A Magnificent Catastrophe

by Edward J. Larson

  On the positive side, Federalists also viewed Burr as more vigorous and pragmatic than Jefferson, whom they scorned as a cowardly, misguided visionary. Hindman wrote of Burr, “He is a soldier and a man of energy and decision.” “To courage he joins generosity,” New York Senator Gouverneur Morris added. “If Mr. Burr succeeds, we may flatter ourselves that he will not suffer the executive power to be frittered into insignificance,” James McHenry stated. “Either will be bad,” Connecticut Senator Uriah Tracy conceded, but “I am…in favor of Burr principally because I think a paralytic complaint is most to be shunned by a popular government.” Federalists also anticipated that Burr, as a New York commercial lawyer, would support Federalist business interests more than Jefferson, a Virginia agrarian. “His very selfishness,” Sedgwick wryly noted about Burr and the business interests, “will afford some security that he will not only patronize their support but their invigoration.”

  “It is fashionable with Feds to declare in favor of Mr. Burr,” one of them informed America’s ambassador to Britain in a late-December letter. Another soon wrote to McHenry, “The Federalists, almost with one mind from every quarter of the union, say elect Burr.” The partisan Philadelphia Gazette expressed the thoughts of many embittered Federalists. “If Mr. Burr should indeed be elevated to the executive,” it exclaimed, “in what a deplorable situation will the Jeffersonian party be! Quite thrown off the hinges of hope! Gone the sweet expectancy of office!” By some manner of twisted reasoning, by the beginning of 1801, Burr had become the Federalists’ white knight. No solid evidence exists that he ever promised anything in exchange for their support. Faced with the prospect of losing power for the first time, they simply gave it to him on faith.

  As Republicans and Federalists scrambled for position in the new political order, Adams held himself above the fray. With three months left in his presidency, he had suffered a double shock on December 3. On the same day as a majority of electors voted for Republican candidates over Federalist ones, Adams learned that his thirty-year-old son, Charles, had died from the effects of alcoholism. Only a year earlier, Adams first learned that Charles, his most sensitive and troubled child, had abandoned his wife and young children, turned to drink, and become bankrupt. Adams summarily renounced his wayward son and never spoke to him again. Nevertheless, Charles’s death grieved Adams greatly. Then news came of his electoral defeat. “My little bark has been overset in a squall of thunder and lightning and hail attended by the strong smell of sulfur,” he wrote to his youngest son, Thomas, on December 17. “The melancholy decease of your brother is an affliction of a more serious nature to this family than any other. Oh! that I had died for him if that would have relieved him from his faults as well as his disease.” The President signed his letter, “I am, my dear son, your affectionate father.”

  Many Federalists blamed Adams for the party’s losses. By “sending the last mission to France,” McHenry observed in words that gave voice to the party line, “Mr. Adams had taken…a course which has lost to him the presidency and led to his utter debasement.” Pickering soon added, “The President, I am told, is in a state of deep dejection. His feelings are not to be envied. To his UNADVISED (to use a mild term) measures are traced the evils with which the whole of our country is now perplexed and depressed.” The truth is, though, that although he lost the election, Adams did better than his party as a whole. Outside New York, he received more electoral votes in 1800 than in 1796, when he won. The Republicans’ narrow victory in the New York City elections had indeed turned the tide. Even without New York, Adams lost only because of the inflated number of electors accorded to southern states due to their nonvoting slave property. The bizarre constitutional compromise that treated each slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning U.S. House seats and electoral votes effectively gave free citizens in slave states added political clout. If only free citizens had counted in allocating electoral votes, Adams would have won by two votes. Meanwhile, Federalists lost control of Congress for the first time in the nation’s history, dropping more than ten seats in the Senate and more than twice that number in the House. Amid a Republican surge, Adams did remarkably well.

  Near the end of December, Adams wrote to a cousin in Massachusetts, “I shall be in Quincy as early in the spring as the roads and the weather will permit. The only question remaining for me is, what shall I do with myself? Something I must do or ennui will rain upon me in buckets.” At age sixty-five and after more than twenty-five years of continuous public service dating back to the First Continental Congress, Adams suggested that he might resume farming or practicing law.

  In grief and disappointment, Adams took no part in the final phase of the presidential election. Although he favored Jefferson over Burr, Adams left the decision wholly to Congress. On the final day of December, though, he vented his feelings about Burr and the partisanship that would lift him to national office. “How mighty a power is the spirit of party! How decisive and unanimous it is! Seventy-three for Mr. Jefferson and seventy-three for Mr. Burr,” Adams wrote to a friend about Burr. “All the old patriots, all the splendid talents, the long experience, both of Federalists and Anti-Federalists, must be subject to the humiliation of seeing this dexterous gentleman rise, like a balloon filled with inflammable air, over their heads…. What an encouragement to party intrigue and corruption!”

  In contrast, stating that she had “turned and turned and overturned in my mind the merits and demerits of the two candidates,” Abigail Adams remained undecided. “Long acquaintance, private friendship and the full belief that the private character of one is much purer than the other, inclines me to” Jefferson, she explained to her sister. “Yet…I am sometimes inclined to believe that the more bold, daring and decisive character would succeed in supporting the government for a longer time.” That meant Burr. The First Lady then added a question of great moment to her. Would God protect America if Americans knowingly chose as President a heretic like Jefferson, “who makes no pretension to the belief of an all wise and supreme governor of the world ordering or directing or overruling the events that take place in it?” she asked about Jefferson. They had come so far, these former friends, from those convivial days in Paris. Still, on a similar score, she worried about Burr too. “Yet [Burr], if he is more of a [Christian] believer,” she wrote, “has more to answer for because he has grossly offended against those doctrines by his practice.” For many pious Federalists, it was a devil’s choice.

  In the waning days of his administration, Adams concentrated on securing Senate approval of the peace convention with France and attending to the various measures passed by the outgoing Federalist Congress, many of them highly partisan. One final opportunity to shape future events had arisen when Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth resigned office unexpectedly. Adams offered the post first to John Jay, but Jay declined for health reasons. He then tapped his loyal Secretary of State, John Marshall, for the position. It was a brilliant choice for the Federalists. As the Republicans consolidated their hold on the elected branches of government, Marshall almost single-handedly extended his party’s influence in national affairs for another thirty-five years. By enunciating the principle of judicial review over statutes and executive decisions in Marbury v. Madison, for example, Marshall helped to secure power in the courts to restrain the sort of extraconstitutional assaults on property that Federalists feared most from Republicans.

  Only one prominent Federalist leader actively tried to stop his party’s mad rush to embrace Burr. Having battled him over the years in New York with mixed results, the prospect of Burr becoming President horrified Alexander Hamilton. “There is no circumstance which has occurred in the course of our political affairs that has given me so much pain as the idea that Mr. Burr might be elevated to the presidency by the means of the Federalists,” he wrote to Oliver Wolcott in December. “Let it not be imagined that Burr can be won to the Federal[ist] view…. His ambition will not be content with those objects which virtuous
men of either party will allot to it, and his situation and his habits will oblige him to have recourse to corrupt expedients.” At least Jefferson “has pretensions to character,” Hamilton explained. “As to Burr, there is nothing in his favor.” After having his attack on Adams criticized as personal, Hamilton now stressed that he got along “well” with Burr. “If there be a man in the world I ought to hate, it is Jefferson,” he wrote, “but the public good must be paramount to every private consideration.”

  In late December, Hamilton launched an extraordinary letter-writing campaign to alert Federalists in Congress to the danger. In these letters, he portrayed Burr as a cunning, diabolical intriguer willing to say or do anything to gain political power and private wealth. “Burr loves nothing but himself; thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement; and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands,” Hamilton admonished Congressman Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts. In several letters, he compared Burr to the Roman conspirator Catiline and warned that, if elected, Burr would start a foreign war to consolidate his power. “No mortal can tell what his political principles are,” Hamilton cautioned South Carolina’s John Rutledge. “If he has any theory, ’tis that of simple despotism.” To the House Speaker, he pleaded, “I beg you, as you love your country, your friends and yourself, to reconsider dispassionately the opinion you have expressed in favor of Burr.”

  All these congressmen wrote back to Hamilton expressing their determination to back Burr. In the wake of the devastating defeat of his hand-picked candidates by Burr’s slate in New York’s state elections, Hamilton again sounded vindictive. He had cried wolf once too often and had lost credibility within his own party.

  Hamilton held out, though, one key source of hope. In his letter-writing campaign, he worked especially hard to change the mind of thirty-three-year-old James Bayard. As Delaware’s lone House member, Bayard held an entire state’s presidential vote, one of sixteen, in his hands. However he voted, Delaware voted. Bayard was a loyal Federalist but not an embittered partisan. With Jefferson by all accounts only one state shy of having a majority in the House, everyone knew that he could win with Bayard’s vote, but virtually no one expected that he could get it.

  In three letters written over the course of eight weeks, Hamilton reasoned with the young congressman. His December 27 letter concluded with the warning, “Mr. Burr [is] the most unfit man in the U.S. for the office of president. Disgrace abroad, ruin at home are the probable fruits of his elevation.” Bayard replied politely but firmly. Although not bound to follow his Federalist colleagues, given his pivotal position, “I ought certainly to be impressed with the most undoubting conviction before I separated myself from them,” he wrote. “I have not the least doubt of their agreeing to support Burr.”

  Even as Hamilton worked furiously behind the scenes to derail the Federalist effort to elect Burr, he was not willing to concede the presidency to Jefferson without getting something in return for Federalist votes in Congress. In fact, just as soon as an electoral-vote tie had started to look likely, he had begun urging Federalists in Congress to wring concessions from Jefferson in exchange for their votes. Specifically, Hamilton wanted a pledge that Jefferson would not repudiate the national debt, ally the country with France, disband the Navy, or dismiss Federalists from government jobs. Federalists could trust the Virginian to honor his commitments, Hamilton assured them. The same promises from Burr would mean nothing, he warned, because no one could trust him to keep his word. “While making it, he will laugh in his sleeve at the credulity of those with whom he makes it,” Hamilton wrote in a letter to Bayard, “and the first moment it suits his views to break it, he will do so.”

  In dealing with Burr, Hamilton suggested that the Federalists should “throw out a lure for him, in order to tempt him to start for the plate and thus lay the foundation of dissension between the two chiefs.” The power-hungry Burr would show his true face in response to an offer of votes from Federalists, Hamilton believed, and Jefferson would never again trust him. The ensuing dissension between the new President and Vice President might divide the opposition, he hoped. As much as Hamilton might favor Jefferson, he could not refrain from partisan scheming.

  A new century formally began on January 1, 1801, but the partisan positions taken in December did not change. Congress returned from its Christmas recess deeply divided. Every Republican in the House agreed to support Jefferson; all but four of the Federalists favored Burr. Except for Maryland’s Dent, however, these dissenters came from Republican-dominated states where their votes for Jefferson would not matter. The projected vote remained eight to six with two states tied. Jefferson hoped that once news of the extent of his party’s gains in the fall elections reached Philadelphia, including confirmation that Republicans would take control of Congress, the Federalists might bow to the apparent popular will. Instead, the news only made them less willing to compromise during the two months remaining until the current presidential and congressional terms ended on March 3. The Federalists seemed more determined than ever to wield power while they had it and hope that, by securing Burr’s election, they could retain it in some fashion.

  With time running out, Federalists in Congress set out to accomplish as many partisan objectives as possible prior to relinquishing power on March 3. Although the Senate and House of Representatives had convened in late November, members waited on the election results before concluding any major business. Many of them arrived late for the session or went home early for Christmas. By the first of January, however, Federalists knew that they had lost the presidency and probably the Congress. This gave them a new sense of urgency. “They are about to experience a heavy gale of adverse wind,” Gouverneur Morris said of his colleagues. “Can they be blamed for casting many anchors to hold their ship through the storm?”

  Their main anchor was the Judiciary Act of 1801, which the Federalist Congress passed as one of its last acts in February. The new law expanded federal-court jurisdiction and created an intermediate level of independent appellate courts. It also increased the number of federal judicial districts. Boasting that “we shall profit of our short lived majority,” Representative John Rutledge noted that the measure “will greatly extend the judiciary power and, of course, greatly widen the basis of government.” Federalists always viewed the national judiciary as a means to reach into the states with their centralizing, pro-business policies, which made creating more courts and packing them with like-minded judges all the more important to them. Morris deftly described the proposed Judiciary Act as “giving additional fiber to the roots of government.” Senator James Gunn of Georgia more crudely spoke of it “extending the influence of our judiciary,” and warned that “if neglected by the Federalists, the ground will be occupied by the enemy at the very next session of Congress.” Writing to Madison about the bill, Jefferson noted, “I dread this above all the measures meditated because [judicial] appointments [are]…difficult to undo.” Adams reportedly worked late into the night of his final day in office signing commissions for these appointees, leading Republicans to scorn them as “midnight judges.”

  Most other partisan bills fell short of passage during the brief session. One would have funded the construction of roads to unify the nation and carry its commerce. Depicting the measure as “the richest provision for jobs to favorites that has ever yet been proposed,” Jefferson privately objected that “the mines of Peru could not supply the monies which would be wasted on this object.” Federalists also proposed erecting a 150-foot-tall pyramid in the nation’s capital to entomb Washington’s remains in pharaonic splendor. The leveling spirit of republican populism doomed the project, however. Only a memorial obelisk later arose. Most radical of all, House Federalists moved to extend the Sedition Act beyond its scheduled expiration. Stating that he “saw nothing in the law…which an honest man should fear,” House committee chair Jonas Platt proposed the extension in mid-January, and (over Republican jeers) the House initially agreed. Re
nowned historian Samuel Eliot Morison described this effort as “the most striking instance of the unteachableness of Federalism.”

  Adams did manage to secure Senate ratification of his peace convention with France, but only after High Federalists defeated it once and then puckishly struck out the virtually meaningless provision relating to indemnities and the Franco-American Alliance. The initial defeat at the hands of his own party infuriated him. Nothing mattered more to Adams than this treaty, not even the election of his successor. “He is extremely irritated in consequence of the treaty not being accepted,” Bayard observed in late January, “and would be apt to insult the person who should mention the subject to him.” His dry wit restored, Adams later characterized peace with France as “the most splendid diamond in my crown or, if any one thinks this expression too monarchical,…the most brilliant feather in my cap.”

  Conditions in the nation’s new capital aggravated the partisan divisions that beset Congress. In cosmopolitan Philadelphia, lawmakers met in the historic old State House and enjoyed the distractions of the nation’s largest and most cultivated city. In frontier Washington, politics consumed them. There was little else to do. “A few, indeed, drink, and some gamble, but the majority drink naught but politics,” House Republican leader Albert Gallatin wrote in mid-January about his colleagues, “and by not mixing with men of different or more moderate sentiments, they inflame one another. On that account, principally, I see some danger in the fate of the [presidential] election which I had not before contemplated.”