The incumbent president was forced to endure a comparable amount of vindictive press. From the Richmond jail where he had been confined after calling Adams a “hoary-headed incendiary,” James T. Callender published a further harangue, maintaining a sarcastic tone over 152 pages. He mocked Adams’s professions of Christianity—the same grounds on which Jefferson was so often attacked—by asking: “What is the religion of that man, who swears to support a constitution, and then breaks it?” Adams had “prattled so loudly of his reverence for the Christian religion” upon entering office; but his legislative initiatives since then belied the claim.
Callender defended Virginia republicanism, and Jefferson, in turn, defended Callender though he knew the man was vulgar. He might have listened to John Taylor of Caroline, who cautioned against involvement with one so unscrupulous and so dominated by self-interest that he was likely to turn on his benefactor at the first sign of neglect.11
“Forever and Inseparable, the Names of Independence and Jefferson”
In the fall of 1800, Madison and Jefferson shared news of the ever-tightening race. Burr’s soon-to-be son-in-law, a South Carolina planter heading home from a tour of the northern states, carried a letter from Montpelier to Monticello, relating Burr’s optimism about the votes of Rhode Island. Yet some of the strongest repudiations of Jefferson were just then appearing in the Federalist press in that tiny state: He was the “patron of disorganization,” the “American philosopher … convicted of cowardice,” the hypocritical slave owner who degraded the capacity of blacks while pretending to favor manumission, “a man who has, in his writings, proclaimed himself to the world a Deist, if not an Atheist … and ridicules the Bible with wanton malignity.” In contrast, it reported, “Who ever heard it said of Mr. Adams that he was an infidel in principle, a coward in the hour of dangers, or a dupe to the wild anti-christian, and demoralizing theories of the age, which have corrupted mankind?” The article, dateline Newport, was signed, “INVESTIGATOR.”12
Reports from Burr on Republican inroads in New England were hard for Jefferson to accept as certain indicators. Meanwhile Madison conveyed to Jefferson the concerns of Burr’s allies that after having been abandoned by Virginia Republicans in 1796, when he was Jefferson’s putative running mate, the New Yorker might not be able to count on the “integrity of the Southern States” in 1800 either. To Monroe, Madison wrote asking that “all proper measures” be taken to ensure that Burr did not lose the vice presidency because of some mix-up in Virginia. Indeed, one of the stipulations that Burr himself made on accepting his role as running mate was that the traditionally ungenerous Virginians hold up their end of the bargain and this time back him without reservation.13
As election time approached, Jefferson’s later biographer George Tucker found James Madison at the home of Governor Monroe, and penned a description of him: he was “nearly fifty years of age, dressed in silk stockings and black breeches, and wore powder according to the practice that still prevailed in full dress. The first [impression] he made on me was that of sternness rather than of the mildness and suavity which I found afterwards.” A few months later Margaret Bayard Smith, the energetic wife of newspaper editor Samuel H. Smith, gave a singular account of her first encounter with Vice President Jefferson. Congress had only then completed its inaugural meeting in the “infant city” of Washington, when a stranger presented himself in her parlor. After the initial chill of his exceedingly dignified bearing, she found that “he turned towards me a countenance beaming with an expression of benevolence and with a manner and voice almost femininely soft and gentle.” They began to converse more affably, as he drew her into a discussion of substance. “I know not how it was, but there was something in his manner, his countenance and voice that at once unlocked my heart.” Some time later her husband appeared and told her, to her great surprise, who the captivating conversationalist was.14
Clerk of the House John Beckley was the Republicans’ most ardent campaigner. In this age when candidates “stood” rather than “ran” for election, and remained at home, Beckley pseudonymously composed a thirty-eight-page pamphlet that we would call a campaign biography. “The probationary period of ten years, since the institution of the federal government, affords much ground to hope and fear,” it began. During those ten years, the experiment in liberty was being slowly subverted by “the painful spectacle of political apostacy, amidst the wreck of principle.” And where should America look for relief? he asked. To Jefferson, “mild, amiable, and philanthropic, refined in manners as enlightened in mind, the philosopher of the world, whose name adds lustre to our national character.” To which he added breathlessly: “Jefferson, yet lives.”15
In September 1800, utterly surrounded in ultra-Federalist Connecticut, Republican Abraham Bishop spoke out against the social class that was doing all it could to prevent the popular voice from receiving a fair hearing: “The agents of delusion are the great, the wise, rich and mighty of the world,” he censured. History showed that men with “charming outsides, engaging manners … fought like blood hounds, in defense of despotism and tyranny.” Federalists, in this case, promised citizens that they would establish good social order, but they were creating instead a culture of slavish ignorance. Bishop predicted a worse future if the Federalists continued to get their way: “What infant in his nurse’s arms is to be the progenitor of an illustrious race of AMERICAN MONARCHS is yet unknown.” If the origins of political division were social, the distance between the people and their present rulers was a function of psychological manipulation. This was all that the election of Jefferson was meant to nullify.16
In October 1800, less powerful than he had been at any time since Washington’s presidency began, “Boss” Hamilton aimed to recover his influence by publishing a fifty-four-page attack pamphlet against John Adams. He focused on “the defects in his character” and his unsuitability for a second term, finding, with little introspection of his own, that Adams’s “extreme egotism” and “gusts of passion” made him an alienating character. The reconstituted Aurora publicized Hamilton’s damaging text, as the New Yorker revealed his preference for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, whose brother, Adams’s 1796 running mate Thomas Pinckney, had declined to run again. Madison, in a sense, had predicted Hamilton’s move four years earlier, when he told Jefferson that Adams was “too headstrong to be a fit puppet for the intriguers behind the skreen.” Did Madison appreciate the irony that the qualities he most disliked in Adams were those that inoculated him against the political malignancy that was Hamilton?
By the time of Hamilton’s pamphlet, it had been five months since Adams unceremoniously fired Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, who was all too obviously undermining him. He replaced that brash cabinet officer with Virginian John Marshall. In spite of Hamilton’s power play, Adams did what was possible to keep his temper in check, rebuild his command within the executive branch, and combat division within the party. He retained support among a great majority of southern Federalists. But Pinckney, his ostensible running mate, did not care much for him, and as a result, the New Englanders thought their southern allies might withhold votes from Adams; so they, in turn, began discussing the possibility of doing the same.17
On November 24, 1800, Jefferson packed up and left Monticello. On his way to Washington to preside over the Senate as vice president for a final, three-and-a-half-month session, he had one more opportunity to confer with Madison. His arrival in Washington was reported by the newly established Republican organ, Samuel H. Smith’s National Intelligencer. Otherwise he tried to stay out of trouble. Living temporarily at Conrad’s boardinghouse, one of several atop Jenkins—renamed Capitol—Hill, he appears not to have paid a visit to President Adams. He also appears to have done everything possible to avoid giving his fellow politicians, in their rural, rudimentary federal city, the impression that he had immediate expectations. His housemates must have formed a protective circle around him, for they included Gallatin of Penn
sylvania and several southern Republicans.18
Residents of the federal city would have to wait. On the third day of December, the electors of the states gathered around the country to cast their votes for president and vice president. After much back-and-forth among Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and their political allies regarding the convolutions of the several states with their differing means of granting votes to their electors, it became clear that those states voting exclusively for the Republican ticket had voted for both Jefferson and Burr; those that split their votes between the Federalist and Republican candidates—Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina—also voted in like numbers for Jefferson and Burr. A sitting president had lost reelection. But it would take weeks more before Jefferson could affirm his own election.
One of the most dramatic elements in the overall contest took place in South Carolina. There Republican Charles Pinckney, an old friend of Monroe’s from their days in the Confederation Congress, was instrumental in delivering the toss-up state to Jefferson and Burr, sinking the chances of his Federalist second cousin; he was to South Carolina what John Beckley was to Philadelphia or Aaron Burr to New York. From the vibrant port city of Charleston to the interior capital of Columbia, Federalists and Republicans alike were making promises of patronage, and both Pinckneys were on hand to manage their party’s respective efforts. During the last three months of the year, Pinckney the Republican wrote to Jefferson repeatedly, the anxiety in his tone increasing in each letter. Madison, who knew Pinckney from the Constitutional Convention, saw him as hotheaded and entirely untrustworthy. Like Burr, he could possibly be a future Republican rival for the Virginia-controlled presidency. Yet at this moment Madison must have been counting on Pinckney’s impassioned campaigning as much as Jefferson was.19
Because the Virginians were under strict instructions not to withhold any votes from Burr, the contrivance of giving Jefferson the slight edge over his vice president was meant to have been taken care of in one of the other southern states. This was not done, however, and so there was neither a president-elect nor a vice president–elect. On December 26, 1800, after final results had come to Washington from all parts of the Union, Jefferson wrote to Madison, with apparent lack of concern, from his lodgings near the half-finished Capitol: “There is no doubt that the result is a perfect parity between the two republican characters.”20
Bishop James Madison of the College of William and Mary penned a letter to his cousin two days later, punctuating it with an insouciance Jefferson could in no way have mustered: “Will it not be a strange Vagary in Fortune to place Burr in the presidential Chair?” he posed. “I can hardly suppose such an Event possible, & yet so various are Reports, that I fear, our Friend Jefferson is not so sure of it, as America.” In South Carolina, under the direction of the restless Republican Pinckney, one vote was meant to have been withheld from Burr, to avoid a tie. Instead, Republican unity took precedence over calculation, resulting in the embarrassing tie.21
“Speculative Theorists and Absolute Terrorists”
For six years the Congress of the United States had been solidly Federalist. The election of 1800 reversed that. For the first time the U.S. Senate would contain a majority of Republicans; the House of Representatives would be composed of a nearly two-thirds Republican majority. But that Congress—the Seventh Congress—would not convene until December 7, 1801, nine months after Jefferson took the oath of office. Until then, for its last hurrah, the Federalist-led House primed its members to exploit the Republicans’ discomfiture in having failed to withhold one vote from Vice President–designate Burr.
Madison termed the Federalists “the adverse party,” as it worked to draw out the process of resolving the tie. Certain Federalists were so embittered that they were receptive to absolutely any idea that would confound their opposition. If it would undermine the Republican triumph and sow dissension, they would willingly reverse the order intended by the Republicans, making Burr president. They entertained, as well, the prospect of a delay past inauguration day that would place either the lame-duck Adams, Chief Justice John Marshall (whom Adams had just moved from the Department of State to the Supreme Court), or some other Federalist in the presidential chair for an indeterminate period. Jefferson thought that a candid conversation with Adams might lead to some cooperation, and Madison, as he had done four years before, rejected any overture to Adams. After Jefferson’s election was finally secured, Madison reflected on the outgoing president’s lame-duck appointments and general disregard for the Constitution: “The conduct of Mr. A. is not such as was to have been wished or perhaps expected,” he wrote to Jefferson. “Instead of smoothing the path for his successor, he plays into the hands of those who are endeavoring to strew it with as many difficulties as possible.”22
Contrary to subsequent histories, which were too accepting of secondhand gossip, neither Madison nor Jefferson suspected Vice President–designate Aaron Burr of bad behavior. The Federalist press in Washington urged congressmen, in rather stark terms, to choose Burr over Jefferson: “Col. Burr is not a Virginian. This is a reason of primary importance.” Besides, the article read, he was “a person of a cool, clear head,” not a “professed deist; nor a scoffer at religion.” To this, a hopeful scenario was added: “Col. Burr has been abused by no party, and stands committed to no party.” Committed to no party? Though entirely unsubstantiated, many a desperate Federalist bought into this notion, and many subsequent historians have deemed it credible too.23
Burr stayed away from Washington, where he might have embroiled himself in the election controversy and subverted the intended order, had he chosen to do so. He remained in close touch with Jefferson and Gallatin, resenting the impertinence of the more distrustful Republicans whose fears of a Federalist “usurpation” led them to suspect the worst of him. No firm evidence exists to prove that either Burr or Jefferson made any meaningful promises to any Federalist electors. As a result, the House Federalists ultimately surrendered the presidency to Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot.24
John Page, a congressman from Tidewater Virginia through most of the turbulence of the 1790s, had been Jefferson’s close friend since their late teens. He identified the offenders in the House of Representatives as “the insolent faction” and recited a long train of abuses of power by Federalists in Congress. He included in the list “their utter Contempt of the Opinions & Wishes of the People,” which was causing even “their best Friends” to “give them up to the Censure they deserve.” Convinced that the “Friends of Man throughout the World will hate them,” Page projected his wish that “in their eagerness to grasp at the Shadow [they] have lost the Substance. Their Power & Influence is gone forever.” Honoring “the Commencement of a new Aera,” as many other Republican enthusiasts would, he signed off the letter to his old college chum with a fanciful gesture, if not a Frenchified wish: “Health & Fraternity.”25
An English visitor to the new national capital as it existed in Jefferson’s first term described its “dreary” atmosphere: “There were no objects to catch the eye, but a forlorn pilgrim forcing his way through the grass that overruns the streets.” He was not the only one to write of the rudeness of Washington, D.C., but if we accept that a certain amount of literary license is taken with these words, we should read the same into his fascination with the U.S. Capitol, “rising with sacred majesty above the woods,” which he viewed from a sailing vessel on the Potomac.26
Madison was unable to come to Washington for Jefferson’s March 4 inauguration. His father died in late February, at the age of seventy-seven, and he was executor of the estate. Though he had to tend to his sixty-eight-year-old mother, Madison himself was in ill health, referring nonspecifically to “several complaints” when he wrote to Jefferson. Burr arrived in the national capital on March 1, and in thanking the citizens who gathered to welcome him, he affirmed: “No person could have supposed that I would have stepped in between the wishes of the people and the man whom they have looked up to.”<
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The new order was slow in getting under way. Albert Gallatin, whose mere presence on the scene had irked Federalists for the better part of a decade, was within reach. He was to hold only an interim appointment as secretary of the treasury until the Republican-led Congress finally met and approved him. Personally incorruptible and opposed to the culture of public debt and speculative risk, Gallatin would go on to serve with distinction in the cabinets of both Jefferson and Madison, reducing government expenditures and improving efficiency. This would be done to the detriment of the War and Navy departments, where the most obvious cuts were to be made. Gallatin was, after Madison, Jefferson’s most influential adviser in Washington.27
With little fanfare, Madison’s name was safely given to Congress the day after the inauguration. Despite the fact that Madison had never left American shores, the president could not conceive that anyone would question his choice for secretary of state, and indeed, unanimous approval was given. The same was true with his nominations for secretary of war and attorney general. The first of these was Henry Dearborn of Maine, a farmer by birth, physician by training, and a Revolutionary officer who had taken part in key battles from Bunker Hill to Yorktown; the second, Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts, was a Harvard graduate and an early convert to the political perspective of Madison and Jefferson. Until Madison took up his post, Lincoln served as acting secretary of state as well as attorney general.28
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