The election of 1800: a study in the logic of political change.

• Author: Freeman, Joanne B.
• Position: Moments of Change: Transformation in American Constitutionalism

To an extraordinary degree, early national politics operated in a climate of crisis. The spirit of political experimentation that fueled the nascent American republic was as disquieting as it was invigorating; keenly aware that they were creating the first polity of its kind in the modern world, politicians believed that anything could happen. This crisis mentality is essential to understanding the logic of political change in the early republic, yet the detachment of hindsight makes it difficult to recapture. Aware of the eventual emergence of an institutionalized two-party system, we search for its roots in this period, projecting our sense of political order onto a politics with its own distinct logic and integrity.

In We the People: Transformations, Bruce Ackerman discusses the broader implications of this present-mindedness, suggesting that it has blinded us to the true nature of American constitutional governance. As he explains at the opening of his argument, "the professional narrative" propounded by judges and lawyers--a story of declining constitutional creativity--has cut Americans off from "the truth about the revolutionary character of their higher lawmaking effort."(1) By using the present as a standard of measurement, Ackerman suggests, this storyline depicts constitutional change as a downslide from the creative to the familiar, the entrenched, the now, obscuring the spirit of "unconventional adaptation" at its core.(2)

The same insight holds true for the early republic. By using our present two-party system as a standard of measurement, we have obscured the distinctive and often unexpected features of early national politics, thereby blinding ourselves to the logic of political change. For rather than building a party system, politicians were struggling to prevent one from forming--particularly national politicians, who assumed that a nationwide conflict between Federalists (largely New Englanders) and Republicans (largely Southerners) would inevitably destroy the Union. An institutionalized two-party system seemed to strike at the heart of the Constitution, renouncing the process of accommodation and compromise that fueled republican governance.(3) Yet, increasingly in the 1790s, political developments seemed to generate such polarized combat. In the absence of a legitimate system of opposition, Federalists and Republicans alike assumed that there was only one answer: They must unite temporarily to eliminate opponents who seemed bent on destroying constitutional order. Their political ideals at odds with the demands of the moment, public figures engaged in the same "unconventional adaptation" that Ackerman places at the root of constitutional politics. What we see as the inevitable construction of our contemporary political system was, in truth, a series of pressured, hasty compromises forged in an atmosphere of crisis and intended solely for the task at hand. It is in the precise nature of these individual compromises that we can discover the logic of political change.

Yet, a full understanding of early national politics requires more than this core understanding, and it: is here that Ackerman's argument does the period an injustice. Ackerman views American history as a cyclical alternation between "normal politics," when the political process goes largely unnoticed, and transforming moments of constitutional change, the three most significant being the Founding, Reconstruction, and the New Deal.(4) Yet, in the Founding period--however broadly defined--there was neither a single defining "constitutional moment" nor a prolonged period of "normal politics." Rather, there was an ongoing series of political crises, any one of which seemed capable of transforming--or worse, destroying--the constitutional order. With the Constitution yet untried and untested, "normal" was a relative term, and any political controversy had potential constitutional significance. This pervading, persisting sense of crisis profoundly shaped the logic of early national political change.

We must take an additional factor into account if we are to understand early national politics, or for that matter, the politics of any time past: culture. In evaluating political acts and decisions, it is vital to consider the impact of a period's prevailing cultural imperatives. Ackerman hints at this idea by praising Gordon Wood for his attention to early American culture, the "distinctive symbolic universe of late-eighteenth-century America."(5) But I am speaking of more than political culture. Early national Americans viewed their world through a distinctive cultural lens; they had particular codes of conduct and distinct assumptions, expectations, values, and fears quite different from our own. When they made decisions, political or otherwise, they did so within this cultural framework. In essence, cultural imperatives have a profound shaping influence on politics and public life. As we shall see, an understanding of the early republic's prevailing culture offers important insights into the process of political change, revealing an ongoing series of personal compromises, rather than a single, transforming "moment" of constitutional change.(6)

This essay applies these three insights--the importance of a crisis mentality, "unconventional adaptations," and distinctive cultural imperatives--to the early national political narrative. Using the crisis-ridden presidential election of 1800 as a case study, it explores the logic of political change. Part I describes the crisis mentality of early national politics. Part II discusses the political context of the election of 1800 and examines three political adaptations born of the pervasive sense of crisis. Part III focuses more closely on the period's distinct culture, revealing the importance of honor to the process of political change. Part IV discusses the link between political and constitutional change by analyzing the election's ultimate crisis, the electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Part V follows the spirit of constitutional adaptation into the decades after the 1800 election, explaining its importance to our understanding of early national politics and its evolution.

1. THE TURBULENT 1790S: A LONG CONSTITUTIONAL MOMENT

   To participants in the presidential election of 1800, its significance was clear. Long after the election, in his retirement years, John Adams had little trouble recalling its broader implications. Adams opened the topic for debate in the spring of 1813, in the midst of a conciliatory correspondence with his former political opponent, Thomas Jefferson. Adams had been reading the Memoirs of the Late Reverend Theophilus Lindsey, including an "Analysis of his Works; together with Anecdotes and Letters of eminent Persons, his Friends and Correspondents."(7) Featured among Lindsey's "Letters of eminent Persons" was a March 21, 1801, letter from Jefferson to renowned Unitarian thinker Joseph Priestley.(8) "I wish to know, if you have seen this Book," Adams wrote to Jefferson, "I have much to say on the Subject."(9) Adams remained true to his word, two of his next three letters (written within five days of each other) opening with the phrase: "In your Letter to Dr. Priestley."(10) Particularly irritating to Adams were Jefferson's claims about the presidential election of 1800. "The mighty wave of public opinion" that had "rolled over" the republic and raised him to office was new, Jefferson had claimed.(11) A "new chapter in the history of man" was opening on American shores.(12) To Adams, this was egocentric nonsense. "[T]here is nothing new Under the Sun," he countered; great shifts in the tide of public opinion had been washing over peoples and civilizations throughout recorded time.(13) Such was the nature of historical change.

   Jefferson's election to the presidency was not revolutionary. Nor had he been swept into office on a wave of popularity. Speaking of the election's moment of crisis--the tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr for the presidency--Jefferson had written that if the tie could not be broken, as seemed likely at the time,

   the federal government would have been in the situation of a clock or watch run down. There was no idea of force, nor of any occasion for it. A convention, invited by the Republican members of Congress ... would have been on the ground in 8. weeks, would have repaired the Constitution where it was defective, & wound it up again. This peaceable & legitimate resource, to which we are in the habit of implicit obedience, superseding all appeal to force, and being always within our reach, shows a precious principle of self-preservation in our composition, till a change of circumstances shall take place, which is not within prospect at any definite period.(14) To Jefferson, a constitutional convention and the spirit behind it--"a precious principle of self-preservation"--would have bridged this moment of crisis. Adams, however, was less optimistic. "I am not so sanguine, as you," he responded. "Had the voters for Burr, addressed the Nation, I am not sure that your Convention would have decided in your Favour."(15) In other words, Jefferson had no popular mandate. Burr easily could have won, his defeat resulting from one congressman's willingness to alter his vote and break the tie. Jefferson, infinitely more self-restrained than the impulsively confessional Adams, chose not to respond to this assertion, instead writing a long disquisition on political parties and their role in American politics, responding to Adams's queries only enough to insist that the two men were too old to "become the Athletae of party, and exhibit ourselves, as gladiators, in the Arena of the newspapers."(16) Adams revisited the subject in his next few letters. Jefferson's next letter, written over a month later, spoke only of religion. For the present, at least, the two would agree to disagree.

   They agreed, however, on one...