by Ron Chernow
Jefferson realized this and advised Madison in early March that “if the city election of N[ew] York is in favor of the Republican ticket,” then the national winner might be Republican.13 Within Hamilton’s Federalist coterie, the April elections arose as the best chance to blunt John Adams’s reelection bid and substitute a more congenial Federalist candidate. Robert Troup wrote to Rufus King, “This election will be all important... and particularly so as there is a decided and deep rooted disgust with Mr. Adams on the part of his best old friends.”14
The centrality of the New York City elections presented an unprecedented opportunity for that most dexterous opportunist, Aaron Burr, who knew that the Republicans wanted to achieve geographic balance on their national ticket by having a northern vice presidential candidate. If he could deliver New York into the Republican camp, he might parlay that feat into a claim on the second spot under Jefferson. In the polarized atmosphere of American politics, Burr knew that a northern renegade aligned with southern Republicans could provide a critical swing factor. This was Alexander Hamilton’s recurring nightmare: an electoral deal struck between Virginia and New York Republicans.
In the New York City elections that spring, Hamilton and Burr descended from the lofty heights to spar in the grit and bustle of lower Manhattan ward politics. On April 15, Hamilton met with his Federalist adherents at the Tontine City Hotel and drew up a largely undistinguished slate of candidates for the state Assembly. It was composed of an atypical (for the Federalists) cross-section of New Yorkers, with a potter, a mason, a ship chandler, a grocer, and two booksellers. This may have been a strategy to outflank the Republicans, or it may have reflected the reluctance of many wealthy Federalists to put in time as poorly paid state legislators, especially with the state capital now transferred to Albany. Burr, with his customary craft, waited for Hamilton to present his slate before revealing his own. When Burr scanned a sheet naming the Federalist candidates, he “read it over with great gravity, folded it up, put it in his pocket, and... said, ‘Now I have him all hollow,’ ” said John Adams.15
The suave Burr packed his slate with gray eminences. He cajoled the perennial ex-governor, George Clinton, out of retirement and added the aging Horatio Gates, still feeding off his wartime victory at Saratoga, as well as Brockholst Livingston, his recent cocounsel. An early master of the art of coalition politics, Burr made common cause with Clintonians and Livingstons to present a redoubtable united front. Hamilton thought Burr had engaged in deceptive window-dressing by padding his slate with luminaries who had no real intention of serving in the state legislature and cared only about the selection of Republican electors in the presidential race.
Unlike other contemporary politicians, Burr enjoyed the nitty-gritty of such campaigns and embraced the electioneering they disdained. No other member of the founding generation would have explained his fondness for elections by stating that they provided “a great deal of fun and honor and profit.”16 That spring, Burr ran a campaign that, with its exhaustive toolbox of techniques, previewed modern political methods. Federalists had benefited from a requirement that voters needed to own substantial real estate. To bypass this, Burr exploited a legal loophole that enabled tenants to pool their properties and claim that their combined values qualified them to vote. He sent German-speaking orators into German-speaking areas. Burr also infused his passionate young followers with uncommon zeal at a time of haphazard campaigning. They drew up lists of voters in the city, with long columns of names accompanied by thumbnail sketches of the voter’s political bent, finances, health, and willingness to volunteer. With his campaign workers knocking on doors to solicit funds, Burr dispensed canny tips about potential donors. “Ask nothing of this one,” he would say. “If we demand money, he’ll be offended and refuse to work for us....Double this man’s assessment. He’ll contribute generously if he doesn’t have to work.”17 However aristocratic his lineage, Burr was a proponent of the hard sell and shrewdly sized up his targets. He also scented victory on several topical issues, denouncing the Alien and Sedition Acts and the unpopular taxes levied to finance Hamilton’s army. “Burr’s generalship, perseverance, industry, and execution exceeds all description,” Commodore James Nicholson told Albert Gallatin. He was as “superior to the Hambletonians as a man is to a boy.”18
That April, New Yorkers out for a stroll could have stumbled upon either Alexander Hamilton or Aaron Burr addressing crowds on street corners, sometimes alternating on the same platform. They treated each other with impeccable courtesy. Neither seemed to have any hesitation about soliciting voters individually or in small groups. One Republican paper could scarcely believe Hamilton’s strenuous campaigning as he rallied the faithful like a general marshaling men for battle: “Hamilton harangues the astonished group. Every day he is seen in the street, hurrying this way and darting that. Here he buttons a heavy-hearted fed[eralist] and preaches up courage, there he meets a group and he simpers in unanimity.... [H]e talks of perseverance and (God bless the mark) of virtue!”19 The Federalist papers professed similar shock at seeing the patrician Burr working the Manhattan sidewalks, one paper asking how a would-be vice president could “stoop so low as to visit every corner in search of voters?”20 Burr opened his home to his workers, serving refreshments and scattering mattresses on the floor to allow quick naps. One New York merchant recorded in his diary: “Col. Burr kept open house for nearly two months and committees were in session day and night during that whole time at his house.”21
Burr displayed similar professional stamina during the three-day polling period. To guard against any Federalist vote tampering, he assigned poll watchers to voting stations and kept a ten-hour vigil at one venue. A local congressman told James Monroe, “Burr is in charge, to his exertions we owe much. He attended the [polling] places within the city for 24 hours without sleeping or resting.”22 To t u r n out the vote, he organized a cavalcade of “carriages, chairs and wagons” to transport Republican sympathizers to the polls. For three days, Hamilton was no less assiduous, mounting his horse and riding from place to place, mobilizing supporters and enduring shouts of “scoundrel” and “villain” in Republican precincts.23
By midnight on May 1, 1800, the local political world learned the result of this fierce election, one that portended a fundamental realignment in American politics: the Republican slate had swept New York City, converting Hamilton’s own home turf from a Federalist to a Republican stronghold. This meant that Jefferson could now count on twelve electoral votes where he had received none in 1796. Since he had lost to Adams then by only three votes, this shift was a real thunderbolt. Burr took justifiable pride in his triumph, explaining to one downcast Federalist that “we have beat[en] you by superior management.”24 Theodore Roosevelt later interpreted Burr’s victory as that of the skillful ward politician, with a “mastery of the petty political detail,” over the statesmanlike Hamilton, but Hamilton had not hesitated to dip into the humble mechanics of politics.25
A shaken Hamilton and fellow Federalists attended a May 4 caucus that was infiltrated by the Republican press. The Aurora said that the “despondency” of those assembled verged on “the melancholy of despair.”26 Those present were so petrified at the thought of Jefferson as president that they considered desperate measures. Led by Hamilton, they decided to appeal to Governor Jay and have him convene the outgoing state legislature to impose new rules for choosing presidential electors. They now wanted the electors chosen through popular voting by district. Most shocking of all, they wanted this new system applied retroactively, to overturn the recent election. In heated arguments over the proposition, the Aurora noted that “when it was urged that it might lead to a civil war...a person present observed that a civil war would be preferable to having Jefferson.”27
Hamilton’s appeal may count as the most high-handed and undemocratic act of his career. A year earlier, Burr had championed a proposal in the state legislature to scrap the existing method for selecting presidential electors: in
stead of having the legislature elect them, they would be elected by the people on a district-by-district basis. The Federalists had hooted this down, but now Hamilton had the gall to revive the idea. On May 7, he warned Jay that the recent election would probably install Jefferson—“an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics”—as president.28 He portrayed the Republican party as an amalgam of dangerous elements, some favoring “the overthrow of the government by stripping it of its due energies, others... a revolution after the manner of Buonaparte.”29 Hamilton acknowledged that Republicans would unanimously oppose his measure but that “in times like these in which we live, it will not do to be overscrupulous. It is easy to sacrifice the substantial interests of society by a strict adherence to ordinary rules.”30 This from a man who had consecrated his life to the law. Henry Cabot Lodge said of this irreparable blot on Hamilton’s career, “The proposition was, in fact, nothing less than to commit under the forms of law a fraud, which would set aside the expressed will of a majority of voters in the state.”31 Hamilton seemed oblivious of the contradiction in asking Jay to resort to extralegal means to conserve the rule of law. A politician of strict integrity, Jay was dumbstruck by Hamilton’s letter, which he tabled and never answered. On the back, he wrote this deprecating description: “Proposing a measure for party purposes which it would not become me to adopt.”32 Jay’s silence was an apt expression of scorn.
How had Hamilton justified this disgraceful action to himself? He believed that Jefferson’s support for the Constitution had always been lukewarm and that, once in office, he would dismantle the federal government and return America to the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. This was not entirely paranoid thinking on Hamilton’s part, for Jefferson made statements that sounded as if he wanted an annulment or radical recasting of the Constitution. “The true theory of our Constitution,” Jefferson told Gideon Granger, was that “the states are independent as to everything within themselves and united as to everything respecting foreign nations.”33 The application of this theory would have canceled out much of Hamilton’s domestic system. Yet by this point Hamilton should have known that Jefferson’s rhetoric tended to outpace reality and that a wily, pragmatic politician lurked behind the sometimes overheated ideologist.
Within days of the New York election, Burr felt within his grasp the prize he coveted: the Republican nomination for vice president. As a reward for the New York victory, a congressional caucus in Philadelphia decided that the party’s vice presidential candidate should come from that state. Although consideration was given briefly to George Clinton and Robert R. Livingston, Burr had masterminded the victory, and his followers exacted their due. A heavy load of mutual distrust between Jefferson and Burr was temporarily set aside. Burr remembered that during the previous presidential campaign, Virginia Republicans had pledged to support him and then given him only lackluster backing. For his part, Jefferson later admitted that he had employed Burr as a (slippery) tool to further his ambitions in 1800. “I had never seen Colonel Burr till he came as a member of [the] Senate,” he would write. “His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much.”34 Only Burr’s bravura performance in the New York elections had secured his place on the ticket. “When I destined him for a high appointment,” Jefferson continued, “it was out of respect for the favor he had obtained with the republican party by his extraordinary exertions and successes in the New York election in 1800.”35 Jefferson had no true respect for Burr, much less affection. Their partnership was to last as long as it served their mutual interests and not a second longer.
Hamilton always believed that the Federalist defeat in New York City in the spring of 1800 had thrown John Adams into such a fright about his reelection prospects that he decided to purge his cabinet of Hamilton loyalists in order to court Republican votes. On May 3, the day the news arrived, Jefferson saw that the election results had indeed dealt a horrendous blow to Adams. “He was very sensibly affected,” Jefferson reported, “and accosted me with these words, ‘Well, I understand that you are to beat me in this contest and I will only say that I will be as faithful a subject as any you will have.”36
John Adams later claimed that in May 1800 he had experienced a sudden epiphany and discovered Hamilton’s malevolent control over his cabinet. But he had harbored such thoughts all along, and rumors of impending cabinet firings had flitted about since the previous summer. George Washington had handled cabinet infighting in a forceful, dignified fashion, as when he tried in vain to impose a truce in the anonymous newspaper war between Hamilton and Jefferson. By contrast, Adams had sputtered and railed and done nothing. “Adams was contemplative and something of a loner,” wrote John Ferling, “whereas Washington was an aggressive, energetic businessman-farmer who read relatively little and was happiest when he was physically active.”37 Washington had a command over his subordinates, and a subtle knowledge of their true nature that Adams never managed to achieve.
Increasingly, Adams had accused Pickering and McHenry of being tools of Great Britain who opposed his French peace initiatives, and he excoriated them openly. Treasury Secretary Wolcott told a colleague in December 1799 that President Adams “considers Col. Pickering, Mr. McHenry, and myself as his enemies; his resentments against General Hamilton are excessive; he declares his belief at the existence of a British faction in the United States.”38 With his selective memory, Adams sometimes forgot having made such defamatory remarks. Federalist George Cabot told Wolcott that the president “denies that he ever called us [a] ‘British faction.’ . . . [H]e does not recollect these intemperances and thinks himself grossly misunderstood or misrepresented.”39 House Speaker Sedgwick supplied Hamilton with similar anecdotes of the president belittling his Federalist colleagues and subordinates: “He everywhere denounces the men . . . in whom he confided at the beginning of his administration as an oligarchish faction.” Adams noisily upbraided his cabinet, Sedgwick said, telling them that “they cannot govern him” and that “this faction and particularly Hamilton its head . . . intends to drive the country into a war with France and a more intimate . . . union with Great Britain.”40 Fisher Ames said that Adams went on in this vein “like one possessed.”41
The image of a wrathful Adams, prone to temper tantrums, was not the invention of Alexander Hamilton, and he was far from alone in finding Adams agitated, intemperate, and subject to violent fits. Congressman James A. Bayard of Delaware told Hamilton that Adams was “liable to gusts of passion little short of frenzy, which drive him beyond the control of any rational reflection. I speak of what I have seen. At such moments the interest of those who support him or the interest of the nation would be outweighed by a single impulse of rage.”42 The Republicans disseminated a similarly unflattering view of an irascible Adams. Jefferson recalled how Adams shouted profanities at his cabinet while storming around the room and “dashing and trampling his wig on the floor.”43 And Jefferson’s tool, James T. Callender, assailed Adams in a string of essays collected into a book entitled The Prospect Before Us: “The reign of Mr. Adams has been one continued tempest of malignant passions. As president, he has never opened his lips or lifted his pen without threatening and scolding.”44 Callender got nine months in jail for his tirade, which had been modestly subsidized by Jefferson. The latter denied any involvement until Callender later publicized a clutch of telltale letters that Jefferson had written to him.
Many High Federalists who constituted Hamilton’s wing of the party preferred Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as their presidential standard-bearer. An Oxfordeducated lawyer from South Carolina—a southern state with a significant merchant class—Pinckney had risen to brigadier general during the Revolution and later attended the Constitutional Convention. His candidacy possessed powerful symbolic value, on account of his role in the XYZ Affair and his position as Hamilton’s senior partner in the recent army. Pinckney’s admirers, however, knew that they could hardly dump a sitting president and woul
d have to settle for him as vice president. After Federalist congressmen caucused in Philadelphia on May 3, 1800, they decided that to “support Adams and Pinckney, equally, is the only thing that can possibly save us from the fangs of Jefferson,” as Hamilton wrote.45 But if Pinckney received more votes than Adams in his native South Carolina, he could easily become president instead of vice president on the Federalist ticket. Adams saw the Pinckney boomlet as a thinly veiled ploy by Hamilton to replace him with someone more tractable to his wishes. Hamilton now regarded Adams as unstable and thought Pinckney had a more suitable temperament for the presidency. His preference for Pinckney was a risky strategy, since Adams was an incumbent president, and Americans were scarcely clamoring for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.
So when Adams inaugurated his cabinet purge on May 5, 1800, it was not so much that he had just “discovered” Hamilton’s control over his cabinet in a flash of light. Rather, he was alarmed by the realization of his own weakness as a candidate, as evidenced by the New York elections that week. One can scarcely fault Adams for cleansing his cabinet of mediocre or disloyal men, and he should have fired them a lot earlier. But he conducted the firings in an autocratic manner that led to a political bloodbath, widened the discord in Federalist ranks, and confirmed Hamilton’s doubts about his unbecoming behavior.
The firings started on May 5 when Adams summoned the unwitting James McHenry from a dinner party. The Irish-born McHenry had been an inept secretary of war. He was a sensitive, mild-mannered man who wrote poetry and retained a lilt in his voice. As a cabinet member, McHenry had been unnerved by the president’s mercurial moods and capricious judgment. He once said that whether Adams was “sportful, playful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, cautious, confident, close, open,” it was “almost always in the wrong place or to the wrong persons.”46