A Magnificent Catastrophe

by Edward J. Larson

  First came the crowing and finger-pointing. “To Colonel Burr we are indebted to everything,” Davis proclaimed in his midnight letter to Gallatin. In a longer letter four days later, he reiterated, “The management and industry of Colonel Burr has [sic] effected all that the friends of civil liberty could possibly desire.” Gallatin’s father-in-law, retired senior Navy officer James Nicholson of New York, agreed about Burr’s contribution. “His generalship, perseverance, industry, and execution exceed all description,” Nicholson wrote playfully. “I [recommend] him as a general far superior to your Hambletons, as much so as a man is to a boy.” For his part, in a letter to Jefferson, Burr wrote, “The victory is complete and the manner is highly honorable. On the part of the Republicans there has been no indecency, no unfairness, no personal abuse. On the other side, the influence and authority of office have [been] openly perverted.” He surely knew that the Virginian would want to see their victory in such terms. To a local Federalist, Burr reportedly boasted, “We have beat you by superior management.”

  Federalists took their defeat particularly hard because they had not anticipated it. Only a year earlier, their Assembly candidates had averaged 60 percent of the vote in the city. Although they received nearly as many votes in 1800 as in 1799, their percentage of the total dropped to about 46. Just as in Pennsylvania, Republicans had won on high turnout in areas of their strength, especially in the Sixth and Seventh Wards, where the number of voters jumped by 40 percent.

  The reversal shocked Federalists. “But yesterday they were arrogant and certain of our defeat,” Edward Livingston wrote about the reaction of Federalists in Congress to news of the election, “today there is a most auspicious gloom on the countenances of every Tory.” From New York, John Jay’s twenty-four-year-old son, Peter, wrote to his father, “The event of the election here is as unexpected as it is mortifying.” He gave due credit for the outcome to Burr, who he said “contrived everything and put everything in motion,” but also blamed his own party for inadequate preparation. “The Federalists were as usual supine till the eve of the election,” young Jay wrote, “then they did their duty—I doubt whether more activity and exertion were ever employed on a similar cause”—but it came too late. Postelection analysis in the Federalist Commercial Advertiser expressed a similar view. “They do not confine themselves to three days exertion,” it said of the Republicans, “they devote weeks, months, even the year itself to secure their purposes.” Abigail Adams put it bluntly soon after hearing the news. “These people at the head of whom was Burr laid their plan with much more skill than their opponents,” she wrote.

  As Burr claimed and his opponents conceded, the Republicans won in part through superior organization. They presented a united front for Jefferson and against Adams. Theirs was no longer the party of disorder—it was the Federalist Party that had begun to splinter. Hamilton and the New York Federalists, by contrast, while vigorous in their efforts, had not rallied behind Adams. Abigail Adams observed that “the defection of New York…was produced by the intrigue of two men”: Burr, who “seized the lucky moment of mounting into power upon the shoulders of Jefferson,” and Hamilton, who “sowed the seeds of discontent and division amongst the Federalists.” In blaming Hamilton, she reflected the views of her husband. “Hamilton has been opposing me in New York,” the President angrily complained to his High Federalist Secretary of War on May 5. “He has caused the loss of the election.” As Adams saw it, by contriving to put forward Assembly candidates loyal to himself, Hamilton had alienated Adams’s supporters in New York and depressed the party’s vote.

  Some Republicans saw the result as a vindication of their principled stand against Federalist restrictions on civil liberties. “To reign by fear and not by affection was ever bad policy,” a writer for the American Citizen commented following the election. “I am confident that the people of America are too fond of freedom to surrender it passively; and that whenever any body of men disclose views inimical to their interests, they will hurl them into insignificance.” In a letter to Jefferson, Chancellor Livingston interpreted the election as “a lesson to the future place” of any party guilty of violating individual rights. “Thank God,” he wrote, “the people are roused from their lethargy.”

  Hamilton could scarcely believe the election results. For two days after the polls closed in New York City, he nurtured the hope that returns from across the state would preserve a Federalist majority in the legislature. Other ardent Federalists held similar hopes. By May 4, however, Hamilton conceded that the Republicans had won. Some reports described him as “a figure of rage and despair”—but these inevitably came from Republicans, who wished it so. Hamilton never totally despaired about anything. He instinctively devised solutions for his problems, and he certainly viewed the prospect of Jefferson’s elevation to the presidency as one of the most serious problems that he or the country had ever faced. Ever since they had served together in Washington’s cabinet, Hamilton had viewed Jefferson as a dreamy idealist who could neither effectively lead a government nor restrain the radically egalitarian and potentially violent elements within the Republican Party. Further, Hamilton despaired of Jefferson’s ideals. Hamilton wanted a strong central government to foster commercial development; Jefferson idealized individual freedom, states’ rights, and the family farm. Hamilton also feared that Jefferson’s ardent anticlericalism, if made national policy, could destabilize the social order by dissolving the glue of civil religion that helped to hold the country together.

  During the first week of May, Hamilton gathered with other New York Federalists to discuss their options. According to an account of their meeting leaked to the Republican press, someone there proposed asking Governor Jay to call a special session of the lame-duck legislature and have it “invest him with the power of choosing the electors.” At least with respect to the choice of New York’s presidential electors, this would effectively undo the election results. When someone else objected that this “might lead to civil war,” a third person in the room “observed that a civil war would be preferable to having Jefferson for president.”

  A day’s ride away in Philadelphia, the Aurora published a story about the proposal on May 7, describing it as “a new and extraordinary instance of the confirmed depravity of a faction.” A Federalist paper in New York promptly dismissed the story as an “infamous lie,” but in fact its substance was true. Some local Federalists met in New York City with Hamilton and some congressional Federalists met in Philadelphia with Hamilton’s father-in-law, Senator Schuyler, to discuss ways to salvage at least a portion of New York’s electoral votes.

  Whatever the initial proposal, it changed by the time it reached the governor. On May 7, Hamilton and Schuyler sent separate letters to Jay requesting that he recall the state legislature for the purpose of authorizing district elections for choosing New York’s presidential electors—the very procedure that Federalist legislators had rejected when the Republicans had proposed it prior to the state legislative elections. “This measure will not fail to be approved by all in the Federal Party,” Hamilton assured Jay. With district elections inevitably splitting the state’s electoral votes, Schuyler expressed confidence “that Mr. Jefferson’s election will be defeated.”

  In his letter, Schuyler stressed that he wrote on behalf of “our federal friends in Congress,” including John Marshall (whom he mentioned by name). “I am aware that there are weighty objections to the measure but…in times like this in which we live, it will not do to be overscrupulous,” Hamilton argued. “The scruples of delicacy and propriety, as relative to a common course of things, ought…not to hinder the taking of a legal and constitutional step, to prevent an atheist in religion and fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of the State.” Hamilton may have thought that these charges against Jefferson would resonate with Jay—a devout Christian and former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Both Hamilton and Schuyler expressed their grave, and undoubtedl
y sincere, concern for the nation’s survival under Republican rule. Schuyler denounced Jefferson as “pervaded with the mad French philosophy.” Hamilton described the Republican Party as “a composition indeed of very incongruous materials but all tending to mischief—some of them to the overthrow of the Government by depriving it of its due energies, others of them to a revolution after the manner of Bonaparte.” Defending the Constitution and preserving the “social order” justified extreme means, Hamilton maintained. “It is impossible to appreciate all the painful results that may ensue from Mr. Jefferson’s conduct should he be president,” Schuyler added. “It seems to me that these considerations will justify the measure of calling the Legislature.” Expressing a view shared by virtually all Hamilton biographers, Ron Chernow concluded that “Hamilton’s appeal may count as the most high-handed and undemocratic act of his career.” It sought to overturn the expressed will of the people through a second election conducted under different rules after his opponents had fairly won the first one.

  Despite his High Federalist leanings and strong party loyalty, Governor Jay did not even dignify these letters with written replies. Even though one of them came from the commander of the Army and the other from a United States senator, Jay simply filed the letters for posterity, which has judged them harshly. He jotted his own opinion on Hamilton’s letter: “Proposing a measure for party purposes, which I think it would not become me to adopt.” From a soft-spoken gentleman like Jay who had served under Washington and imbibed late-eighteenth-century notions of public service and personal honor, “for party purposes” constituted a biting indictment. The New York election stood.

  Even as New Yorkers voted in their late April elections, news spread regarding the results of Virginia’s state legislative contests, held on April 23. To assure that Jefferson would this time sweep the state’s twenty-one electoral votes, allowing for no rogue Federalist electors, the old, Republican-dominated legislature had changed the law to have voters choose electors by a statewide vote in 1800. Federalists tried to make the new law into an issue during the April legislative campaigns. They wanted to restore the old method of choosing electors by district elections. A new legislature could revise the law in time for the fall election.

  Although most voters probably did not either fully understand or greatly care how they chose electors, rumors persisted in the nation’s capital that Virginia Federalists had found a winning issue. Federalist House Speaker Theodore Sedgwick reported hearing it from “several of our friends,” yet confessed he had not the “faintest hope” of his party’s candidates prevailing in the state on that or any other issue. “Pray how is the general ticket relished in Virginia?” Republican Congressman John Dawson worriedly asked Madison three months before the election. Federalists “report that it is universally abhorred,” Dawson noted. Madison thought otherwise: “I have no reason to believe this to be the fact,” he replied. Nevertheless, in March, Virginia Republicans published a twenty-three-page pamphlet justifying the law as a fully constitutional means to maximize the state’s influence in the upcoming presidential contest. “That the election of Mr. Jefferson was an effect expected or rather hoped for by the friends of the measure is readily admitted,” the pamphlet stated.

  This straightforward explanation apparently satisfied voters. Three days before the election, Madison reported to Jefferson about the state legislative campaign, “I find that considerable exertion is used to raise prejudices against the measures of the last session of [the] Assembly, especially the novel mode of appointing electors. I am not possessed however of any evidence of their success that deserves attention.” By April 26, as returns trickled in from across the state, Monroe assured Jefferson, “The elections so far as we have intelligence are almost universally in favor of the Republican cause.” The next day, Madison wrote from Virginia regarding the Federalists, “The patrons of usurpation and aristocracy will have little encouragement from this quarter.” Republican candidates won virtually everywhere in the state and reportedly did so by large margins.

  The election results from New York and Virginia, coming as they did six months after McKean’s victory in Pennsylvania, panicked Federalists and elated Republicans. All three elections turned on national issues and directly impacted the electoral vote. In six months, the situation had reversed from the Republicans having to sweep virtually every remaining winnable electoral vote to the Federalists bearing that burden. To compensate for the loss of New York’s electors, Federalists would need to hold New Jersey, win more electoral votes in Maryland and North Carolina than they won in 1796, and carry South Carolina. If Pennsylvania voted, they would also need at least some of its votes. Because of the heightened importance of the Carolinas, Pinckney might now have the best chance of any Federalist to cobble together the votes needed for victory.

  As early as March, Jefferson commented about the mood at the nation’s capital, “The Feds begin to be very seriously alarmed about their election next fall. Their speeches in private as well as their public and private demeanor to me indicate it strongly.” The shift became apparent to everyone by May. Commenting in early May on the latest Republican victory, the Aurora gloated, “The results of the New York election must speak to the Federal administration in a very emphatical manner, how general and decisive the public opinion is against their measures.”

  Abigail Adams could count the votes accumulating against her husband as well as anyone. She saw only darkness ahead. The Republicans had added twelve electors to their already formidable fifty-odd elector base, with only seventy needed to win. “New York, by an effort to bring into their assembly anti-Federal men, will make also an anti-Federal ticket for president…at the sacrifice of all that good men hold dear and sacred,” she wrote to her sister on May 5. “Much animosity is springing up between South and North and East. A whole year we shall hear nothing else but abuse and scandal, enough to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world. Out of all this will arise something which (though we may be no more) our children may live to rue.” John Adams and other Federalists knew that they must act quickly and decisively to right the situation. In order to do so, they needed to present a united front against the Republicans, but the growing rift between Adams and the High Federalists would prove a great challenge for the party that had ruled America since the Constitution was ratified.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CAUCUSES AND CALUMNY

  HAVING ORCHESTRATED the Republican victory in the New York City election, Aaron Burr promptly set out to claim his reward—designation as the party’s choice for Vice President. Burr’s chief lieutenant, Matthew Davis, served as his agent. No candidate for national office in America had ever been so brash. Washington had appeared positively reticent about putting himself forward for President. Adams and Jefferson had worn a similar face when seeking national office, as had Clinton in 1792 and Thomas Pinckney in 1796.

  The product of urban politics and a full generation younger than Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, Burr could not keep himself out of sight or above the fray. He yearned for high office and never hid his ambitions, which made some politicians distrust him.

  Already in 1792, during his first year as a senator from New York and only age thirty-six, or one year older than the minimum age to serve as President, Burr had pushed himself forward as a candidate for Vice President. That year the Republicans had launched an effort to oust Adams from the post. In the election—America’s second for President—everyone assumed that all electors would cast one vote for Washington’s reelection, which they did. The contest for Vice President remained in doubt, though, and some Republican leaders had sought to push Adams aside by encouraging Republican electors to cast their second votes for an agreed alternative, which ended up being eight-term New York Governor George Clinton. Jefferson, then serving as Washington’s Secretary of State, would have been their logical choice, but he was effectively excluded from consideration because he came from Virginia, the same state
as Washington, and the Constitution bars electors from voting for two people from their own state. At the time, no Republican could hope to win without electoral votes from Virginia. Republicans needed a candidate from another state. Burr had sought the nod by seeking the cooperation of party leaders in New York and Pennsylvania.

  Following a flurry of letters among leading Republicans, the choice had gone to Clinton over Burr due to the long-serving governor’s greater stature and more reliable Anti-Federalist credentials. In comparing these two options for the vice presidency, Virginia Senator James Monroe had written to Madison, “Some person of more advanced life and longer standing in public trust [than Burr] should be selected for it, and particularly one who in consequence of such service had given unequivocal proofs of what his principles really were.” Having voted for the Declaration of Independence as a member of the Continental Congress but against the Constitution as speaker of New York’s ratifying convention, Clinton had a long history of patriotic service as a principled Anti-Federalist. The pragmatic Burr, in contrast, had flirted with both factions during his brief political career. Madison concurred with Monroe in favoring Clinton over Burr, and their opinion prevailed.

  Clinton ultimately received the united electoral votes of four states—New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia—placing him a strong third behind Washington and Adams. This contest between Adams and Clinton had etched the first outlines of coordinated partisan balloting for national office. Considering Washington’s popularity and Adams’s stature, the Republican candidate had done surprisingly well, and the choice of Clinton over Burr probably contributed to this outcome. Burr, however, would not be deterred.