Mr. President (35 page)

By mid-October elections had been held in all eleven states in which legislatures chose the electors, but the national outcome was still very much in doubt. The five states with popular elections had yet to weigh in, while the results in Pennsylvania and South Carolina had been indecisive. Voters in Pennsylvania had produced a Federalist senate and Republican assembly, and unless these two bodies could agree, Pennsylvania would have
no
electors—a major loss to Republicans, who had carried the state in 1796. South Carolinians had given Republicans a slim edge in the legislature, but party loyalties there were more tenuous than elsewhere, and nobody could safely predict whether Republican electors would vote for Pinckney and possibly even his running mate.

Then suddenly, on October 24, Alexander Hamilton reentered the mix. On that day the
New-York Gazette and General Advertiser
published a fifty-four-page pamphlet titled
Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States
. It was a remarkably vindictive work and potentially a game changer. Instead of promoting the virtues of his party’s candidate for president, he issued a damning indictment:

Although the campaign of 1800, like that of 1796, was replete with character assassination and negative campaigning, shots were usually fired in the direction of the opposing party. That Hamilton would treat the Federalists’ nominal leader in such a manner seemed at first glance to constitute a serious breach of party discipline—but that’s not how Hamilton saw it. In its own convoluted way, his letter presented a
reasoned argument, even if embedded within a free-flowing stream of inflammatory rhetoric.

Hamilton’s diatribe was as much a vindication of his own behavior as a denunciation of Adams’s. He told how he had wanted to give Thomas Pinckney an “equal chance” in the previous election to ensure a Federalist victory, but his warning had been ignored by those supporting Adams, and this allowed Jefferson to become vice president and almost president. Adams’s resistance to running equally with Pinckney created “in a great measure … the serious schism which has since grown up in the Federal Party,” Hamilton claimed. For several pages, he defended the Pinckney brothers and himself from charges of being under “British influence.” He then indicted the president for ignoring “the advice of his Ministers” and firing two of them—Hamilton’s allies McHenry and Pickering—not for “misconduct” but for “collateral inducements,” or what we might call today political gain. (This contradicted his earlier position; Hamilton had supported giving the president the discretionary power of removal when the issue was debated in the First Federal Congress.) Finally, Hamilton admitted to his own reasons for “personal discontent” with Adams’s actions. Contrary to “the
express stipulation
of General w
ASHINGTON
,” Adams had resisted making Hamilton second-in-command of the additional army, and upon Washington’s death the president had refused to promote him to the top spot.

Now for the clever logic, evident to Hamilton but confusing to readers then and now. Despite all these reasons
not
to support Adams, Hamilton still would. Torn between “the unqualified conviction of his [Adams’s] unfitness for the station contemplated, and a sense of the great importance of cultivating harmony among the supporters of the Government [Federalists], on whose firm union hereafter will probably depend the preservation of order, tranquility, liberty, property, [and] the security of every social and domestic blessing,” he would choose the latter. Party unity trumped all other considerations, even the “unfitness” of the president. So if he was willing to go that far to preserve “harmony” among Federalists, shouldn’t
all
Federalist electors support the
full
party ticket, Adams
and
Pinckney? That was his closing argument. Explicitly, his intent was to keep Federalist electors in line; implicitly, he no doubt hoped that after hearing about Adams’s shortcomings, one or two might choose Pinckney and
not
Adams, thereby delivering the presidency to his preferred candidate.
³⁴

Hamilton’s argument, logical as it was, obviously backfired. Adams supporters were furious, High Federalists embarrassed, and Republicans elated. Unwittingly, Hamilton endangered the support Pinckney already enjoyed and gained him no more, and he certainly did Adams no favors. If Hamilton had meant to mend the schism that divided Federalists, he didn’t. As one Federalist put it, “Gen. Hamilton’s letter on the conduct & character of the President … will administer
oil
rather than
water
to the fire.”
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Hamilton’s letter probably had little impact on the popular elections in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, and Rhode Island, all held between November 3 and 19, nor in the ongoing contest within the Pennsylvania legislature, which ended in a virtual stalemate that yielded eight Republican and seven Federalist electors. Yet the letter might have played some role, even if indirectly, in South Carolina, where the election would eventually be decided.

Without South Carolina, each party had in its column precisely sixty-five electors. While Jefferson and Adams could count on that many votes from their parties, some votes for their running mates might still be “thrown away.” All this would come into play in Columbia during the ten days preceding the December 3 deadline, when electors would cast their ballots. In and out of chambers, legislators debated and caucused in preparation for choosing electors. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, popularly known as General Pinckney or C.C., was certainly a local favorite, a low-country patrician with as much prestige and honor as any in the state and connected to nearly everybody who wielded power or influence. Opposing him, though, was the U.S. senator Charles Pinckney, the vice presidential candidate’s cousin who had argued so vociferously against the Federalist-sponsored Ross bill in Congress. Absenting himself from the national body in order to participate in the wrangling, “Blackguard Charley” (as his Federalist family and peers called the Republican renegade) lobbied against his own kin. With allegiances torn, the most popular alternative was to put forth electors pledged to a split ticket of Pinckney and Jefferson, a result that would have pleased Hamilton. Yet Hamilton had made that impossible. Such a ticket would need the support of General Pinckney himself, and after the controversial letter, he was boxed in; at the risk of appearing Hamilton’s tool, he needed to retain strict party loyalty. Without the candidate’s assent, the compromise faltered, and on December 2,
with not a day to spare, the South Carolina legislature chose eight electors, all pledged to Jefferson and Burr. Even in South Carolina, where party organization and allegiances were weaker than anywhere else in the nation and personal connections particularly strong, party trumped family and local loyalties.
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On December 3, electors met as stipulated in their state capitals, and though the voting was supposed to be secret until ballots were opened on the Senate floor two months hence, this constitutional stipulation had been ignored from the time of the first presidential election. As soon as communications across distances would permit, within weeks rather than months, everybody knew the results: the Republicans had prevailed by exactly eight votes.

Note the plural,
Republicans
. Jefferson and Burr had garnered 73 votes each, Adams 65, and Pinckney 64. It was an amazing display of party unity on both sides. Back in 1796, 46 of 138 electors had voted for candidates not on their party’s ticket. In 1800, only one did—an elector from Rhode Island who voted for John Jay rather than Pinckney to ensure that Adams and Pinckney would not wind up in a tie. Republicans, recalling how Federalists had lost the vice presidency in 1796 by not staying united, failed to take that precaution. Every single one voted diligently for the two candidates, and that produced a result the framers had not foreseen but Hamilton had during the very first presidential election: the avowed winner would have to face a runoff with his presumed vice president in the House of Representatives, as required by Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution.

This would have been merely a technical glitch, easily rectified by a simple vote in the House of Representatives, if parties had not rigidified. In a winner-take-all game, however, all strategies make sense, as long as one plays by the rules, and there was nothing in the rules that prevented Federalists in Congress from voting for Burr over Jefferson. With Burr they would have considerable influence, with Jefferson none.

The rest of the story is legion and need not be detailed here; a simple outline will suffice to reveal the stark truths. The Constitution stipulated that voting in the House would be by state delegations and that a majority was necessary to produce a winner. Of the sixteen delegations, eight were Republican, six Federalist, and two evenly divided. To gain the critical ninth vote, Republicans needed to persuade just a
single Federalist from either of the divided states, or a few from one of the others,
not
to back Aaron Burr for president. This they could not do, even though Burr had neither the personal credentials nor the political persuasion that would normally appeal to them. All that mattered was foiling their political opponents.

One prominent Federalist refused to play along with this game. Long opposed to Burr for a multitude of personal and political reasons, Alexander Hamilton sounded the alarm to his fellow Federalists: Burr was altogether without “public principles,” an opportunist who would “plunder” his country, “disturb our institutions,” and seek for himself “permanent power.” Much as he had preferred Adams to Jefferson even though he detested them both, he now argued that Jefferson was “by far not so dangerous a man” as his longtime antagonist from New York. “For heaven’s sake,” he pleaded, “let not the Foederal party be responsible for the elevation of this man.” (Four years later, when Burr ran for governor of New York, Hamilton again derided him in public; this time Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, Hamilton accepted, and Burr prevailed.)
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Nobody listened to Hamilton’s latest tirade. Burr’s character was not the issue. “He is ambitious—selfish—profligate. His ambition is of the worst kind—it is a mere love of power,” Speaker of the House Sedgwick admitted. Yet Burr held “no pernicious theories,” and because of his obvious inadequacies “Burr must depend on good men for his support & that support he cannot receive but by a conformity to their views.” A Burr presidency, in short, would give Federalists access to centralized power, and that was worth fighting for.
³⁸

Since the first presidential election, Hamilton had been willing and even eager to exploit the “defect in the constitution” to achieve his party’s ends, yet now, when Federalists found themselves with a special opportunity to do so, he reneged. Was it honor that caused him to back off? Personal vendetta? Sound judgment? Whatever his reasons, Federalists in Congress did not share them. They had learned too well from their master: party loyalty came first.

The first vote to break the Jefferson-Burr tie was taken in the Capitol building, under construction in the swampy town of Washington, at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 11. Predictably, eight states voted for Jefferson, six for Burr, and two delegations, splitting evenly, cast no votes. Members caucused, offered deals, and voted again, but the
result remained unchanged. Into the night they voted and caucused, and at 8:00 the following morning, after casting twenty-seven ballots, the House finally recessed. Voting resumed on Friday and again on Saturday. Not until Sunday, the Sabbath, did members take a full break. By then they had voted thirty-three times.

On that day, a frustrated Jefferson wrote to his ally James Monroe, currently governor of Virginia. Federalists, he said, had talked of passing “a law for putting the government into the hands of an officer” of their own choosing if the election were not settled by March 4, when Adams’s term as president ended. Jefferson and the Republicans countered with force: “We thought it best to declare openly and firmly, one & all, that the day such an act passed, the middle states would arm, & that no such usurpation, even for a single day, should be submitted to.”

While the prospect of armed resistance to federal authority “shook them,” Jefferson reported, Federalists were even more “alarmed” by the next volley: Republicans threatened to call a convention “to re-organize the government, & to amend it.” That truly hit its mark. “The very word convention gives them horrors, as in the present democratical spirit of America, they fear they should lose some of the favorite morsels of the constitution.” For years, Federalists had complained that Republicans were warmed-over Anti-Federalists bent on destroying the Constitution, and now their worst fears might come true. A new convention, they knew, might well throw out the old rules altogether, just as the Federal Convention of 1787 had done.
³⁹

Neither threat was idle. A new constitutional convention could and probably would have been called if Jefferson were not elected, and military preparations were already under way in at least two key states. Governor McKean of Pennsylvania later assured Jefferson, “Militia would have been warned to be ready, arms for upwards of twenty thousand were secured, brass field pieces etc. etc. and an order would have been issued for the arresting and bringing to justice every member of Congress and other persons found in Pennsylvania … concerned with the treason.” In Virginia, Governor Monroe had already placed a militia guard around a large storehouse of arms in New London, halfway between the state capital in Richmond and Washington, to keep it from the hands of the national government. Fears of disunion struck a chord with the Delaware Federalist James Bayard, who announced he would withhold his vote for Burr rather than “hazard the Constitution
upon which the political existence of the state depends.” A few others followed Bayard’s lead, and at noon on Tuesday, February 17, on the thirty-sixth ballot, the House of Representatives voted ten states to four, with two abstaining, for Jefferson.
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