Washington was now tired and wanted only a quiet life, but his peers knew that his leadership and charisma were unsurpassed. The colonists had fought the war as a set of different nations, without unity, until Washington assumed command of their forces. As he had united them during the war, he would do so again in the aftermath. Citizens across the colonies as well as former comrades in arms insisted that only he could forge a nation.
Washington won the presidency by unanimous electoral vote in both and in Upon his inauguration as the first president on April 30, , George Washington assumed office under the tenuous circumstances of an untested federal government. The newly established Constitution was not yet a year old and still lacked ratification by two of the thirteen states, North Carolina and Rhode Island.
A discerning group of state delegates had also refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights. In accepting the presidency of what was still an experiment in republican democracy, Washington proved a model of confidence and restraint. For example, his decision to serve no more than two terms set a lasting precedent. A century and a half later, after Franklin Roosevelt was elected to four terms, that precedent was cemented in the Twenty-Second Amendment.
In , he successfully suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion, invoking the power of the federal government over the states. In the campaign that followed, the Federalists depicted Jefferson as a godless nonbeliever and a radical revolutionary; he was often called a Jacobin, after the most radical faction in France during the French Revolution.
His election, it was charged, would bring about a reign of terror in the nation. The Republicans cast Adams as a monarchist and the Federalist Party as an enemy of republicanism, including the greater egalitarianism promised by the American Revolution. The level of personal attack by both parties knew no bounds.
At one point, Adams was accused of plotting to have his son marry one of the daughters of King George III and thus establish a dynasty to unite Britain and the United States.
The plot had been stopped, according to the story, only by the intervention of George Washington, who had dressed in his old Revolutionary War uniform to confront Adams with sword in hand. Jefferson, meanwhile, was accused of vivisection and of conducting bizarre ritualistic rites at Monticello, his home in Virginia.
One of Adams's greatest foes in this election was Alexander Hamilton, a member of his own party. In October, Hamilton published a pamphlet in which he argued that Adams should not be reelected.
He charged that the President was emotionally unstable, given to impulsive and irrational decisions, unable to coexist with his closest advisers, and generally unfit to be President.
It is unlikely, however, that Hamilton's attack cost Adams any electoral votes. Failing in that endeavor, Hamilton schemed to elect Pinckney. He worked to persuade all the Federalist presidential electors from the North to vote for the party's two nominees, Adams and Pinckney, while he tried to convince some southern electors to withhold their vote for Adams.
That would enable Pinckney to outpoll Adams. Hamilton's scheme failed, however. Not only did numerous New England Federalists, who were pro-Adams, withhold their second vote from Pinckney but the Federalist ticket was outpolled by their Democratic-Republican rivals.
Pinckney finished fourth in the balloting, and Adams stood third in electoral votes, while Jefferson and Burr tied for first place with seventy-three votes each.
The nation had divided once again along sectional lines. Eighty-six percent of Adams's votes were cast by northern electors; nearly three-fourths of Jefferson's votes were from the South. Party discipline was much improved over that of the election of In the election, nearly 40 percent of electors had refused to adhere to the recommendations of their party's caucus. In , however, only one elector broke ranks—a New England Federalist elector withheld his second vote from Pinckney.
Public opinion in is difficult to gauge. Only five states—down from seven in —permitted the qualified voters to elect the members of the electoral college. State legislatures made the choice in the remaining eleven states. Moreover, several states abandoned the election of electors in districts and instituted a winner-take-all system.
Virginia adopted the at-large format, enabling Jefferson to win all twenty-one votes from his home state; had the election been by district, Adams likely would have won up to nine votes. In addition, Adams was the first presidential candidate to be victimized by the infamous three-fifths compromise agreed to in the Constitutional Convention. That decision, which permitted the counting of 60 percent of the slave population for purposes of representation in the House and the electoral college, enhanced the clout of the South—Democratic-Republican territory—in this contest.
Had no slaves been counted, Adams likely would have defeated Jefferson by a margin. Ultimately, the election turned on the outcome in New York. The Democratic-Republican Party won control of the New York legislature in the May elections of that year, principally by winning every contested seat in New York City. Control of the assembly meant that Jefferson would receive all twelve electoral votes from New York, whereas Adams had won those votes in Jefferson's victory in also stemmed from the disunion of the Federalist Party and, more importantly, the superior party organization of the Democratic-Republicans, which enabled the party to capture both the presidency and Congress.
The Democratic-Republicans started several new newspapers and created committees of correspondence to direct the distribution of campaign literature and plan meetings and rallies.
Their victories were due to four years of party organizing, sophisticated political campaigning, and the shaping of a party machine that responded to the temper and mood of the electorate. With the election a tie, the decision was remitted to the House of Representatives, as specified by the Constitution.
Every Democratic-Republican delegation in the House stood by Jefferson; however, some northern Federalists favored Burr, whom they found more palatable than their longtime nemesis from Virginia. After thirty-five ballots and five days of voting, the House was deadlocked.
Each vote had ended with Jefferson receiving eight votes to Burr's six. The delegations from two states, Vermont and Maryland, were deadlocked and could not cast a ballot.
Burr refused to step down even though it was understood that he had run as a vice presidential candidate in the general election. Throughout the long battle, Alexander Hamilton had urged the election of his old rival, Jefferson. He viscerally disliked Jefferson and objected to his democratic and egalitarian principles, but he feared and mistrusted Aaron Burr as an unprincipled opportunist.
In the end, however, the outcome in the House appears to have hung on Federalist bargaining with both Jefferson and Burr. In return for their vote, Federalist House members sought a commitment from one or the other to preserve Hamilton's economic program, keep the enhanced Navy intact, and leave Federalist officeholders in their jobs. Burr appears to have refused to bargain. Jefferson, ever after, denied making such a bargain, although several Federalists claimed that he had agreed to their terms.
The truth can never be known. What is clear is that on the thirty-sixth ballot, a sufficient number of Federalists broke from Burr and gave their votes to Jefferson. The final House vote was Jefferson with ten states and Burr with four states while two states South Carolina and Delaware abstained.
With that, Jefferson became the third President of the United States. When Jefferson assumed office, his opponents stepped down peacefully. This return to domestic tranquility established a powerful precedent for the future.
Although it is true that Adams tried to entrench Federalist power in the new administration by appointing Federalist judges in the last weeks of his term, this was viewed as acceptable politics by most observers, yet Jefferson's refusal to honor these last-minute "midnight appointments" led to the landmark Supreme Court case of Marbury v.
Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A.
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