A Magnificent Catastrophe

by Edward J. Larson

  Jefferson saw the issue quite differently. “I congratulate you on the triumphs of Republicanism in the city and county of Baltimore,” he wrote to Maryland Congressman Samuel Smith after the October election. “The spirit of ’76 had never left the people of our country, but artificial panics…had put it to sleep for a while. We owe to our political opponents [credit for] exciting it again by their bold strokes.” The Federalists had overreached, Jefferson thought, and their support for appointing electors in Maryland simply made matters worse for them. It substantiated the Republican claim that Federalists sought to consolidate power in the hands of an aristocracy.

  Maryland Federalists consoled themselves that the October legislative elections turned on a single issue and did not necessarily reflect a shift in voter allegiances toward the Republicans generally. Prior to the October elections, partisans on both sides predicted that Republican candidates would win in only three of Maryland’s ten electoral districts and did not anticipate that even a bruising defeat by Federalists in the legislative elections would impact the subsequent vote for electors. In opposing legislative appointment, Republicans presumably were fighting for those three votes. Following the October elections, Federalists maintained that nothing had changed. “I see no other consequences to this state, or to the union, from this last election, than that Mr. Adams and General Pinckney may lose three votes,” a Federal Gazette writer reassured his partisan readers in late October.

  Maryland Republicans, in contrast, were almost giddy with triumph and began hoping for even greater gains in November. “I have now the pleasure of communicating to you that,” Republican portraitist Charles Peale Polk wrote to Madison immediately after the October election, “from the best information that I have received on the subject, Mr. Jefferson will most probably have seven votes from this state.” In a letter to Madison posted a week later, Maryland jurist and former Congressman Gabriel Duvall placed this figure at “five, perhaps six votes.” With Republican hopes raised, the electioneering continued in Maryland into November. If Republicans could pull off a swing of four more electoral votes from Adams to Jefferson by winning seven of Maryland’s ten votes rather than just three, the feat could well prove decisive.

  Voters in Delaware cast their ballots on October 6, the same day as voters in Maryland; New Jersey voters went to the polls a week later. In all these mid-Atlantic states, Federalists sought to retain control of the legislature against unusually vigorous Republican attacks. Unlike their counterparts in Maryland, however, Republicans in Delaware and New Jersey lacked the ready-made issue of defending the people’s right to vote for electors. The legislature had always chosen electors in these two states and, as much as Republicans might decry the process, changing it never became a major issue. Instead, state legislative contests became referendums on the national presidential candidates.

  Paralleling developments in Virginia, New Jersey Republicans resolved to form their state’s first statewide network of local party committees. “The plan, if carried into effect generally, will no doubt contribute greatly to the success of the Republican ticket at the ensuing election,” party leaders explained early in 1800. “Opposition we may naturally expect from the aristocrats, the Tories, and the lawyers; but to the respectable farmers of New Jersey, to the Whigs of ’76, the resolution is respectfully submitted.” Though local Republican committees subsequently sprang up across the state, they proved no match for the Federalist establishment that dominated New Jersey. When Republicans in Gloucester passed a series of resolutions critical of the Adams administration, for example, outraged local Federalists denounced these Republican resolutions as aiming “at the total destruction of the constitution of the United States and the administration thereof, under which we have hitherto lived prosperous and happy.”

  Federalists closely monitored these Republican campaign efforts, but they remained confident of victory in both states. “A considerable diversion in favor of the opposition has lately been made in New Jersey,” Hamilton noted during the summer, “but the best and best-informed men there entertain no doubt that all her electors will still be Federal.” In Delaware, as the election approached, the state’s lone congressman, Federalist James A. Bayard, assured Hamilton, “Delaware is safe.” Hamilton was particularly interested in both states because he harbored hopes that, as High Federalist strongholds, their electors would drop votes from Adams so as to slip Pinckney into first place in the final tally. As a coconspirator in this scheme, Bayard added to his comment about Delaware’s “safe” Federalist electors: “They may hesitate whether they will give Mr. Adams a vote.”

  True to the projections, Federalists carried at least two-thirds of the seats up for election in both New Jersey and Delaware. As if to taunt both Jefferson and Hamilton, the proadministration Gazette of the United States reported about the New Jersey election, “No doubt is entertained of a good majority in the legislature for the Adams interest.” It took only a simple majority in the legislature to appoint all the state’s electors. Republicans needed to look elsewhere for the electoral votes required to win the presidency.

  One of Delaware’s few surviving Republican legislators, Caesar Rodney, reported to Jefferson following the October 6 election, “Altho’ our horizon be clouded [in Delaware], the prospect brightens on turning our eyes to Pennsylvania and Maryland. I trust the old maxim, ‘Truth is great and will prevail.’” Republicans had prevailed in the Maryland legislative elections by this time, but Pennsylvanians had yet to vote. Of course, the party had done well in Pennsylvania a year earlier, when McKean won the governorship and its candidates captured the State Assembly in what amounted to the opening round of the presidential campaign—but staggered terms for state senators slowed the process of political realignment there. The legislative elections on October 14 offered Republicans their last chance to take over the State Senate in time to appoint electors. Both sides geared up for a fight.

  Although the nation’s capital had moved to Washington, Philadelphia remained America’s political nerve center throughout the campaign. It vied with New York as the most populous city in the country, and as its hub for trade, commerce, and banking. Most critically, after serving as the seat of government for ten years, Philadelphia was home to the nation’s leading partisan newspapers at a time when such papers provided much of the institutional structure for party politics in America. Indeed, a symbiotic relationship linked presses and parties in 1800: Partisan reporting attracted readers and forged party identity.

  The number of newspapers shot up in advance of the 1800 election as public interest in the campaign increased readership, wealthy party leaders subsidized printers, and partisans supplied copy for publication. “The engine is the press,” Jefferson wrote to Madison in 1799 about the Republican campaign. “Every man must lay his purse and his pen under contribution.” As the party out of power, Republicans needed a friendly press to communicate their message to voters.

  William Duane’s Philadelphia Aurora led the Republican pack in 1800. Its crosstown rival, Gazette of the United States, countered for the Federalists. Often without attribution, articles lifted directly from these sources reappeared in partisan publications across the country, spreading like ripples on a pond first to newspapers in nearby communities, then to ones in more distant towns, and finally surfacing in the most remote papers. It typically took two or more weeks for an Aurora or a Gazette article to reappear across the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky, for example. Other presses also fed original material into the partisan web. As a result, national political news carried the partisan slant given to it from its source of origin, which was often Philadelphia. “On every important subject, the sentiment to be inculcated among the Democrats has been first put into the Aurora. This was the heart, the seat of life. From thence the blood has flowed to the extremities,” the Federalist Connecticut Courant noted in August 1800. “It is even astonishing to remark with how much punctuality and rapidity the same opinion has been circulated and repe
ated.” Fisher Ames blamed the spread of Republicanism on “the unceasing use of this engine”; Jefferson credited the Aurora with “arrest[ing] the rapid march of our government toward monarchy.”

  With a split electorate and Congress sitting in Philadelphia for the previous decade, by 1800, Pennsylvania had more decidedly partisan newspapers than any other state. They helped to politicize the population, and their printers wanted nothing more than to stir up passionate partisan interest in the October state elections. Veteran observers knew that those elections would probably not alter the division of power in the Pennsylvania legislature: Republicans enjoyed unassailable dominance in the State Assembly while, because of holdovers, only a clean sweep by Republicans in every contest could dislodge Federalists from their grip on the State Senate. Nevertheless, the approaching contests unleashed a torrent of political activities and partisan newspaper articles. Newspapers on both sides hyped the elections by suggesting that the contest for President would turn on the outcome of the state’s senate races.

  Discussion during the campaign centered on the continuing legislative deadlock over the manner of choosing electors. Republicans initially had demanded a statewide vote for electors in Pennsylvania because they thought it would favor Jefferson, but now, due to the lack of time for an election, they wanted the legislature to appoint a slate of electors that would somehow reflect their party’s greater numbers in the State Assembly and its control of the governorship. Federalists originally had held out for district balloting for electors, which they thought would help Adams, and now sought to use their control of the State Senate either to block Pennsylvania from voting at all or to gain an equal share of its electors.

  Pennsylvania Republicans stressed the importance of winning every senate seat up for election in 1800. “Our annual election is now at hand,” the Aurora declared. “It is, fellow citizens, within the compass of a probability…that upon the vote of a single member of the Senate of this state may rest the decision of the mighty contest [for President] which is now agitating the mind of every American citizen.” Republicans did their best to mobilize their voters across the state with rallies, pamphlets, and speeches. “It is intended by them to use every effort to obtain favorable changes in the senators to be chosen at the next election,” the Gazette of the United States warned its Federalist readers. “We beg leave to put you on your guard and earnestly to exhort you to leave nothing undone to secure a favorable return of senators.”

  When Election Day finally came, both sides pleaded for their supporters to vote. “CITIZENS OF PHILADELPHIA, TAKE YOUR CHOICE,” the Aurora proclaimed on October 14. “FEDERALISTS TO YOUR POSTS,” the Gazette countered. “This day decides whether Virtue, Liberty and Independence shall prevail or whether Jacobinic tyranny shall lord o’er COLUMBIA. As you love your country, fly to your polls.”

  Toward the end of the campaign, electioneering turned sharply negative. Assailing Jefferson, the Gazette of the United States asserted, “In a few days, the question will be seriously and strenuously made whether the experiment of a federal republic under religious, moral, and steadfast politicians tracing the high road to order, dignity, glory and independence is still to be essayed; or whether we be willing to submit to the Gallic domination of an acknowledged Deist.” Pressing its point, the article added about Jefferson, “Men know his contempt of Christianity, his Parisian policies, his visionary projects, his timidity, his inconsistencies.” Republicans, in contrast, warned of tyranny and worse under Adams. “The friends of peace will vote for Jefferson; the friends of war will vote for Adams or for Pinckney,” the Aurora declared. It reprinted personal letters supplied by Pennsylvania Republican Tench Coxe suggesting that Adams wanted a monarchy and Pinckney supported Britain. Rumors circulated that Adams had once sent Pinckney to England for four mistresses—two for each man—leading Adams to joke, “If this be true, General Pinckney has kept all for himself and cheated me out of my two.”

  For Republicans, the Pennsylvania election results turned out better than they had expected but not as good as they had hoped. In Pittsburgh, for example, where Federalists had won in 1799, the Herald of Liberty reported, “Republicans will carry every candidate from the Coroner to the Congressman. Never was there such a change known.” A similar shift occurred in the east-central counties where Fries’s Rebellion occurred. Overall, Republicans won 10 of 13 congressional races, 55 of the 78 seats in the State Assembly, and all but 1 of the 7 Senate contests. That still left Federalists in control of the State Senate by a single seat, however. “The elections in that state have been greatly in favor of the Republicans,” Jefferson wrote to Charles Pinckney in early November, but “the Federalists carried their [State Senate] member in Lancaster.” Either both sides would have to compromise or Pennsylvania would not vote for President. While the situation in Pennsylvania was a simple stalemate, in South Carolina, multiple factors—some personal and some partisan—clouded the prospects.

  Voters in South Carolina cast ballots on the same day as Pennsylvanians but under different conditions. Where Pennsylvania lacked an established method of choosing electors, South Carolina law clearly prescribed that the entire legislature, sitting as one body, choose each of their state’s eight electors by majority vote of all the members. This left ample room for logrolling, vote trading, and backroom deals among the members. Legislators could choose all eight electors from one party, pick some from each, or name independent electors, as happened in 1796, when South Carolina had cast its votes for Jefferson and Thomas Pinckney. While in Pennsylvania partisan politics had developed to the point where candidates ran exclusively on party tickets, colonial-style patrician politics still survived in South Carolina. Candidates there identified themselves more with elite patrons and wealthy families than with political parties. The Pinckney family—rent between parties—carried the most weight. First cousins Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Charles Pinckney, ages fifty-four and forty-two respectively, were, by 1800, bitter rivals battling over their state’s eight electoral votes.

  General Pinckney (as virtually everyone called Charles Cotesworth) was a conservative patriot in the mold of Washington and Hamilton. He had led South Carolina into rebellion against Britain and subsequently served his state and nation in various posts even as he rebuilt his considerable estate after suffering wartime losses. Stout and broad shouldered with a round face and Roman nose, Pinckney had a practical intelligence and a determined nature. He fought the Revolution to preserve what he, as a South Carolina patrician, viewed as the traditional rights of Englishmen, which for him included the God-given right to enslave Africans—a right that prewar legal developments in Britain appeared to threaten. He never saw much wisdom in extending those rights further, certainly not to slaves. In addition to serving as Southern commander for the Additional Army in 1800, General Pinckney was a state legislator and, if reelected, would participate in selecting South Carolina’s electors. He felt confident that these electors would vote for him.

  Charles Pinckney (called “Blackguard Charlie” by local Federalists) held a lower military rank during the Revolution than his cousin but rose higher in the echelons of South Carolina politics. He served three terms as governor during the 1790s and, by 1800, was a U.S. senator. Handsome, vain, openly ambitious, and something of a rake after his wife died in 1794, Pinckney was a political visionary who played a leading role in crafting the U.S. Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention. He jumped to the Republican Party from the Federalist faction during the mid-1790s in reaction to Jay’s Treaty with Britain. Becoming a vocal critic of the Adams administration, he worked tirelessly for Jefferson’s election in 1800. Under the pseudonym “A Republican,” Pinckney penned twenty-four newspaper essays supporting the election of Jefferson over either Adams or his own cousin. Federalists resorted to charging Pinckney with disloyalty to his family, dereliction of his Senate duties, and self-interest in seeking an ambassadorship under Jefferson. Nothing silenced him.

  Presidential politi
cs loomed large in South Carolina’s state legislative races, which upset some voters unaccustomed to partisan campaigning. One citizen wrote to a local paper, “We are so beset with and run down by Federalists, Federal Republicans, and their pamphlets that I begin to think, for the first time, there is something rotten with the system they attempt to support, or why all this violence and electioneering?” Striking a more hopeful note, another correspondent commented, “The citizens of Charleston, and of the state at large, I am certain, have too much spirit and good sense to permit themselves to be led by the sound of a name—whether that of a Charles or a General.”

  Ultimately, the patrician structure of South Carolina politics withstood the partisan wave sweeping the country in 1800. General Pinckney handily won election to the State Senate from Charleston and carried with him nearly all the Federalist candidates running for legislature from the city. Demonstrating the weak hold of party politics, however, six of the fifteen Federalist candidates in Charleston also ran on the Republican ballot. Further, Republican candidates, or what one newspaper dubbed “Mr. C. P.’s Ticket,” did well elsewhere. Statewide, more Republicans won than Federalists, but their party loyalty was untested. The new legislators were committed more to personalities than to parties. Thomas Pinckney advised Federalist Congressman John Rutledge Jr., “You know we can form no certain estimates [of party strength] from the persons returned [to the state legislature] because hitherto the distinctions of political parties has been marked by a very faint line” in South Carolina.