Resolutions For Amending The Constitution On Election Of...

Resolutions For Amending The Constitution On Election Of...

Resolutions for amending the Constitution on Election of the President, 1800. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

Nasty political mud–slinging. Campaign attacks and counterattacks. Personal insults. Outrageous newspaper invective. Dire predictions of warfare and national collapse. Innovative new forms of politicking capitalizing on a growing technology. As much as this seems to describe our present–day presidential contests, it actually describes an election more than two hundred years past.



The presidential election of 1800 was an angry, dirty, crisis–ridden contest that seemed to threaten the nation's very survival. A bitter partisan battle between Federalist John Adams and Republican Thomas Jefferson, it produced a tie between Jefferson and his Republican running mate, Aaron Burr; a deadlock in the House where the tie had to be broken; an outburst of intrigue and suspicion as Federalists struggled to determine a course of action; Jefferson's election; and Burr's eventual downfall. The unfolding of this crisis tested the new nation's durability. The deadlock in the House revealed a constitutional defect. It also pushed partisan rivalry to an extreme, inspiring a host of creative and far–reaching electoral ploys. As a sense of crisis built, there was even talk of disunion and civil war, and indeed, two states began to organize their militias to seize the government if Jefferson did not prevail.



Oddly enough, this pivotal election has received relatively little scholarly

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