As Donald Trump takes office as the forty-fifth president of the United States, this course explores presidential elections in historical perspective, via five case studies. It tells the story of key campaigns in US history, and by doing so it investigates how politics changed over time—and how understanding the past sheds light on the current campaign. From the arrival of "dirty politics" to the impact of the "digital revolution," the course looks at the historical background to some of the key phenomena that shaped the controversy-laden campaign of 2016. The five elections that we'll investigate are among the most significant in American political history. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson won the presidency in a contest that encouraged politicians to reform the electoral college, the system by which presidents are still chosen. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 prompted the outbreak of the Civil War. It's an election that helps us to understand the development of political parties. In 1968, the Vietnam War was a dominant concern for Americans, and yet foreign policy played a secondary role in Richard Nixon's victory. Twelve years later, in 1980, Ronald Reagan won an election that initiated a new era of conservatism. Finally, we'll turn our attention to the election that took Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, to the White House in 2008. Many saw the Obama's success not only as revealing the impact of the digital revolution on campaign politics, but also as signaling a turn to progressivism. Image credits: Course logo - "Former President Truman holds a copy of the famous Chicago Daily Tribune paper declaring 'Dewey Defeats Truman'" Harry S. Truman Library & Museum (https://www.trumanlibrary.org/photographs/view.php?id=38592). Course banner - "US Flag Backlit" by Joshua Nathanson, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Flag_Backlit.jpg).
 The year 1800 brought about a host of changes in government, in particular the first successful and peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another. But the year was important for another reason: the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. (pictured here in 1800) was finally opened to be occupied by the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the courts of the District of Columbia. William Russell Birch, A view of the Capitol of Washington before it was burnt down by the British, c. 1800. Wikimedia. Meanwhile, the Sedition and Alien Acts expired in 1800 and 1801. They had been relatively ineffective at suppressing dissent. On the contrary, they were much more important for the loud reactions they had inspired. They had helped many Americans decide what they didn’t want from their national government. By 1800, therefore, President Adams had lost the confidence of many Americans. They had let him know it. In 1798, for instance, he had issued a national thanksgiving proclamation. Instead of enjoying a day of celebration and thankfulness, Adams and his family had been forced by rioters to flee the capital city of Philadelphia until the day was over. Conversely, his prickly independence had also put him at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the leader of his own party, who offered him little support. After four years in office, Adams found himself widely reviled. In the election of 1800, therefore, the Republicans defeated Adams in a bitter and complicated presidential race. During the election, one Federalist newspaper article predicted that a Republican victory would fill America with “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest.” A Republican newspaper, on the other hand, flung sexual slurs against President Adams, saying he had “neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Both sides predicted disaster and possibly war if the other should win. In the end, the contest came down to a tie between two Republicans, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and Aaron Burr of New York, who each had 73 electoral votes. (Adams had 65.) Burr was supposed to be a candidate for vice president, not president, but under the Constitution’s original rules, a tie-breaking vote had to take place in the House of Representatives. It was controlled by Federalists bitter at Jefferson. House members voted dozens of times without breaking the tie. Public alarm mounted as the deadlock dragged on, and Burr and his political allies conspired behind the scenes to win key state votes. In the end, however, Alexander Hamilton, believing that Burr was a dishonorable man, persuaded a few Federalists to stop supporting him. On the thirty-sixth ballot, Thomas Jefferson emerged victorious. Republicans believed they had saved the United States from grave danger. An assembly of Republicans in New York City called the election a “bloodless revolution.” They thought of their victory as a revolution in part because the Constitution (and eighteenth-century political theory) made no provision for political parties. The Republicans thought they were fighting to rescue the country from an aristocratic takeover, not just taking part in a normal constitutional process. In his first inaugural address, however, Thomas Jefferson offered an olive branch to the Federalists. He pledged to follow the will of the American majority, whom he believed were Republicans, but to respect the rights of the Federalist minority. And his election set an important precedent. Adams accepted his electoral defeat and left the White House peacefully. “The revolution of 1800,” Jefferson would write years later, did for American principles what the Revolution of 1776 had done for its structure. But this time, the revolution was accomplished not “by the sword” but “by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.” Four years later, when the Twelfth Amendment changed the rules for presidential elections to prevent future deadlocks, it was designed to accommodate the way political parties worked. Despite Adams’s and Jefferson’s attempts to tame party politics, though, the tension between federal power and the liberties of states and individuals would exist long into the nineteenth century. And while Jefferson’s administration attempted to decrease federal influence, Chief Justice John Marshall, an Adams appointee, worked to increase the authority of the Supreme Court. These competing agendas clashed most famously in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which Marshall used to establish a major precedent. The Marbury case seemed insignificant at first. The night before leaving office in early 1801, Adams had appointed several men to serve as justices of the peace in Washington, D.C. By making these “midnight appointments,” Adams had sought to put Federalists into vacant positions at the last minute. Upon taking office, however, Jefferson and his secretary of state, James Madison, had refused to deliver the federal commissions to the men Adams had appointed. Several of the appointees, including William Marbury, sued the government, and the case was argued before the Supreme Court. Marshall used Marbury’s case to make a clever ruling. On the issue of the commissions, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Jefferson administration. But Chief Justice Marshall went further in his decision, ruling that the Supreme Court reserved the right to decide whether an act of Congress violated the Constitution. In other words, the court assumed the power of judicial review. This was a major (and lasting) blow to the Republican agenda, especially after 1810, when the Supreme Court extended judicial review to state laws. Jefferson was particularly frustrated by the decision, arguing that the power of judicial review “would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
In the election of 1800, the Federalist incumbent John Adams ran against the rising Republican Thomas Jefferson. The extremely partisan and outright nasty campaign failed to provide a clear winner because of a constitutional quirk. Presidential electors were required to vote for two people for the offices of president and vice-president. The individual receiving the highest number of votes would become president. Unfortunately，Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr both received the identical number of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives voted to break the tie. When Adams’s Federalists attempted to keep Jefferson from the presidency, the stage was set for the first critical constitutional crisis of the new American federal republic.
Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams, March 29, 1801
This patriotic engraving was created just before the contentious election of 1800, in which Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams. The sixteen states then in the union surround President Adams. Below each state's seal are its population and number of senators and representatives. Over the top is the defiant motto, "Millions for our Defense Not a Cent for Tribute," a slogan that became popular during the late 1790s when the U.S. expected tensions with its Revolutionary War ally France. Americans were angered by French demands for tribute and France's seizures of U.S. merchant ships. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj4 Back to Top
Before the site of the new capital was carved out of Maryland and Virginia, the land was a largely rural area of trees and farms along the Potomac River. Two small port towns, Georgetown, Maryland, and Alexandria, Virginia, were originally included in what is today known as the “District of Columbia.” This 1795 view shows the area along the Potomac River looking toward the future site of the Federal City. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj6
Federalists Fear “Fangs of Jefferson”
After learning of the Republican victory in New York City, Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) argued that unity behind their candidates, John Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746–1825) of South Carolina, was “the only thing that can possibly save us from the fangs of Jefferson.” He wrote those words to Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813), a Federalist who served as a representative and, later, a senator from Massachusetts. However, when the presidential election of 1800 ended in a tie, Hamilton supported his old rival Jefferson against fellow New Yorker Aaron Burr.
Enlarge Letter from Alexander Hamilton to Theodore Sedgwick, May 4, 1800. Manuscript. Alexander Hamilton Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (99) [Digital ID# us0099] Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj7
Vice President Thomas Jefferson, presidential candidate of the Republican Party, predicted victory in the upcoming 1800 election. “The spirit of 1776 is not dead,” declared Jefferson, “it has only been slumbering, the body of the American people is substantially republican.”
Enlarge Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Lomax, March 12, 1799. Manuscript. Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (099.02.00) [Digital ID# us0099_02] Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj8
Mysterious fires in the offices of the War Department on November 8, 1800, and the Treasury Department on January 20, 1801, kindled fears of civil unrest. With tensions already running high because of the hotly contested presidential election and a slave revolt in Virginia, many Americans feared that a revolt, such as those in France or Haiti, was about to break out in the United States.
Letter from Matthew Clay to James Monroe, January 21, 1801. Manuscript. James Monroe Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (132.00.00) [Digital ID# us0132] Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj11 Back to Top
The Constitution calls for a federal district, separate from the states, to serve as the permanent national capital. The federal government located its new capital on land carved from Maryland and Virginia as a result of the Compromise of 1790, whereby some Southern representatives agreed to support federal assumption of state debts in return for a bill locating the permanent capital on the Potomac River. George Washington selected the site and in 1791 chose Pierre L’Enfant (1754–1825), a French engineer and veteran of the American Revolution, to design the new city. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/election-of-1800.html#obj15 >Back to top |
Why was the election of 1800 considered a revolution
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