618-34398-9 ... also listed (in at least one source) as from Mariner Books (Boston) in 2004

Wills, Garry

Weisberger, Bernard A. (2000) "America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800" (New York: William Morrow).

Extant popular vote data and county-by-county maps for four states

1800 U.S. Presidential Election at VoteArchive.com

Vote Archive: County-level results for Maryland

Vote Archive: County-level results for North Carolina

Vote Archive: County-level results for Rhode Island

Vote Archive: County-level results for Virginia

from the Library of Congress

Presidential Election of 1800: A Resource Guide

Lesson plans from NEH

Documentary Timeline 1787–1800

A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787–1825

Overview at Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

Booknotes interview with Bernard Weisberger on America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the First Contested Election, February 25, 2001.

Booknotes interview with John Ferling on Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, October 3, 2004.

Archived September 30, 2019, at the Wayback Machine

Election of 1800 in Counting the Votes