Pinckney had failed to carry a single electoral vote in his home state and received only nine votes from Southern electors—the same number as Adams. Years in opposition had forged the Republicans into a united party, especially in the South. Voting on the same day, one Rhode Island elector dropped his vote for Pinckney so that Adams would outpoll his running mate. Because of this, even with all of South Carolina’s electoral votes, Pinckney would have finished behind Jefferson, though ahead of Adams and Burr. By carrying four electoral districts in North Carolina as compared to only one in 1796, Adams had actually done slightly better in the South than four years earlier—but not well enough to overcome his loss of New York’s twelve electors.
Jefferson learned of the South Carolina vote in a letter from Republican printer Peter Freneau, who covered the event for his Charleston newspaper. The letter, dated December 2, identified the electors chosen by the South Carolina legislature and their party affiliation. They would not actually cast their ballots until December 3, of course, so the letter could only predict how they would vote. In fact, it incorrectly forecast that one of them would drop a vote for Burr to ensure Jefferson’s victory. Reports suggested that Republican electors in other states might do the same on Election Day.
Jefferson received Freneau’s letter on December 12 and immediately shared the news with his family. “I believe we may consider the election as decided,” he wrote from Washington. “The votes will stand probably T. J. 73, Burr about 70, Mr. Adams 65, Pinckney probably lower than that. It is fortunate that some difference will be made between the two highest candidates, because it is said the Feds here held a caucus and came to the resolution that in the event of their being equal, they would prevent an election…by dividing the House of Representatives.” At least at this point, Jefferson assumed that one or more electors on each side would drop votes from their party’s second candidate. He also realized, however, that the Federalists in Congress were prepared to exploit the situation should the two Republican candidates end in a tie for first.
The concluding commentary about the Federalist caucus betrayed Jefferson’s one lingering concern about the election. He knew there were seventy-three Republican electors and only sixty-five Federalist electors. He counted on all the Republican electors voting for him. Republicans had become so unified in their opposition to Federalists, however, that every Republican might also vote for Burr out of fear that otherwise Adams or Pinckney might slip in ahead of Burr in the final tally, just as Jefferson had slipped in ahead of Thomas Pinckney in 1796 and become Vice President. If both Republican candidates received seventy-three electoral votes, however, neither of them would win outright and, under the Constitution, Congress would choose between them for the presidency. With the Federalists holding the balance of power in Congress, this was a sobering prospect.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TIE
“SPLENDID INTELLIGENCE,” read the headline in Washington’s new Republican newspaper, The National Intelligencer, on December 12. “We have this moment received information from Columbia (S.C.) that the Republican ticket for electors has been carried entire…. Mr. Jefferson may, therefore, be considered as our future President,” the article proclaimed. It went on to report without further comment that Jefferson and Burr would receive all the state’s electoral votes. By this time, politicians in the nation’s capital also knew of the results in Pennsylvania and enough of the other states to establish that a majority of the nation’s electors would be Republican. This momentous news gradually spread across the land with the fastest riders, coaches, and ships.
In 1800, electors from all sixteen states met in their respective states and cast their votes on December 3—the date prescribed by law. Although, under the Constitution, Congress (or, more precisely, the president of the Senate with Congress present) would not open and count the ballots until February 11, 1801, word of how the electors voted trickled out steadily from the various state capitals. Although unofficial until counted, the votes were not secret. Electors could, and did, tell people how they voted. Newspapers reported it. With electors free to vote as they pleased and the contest very close in 1800, no one could know the final outcome for certain until reports of all the states reached them—which inevitably took weeks. Lacking a central news source, Americans anxiously awaited word of the precise electoral-vote count from each state. Rhode Islanders would not hear how Georgia’s electors voted for over a month, for example, and reports from Kentucky and Tennessee could take almost as long to reach some East Coast communities. Keeping track of the various accounts and drawing up tallies kept the candidates and newspaper printers occupied throughout December.
As news spread out from South Carolina of the Republican victory there, it intersected with reports on how electors voted in other states. The issue of The National Intelligencer that proclaimed the sweep by Jefferson and Burr in South Carolina also reported news from the West that the Republican ticket had carried all the electoral votes of Kentucky and Tennessee. Word soon came from the North that, contrary to the assurances of Burr and some other Northeastern Republicans, Jefferson had not received any electoral votes in New England or New Jersey. Georgia electors, it turned out, had voted solidly for the Republican ticket, dashing Jefferson’s hope that perhaps one of them would withhold a vote from Burr, as some rumors suggested. Republican leaders had thought that one or more electors in Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, Georgia, Kentucky, or Tennessee would vote for Jefferson but not Burr. No one, however, either confirmed the arrangement or directed any particular elector to drop a vote from Burr so that Jefferson could prevail. Jefferson himself and his two closest political allies, Madison and Monroe, had held back from making such arrangements due to their commitments made to Burr. The failure of any other party leaders to attend to the issue was a remarkable oversight in an otherwise well-managed campaign.
By the third week of December, a consistent pattern of highly disciplined party-line voting had become clear. Republican electors had voted with such unity that, it now became apparent, Jefferson and Burr would likely end up in a dead heat with seventy-three electoral votes each. The best estimates had them finishing eight votes ahead of Adams and nine in front of Pinckney.
This development, even though he had foreseen it as a possibility, shocked and deeply troubled Jefferson. Already on December 15, when he still expected to finish alone on top, Jefferson had written to Burr about the coordination of voting by Republican electors. “It was badly managed not to have arranged with certainty what seems to have been left to hazard,” Jefferson observed. “I never once asked whether arrangements had been made…[for] dropping votes intentionally…nor did I doubt till lately that such had been made.” Burr did not respond to Jefferson on this point but he must have anticipated the possibility of a tie. He had pressed for votes from every Republican elector from the outset.
By the third week of December, Jefferson knew the final tally. “There will be an absolute parity between the two Republican candidates,” he wrote to Madison from Washington on December 19. “This has produced great dismay and gloom on the Republican gentlemen here, and equal exultation in the Federalists.” Adams, Hamilton, and the other Federalists had also assumed that the Republicans would manage the electoral vote better. With a tie between Jefferson and Burr now apparently the result, though, the final session of the Sixth Congress, which began on November 17 with a light agenda, was suddenly shaping up as historic. Its members, which included many lame-duck Federalists, would choose the next President.
By nature, Jefferson was pessimistic about his political prospects and saw dark conspiracies against him. In this case, he only slightly exaggerated the situation. Under the Constitution, in the case of a tie between two candidates for President, each with votes from more than half of the electors, the House of Representatives chooses between the two top finishers. Rather than participate as individuals, however, members from each state voted as a unit, with each state having one vote. The state�
��s vote would go to whichever candidate a majority of congressmen from that state supported. If they split evenly, the state would abstain.
With sixteen states, an absolute majority of nine votes was required for victory regardless of how many states actually voted. Jefferson keenly calculated and recalculated his chances. From the outset, he felt confident that he would receive votes from all eight state delegations with a majority of Republican members. This included the five-man New Jersey contingent, in which the crossover of a nonaligned member had created a three-to-two Republican tilt, and the two-member Georgia delegation, over which the recent death of a Federalist member had left its lone Republican in charge. After all, Jefferson reasoned, Republicans uniformly considered him as their party’s candidate for President and the electors and people had voted with that understanding. All Republican congressmen should support him.
The Federalists, in contrast, held a majority of the House seats of seven states. In one of these, Maryland, a Federalist congressman, George Dent, announced that he would vote for Jefferson, just as most of the voters in his district had done, which split the state’s delegation four to four. The Vermont delegation was also split evenly, with one member from each party. Other than Maryland, the Federalist-dominated states would likely vote for Burr. Partisanship had by now become so fierce that they would choose to give the presidency to the wildly ambitious but unprincipled opponent who had beaten them in New York rather than give their votes to Jefferson, the acknowledged Republican leader. With their delegations divided, Vermont and Maryland would probably abstain. The House would deadlock, with eight states voting for Jefferson, six for Burr, and two not voting. In utter frustration, Jefferson wrote to Monroe on December 20 about the tie with Burr, “The Feds in the legislature have expressed dispositions to make all they can of the embarrassment so that after the most energetic efforts, crowned with success, we remain in the hands of our enemies by want of foresight in the original arrangement.”
With only their six states, of course, Federalists could never win a House vote for President. They might, however, still benefit from their power to block Jefferson’s election. In several private, late-December letters to Republican collaborators, Jefferson outlined two schemes that Federalists might use to extend their rule.
By deadlocking the House, Jefferson noted, Federalists could allow the presidency to devolve to the president pro tempore of the Senate. Under the Constitution, if the top two posts become vacant, this officer acts as U.S. President. The presidential and vice presidential terms would end on March 3, 1801, and, if Congress had not chosen between Jefferson and Burr by that date, the Senate president pro tempore might claim power. The Senate did not have a president pro tempore, however. Under the reasoning that the Senate did not need a president pro tempore if the Vice President was sitting as its president (or presiding officer), the rules authorized the Senate to choose a president pro tempore only in the Vice President’s absence. As long as he remained Vice President, Jefferson could stop the Federalist-led Senate from electing a president pro tempore simply by attending every session in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, which he vowed to do. This left open the question of what might happen if the Senate remained in session after Jefferson’s term ended on March 3. Senators, or at least those senators whose terms had not also expired on March 3, might then try to elect a president pro tempore, who might move to claim the powers of the United States presidency.
Further, the Constitution clearly authorized Congress to enact legislation designating which officer would lead the nation in the absence of both a President and Vice President. Congress could pass a law providing, for example, that some specific cabinet member or judicial officer would assume power in such a crisis. Jefferson realized that this offered a second means for the Federalists to cling to power after March 3. In particular, he worried that they would use their power in Congress to designate as the next in line for presidential succession either the Secretary of State—then Virginia Federalist John Marshall—or the Chief Justice—probably Federalist senior statesman John Jay, whom Jefferson presumed would soon fill that then-vacant post.
To Republicans, either approach would constitute a naked usurpation of power, but they feared the worst from their opponents. Federalist leaders in Congress did in fact consider both options, as well as the extraconstitutional alternative of calling a new national election. The Federalist press openly defended all three approaches for retaining power even as Republican newspapers railed against them. In one widely reprinted response, The National Intelligencer argued that if March 3 came and went without the election of a President, rather than the president pro tempore taking power, the Articles of Confederation “will be revived by the termination of the…federal Constitution.” Although of doubtful authority, this response raised the stakes for the Federalists, whose very existence as a party was identified with the effort to ratify and defend the Constitution. “Some, tho’ Federalists, will prefer yielding to the wishes of the people rather than have no government,” Jefferson explained in a letter to his daughter, Martha.
A more likely scenario than any of these approaches had Burr conspiring with the Federalists and a handful of Republican congressmen to win the election in the House. Republicans held only a slender advantage in several of the congressional delegations that they controlled. In Vermont, New Jersey, Maryland, Georgia, and Tennessee, even a single Republican defection could turn the state’s vote against Jefferson. Two defections could swing Burr’s home state of New York. If every Federalist congressman voted for him, Burr would need only three or four strategically placed Republican votes to carry nine states. Never short on self-confidence, Burr reportedly believed that, if he sought out their support, he could muster enough votes from Republican congressmen to win the presidency. To Jefferson, however, he professed his loyalty. “My personal friends,” he assured Jefferson in a December 23 letter written before Burr knew the final electoral-vote count, “are perfectly informed of my wishes on the subject and can never think of diverting a single vote from you.” Thereafter, Burr became so equivocal in his comments that no one could be sure of his intentions.
Representative Samuel Smith of Maryland contacted Burr repeatedly on behalf of Republicans in Congress to gain his promise not to stand in Jefferson’s way but received back mixed messages. After pledging unwavering support for Jefferson in a December 16 letter to Smith that the congressman released to the press, Burr drew back. In a December 29 letter to Smith, Burr refused to say whether he would decline the presidency if chosen by the House. At an early-January meeting between the two men in Philadelphia, Burr left Smith with the distinct impression that if elected President, he would serve. “Keep the game perfectly in your hand,” Federalist Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper advised Burr in a December 24 letter, and Burr did just that. He remained in intermittent contact with House members throughout the process but he never went to Washington. Apparently Burr decided not to solicit votes but to accept those that came his way, which was how the Federalist press reported it at the time.
The Republican press betrayed little of the concern about Burr now growing among Republican leaders in Congress. “A drowning man will grasp at a straw,” the Republican Herald of Liberty commented in early January on the Federalists’ effort to elect Burr, but “it will not save him.” It mattered less “whether Thomas Jefferson or Aaron Burr should be President as that a period should be put to the excesses and enormities of the Federal[ist] faction by electing a Republican to the presidential chair,” the writer concluded. After assuring its readers in mid-January that “Mr. Burr would certainly make an excellent President,” The National Intelligencer simply added “that no man will doubt, and Mr. Burr himself will, with an honorable candor, admit that the people, their legislatures, and the electors intended Mr. Jefferson to be President and Mr. Burr to be Vice President.” After boosting the party ticket for months, Republican printers could hardly turn against one of their two can
didates.
Although perhaps grasping at straws, Federalists did cite various rationales for backing Burr over Jefferson. “The considerations concluding to this point are of a negative nature principally, and drawn from the greater unfitness of Jefferson,” House Speaker Theodore Sedgwick wrote to his son on January 11 about Burr. “He is not an enthusiastic theorist. He is not under the direction of Virginian Jacobins. He is not a declared infidel.” Perhaps most important of all, Sedgwick added, “He would not be able to administer the government without the aid of the Federalists and this aid he cannot obtain unless his administration is Federal[ist].” Republicans in Congress would surely abandon Burr if he took the presidency over Jefferson, the wily House Speaker reasoned, and so he must work with the Federalists to enact his proposals or even to confirm his appointments. “There are many reasons why Col. Burr is preferable to Mr. Jefferson,” the Federalist Albany Centinel explained in early January. “His father was a very pious and worthy clergyman, he is not beloved by [Republicans], but above all, those who know him best have the fullest belief that he will set up a rigid government.”
Virtually all Federalists in Congress viewed Burr as grasping, selfish, and unprincipled. “A profligate without character and without property—a bankrupt in both,” Sedgwick called him at the time. These very traits made him all the more likely, though, to cooperate with them in maintaining a strong national government, Federalists believed. “By persons friendly to Mr. Burr, it is distinctly stated that he is willing to consider the Federalists as his friends and to accept the office of President as their gift,” Delaware Representative James A. Bayard asserted on the basis of some contacts apparently not authorized by Burr. “He must lean on those who bring him to the chair, or he must fall to never rise again,” Virginia Congressman Henry Lee added. In short, by electing him President, Federalists hoped to turn Burr into their creature. “I believe,” Maryland Representative William Hindman noted, “that he would support the Federal[ist] cause as the Jeffersonians would become his bitter implacable enemies.”
A Magnificent Catastrophe Page 28