Transcription
Hello, welcome to The Daily Bellringer. Please don't forget to subscribe and to check out the questions in the description.
Today, we're going to be looking at the election of 1800. The election of 1800 is really a significant election, and a lot of historians consider it to be the first modern presidential election. Not necessarily because it's the first time we have two different parties; we do have two-term parties running against each other here, but because this is really the first election where we see the candidates, I guess you could say, throwing mud at each other or, you know, kind of running negative campaigns against each other.
So in this election, of course, we have Thomas Jefferson running for the Democratic-Republicans. He was the challenger, and then we have the incumbent second president of the United States, John Adams, who was running on the Federalist ticket.
Now, one interesting thing here to consider is, you know, these guys had run against each other before in 1796. But at that time, in the Constitution, whoever finished second in the election would end up being the vice president. So Thomas Jefferson had spent the last four years serving as John Adams' vice president, even though they had extremely different views about how the government was supposed to run. So that was a little awkward for everybody.
So let's look a little bit here at what happens during this election. As I mentioned before, they didn't say anything about political parties in the Constitution, but by the time of 1796, we had political parties that had formed. The Federalists believed in a strong central government, while the Democratic-Republicans were a little bit more laid-back and said that the states should maybe have more power.
But let's look at, you know, what was some of the mud they were actually throwing at each other here in this election. For the Federalists, or for John Adams, he was attacking Thomas Jefferson on a couple of different points. One big point was Thomas Jefferson's religious beliefs. Adams accused Jefferson of being an unchristian deist. When they say a deist, a deist is basically somebody that believes there is a God, but that God created everything and then left, kind of just, you know, was out of the picture. That's basically what Thomas Jefferson believed in.
There were a lot of people in the country that did agree with that, and so, of course, Adams attacked Jefferson on that. Also, we had the French Revolution that was in the midst of taking place, and Jefferson had spent a lot of time in France as a diplomat. He really liked a lot of French ideas, so Adams was attacking Jefferson, saying he was very pro-French Revolution and that there was going to be chaos here in the United States if we allowed Jefferson to become president.
On the other side, Thomas Jefferson was attacking John Adams basically on his Federalist ideals, on his idea that the federal government should be in control, and especially on the whole growth of the U.S. military at this time, especially the growth of the Navy. Remember, during the XYZ affair, the Navy had been expanded, and there had been this unofficial war with France that had begun.
Then, also, Jefferson was attacking John Adams because of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were a violation of the First Amendment, basically limiting how much people could say about the government and everything.
Now, I guess when you think about them throwing mud at each other, of course, there weren't campaign ads at this time the way that we think of campaign ads today being on TV or on the Internet. Basically, what they did was they wrote letters to newspapers, and they would do a lot of writing and send out their message that way. It was really how they would attack each other.
But one interesting thing too about this election is this is the first time that we see running mates being chosen. To try to avoid the whole thing of having a vice president that was of the opposite party, each party chose a running mate. For Jefferson, he chose another Democratic-Republican, Aaron Burr, to be his running mate, whereas John Adams had a guy named Charles Pinckney who was his running mate. The hope was in the Electoral College that the running mate would get the second number of votes, and then they would become the vice president.
So here's how the election broke down. The way that this broke down is that Jefferson narrowly won 73 electoral votes to 65. What's kind of cool here to look at is actually Jefferson and Aaron Burr, his running mate, tied for the presidential election. The only ticket didn't necessarily say who you were voting for, for this guy for president or voting for him for vice president. So actually, they tied, and the election had to be decided in the House of Representatives.
During this election, the Democratic-Republicans swept in and won control of the House of Representatives, but before they could come in and be sworn in, the Federalists were going to decide this election. One of the key people that really decided this election was Alexander Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist party leader. He helped to sway the vote towards Jefferson because he saw Jefferson as being the lesser of two evils. Now, this might come back to haunt him later because, of course, it's going to be Aaron Burr that eventually kills Alexander Hamilton, but you know, that's a whole other story to get into.
Two big significant things that come out of this election are, you know, the first time we see a peaceful transition of power. Instead of it being a big fight of a new party taking over, we see the democratic process working here because it's a peaceful transfer of power to the other party.
Then also, it would be the last time that we see a Federalist president. Technically, George Washington is kind of considered a Federalist because he believed in a strong central government.
Alright, so hopefully you learned something there, and I'll talk to you later. Thanks!