What is the significance of revolution of 1800

Every presidential election matters. But only a few have offered a choice of fundamental principles, in ways that seemed fundamental at the time, and not just in retrospect. The election of , which led to Civil War, tops that list. The election of follows close behind.

In , as in the courtroom that spring day, two visions of the meaning of the Revolution and the Constitution butted heads. They had written and ratified the Constitution to quell what they saw as the excesses of democracy and faction unleashed by the Revolution.

Their Constitution had created a strong federal government, which took power away from state legislatures they judged too responsive to calls for debt relief, paper money, and lower taxes.

They believed the presidency and the Senate, indirectly elected from among the best men, would check popular enthusiasms arising from the directly elected House of Representatives. The people would go to the polls every two years, choose among the candidates offered to them, and then go back, quietly, to their private lives, leaving their betters to govern them.

In the s Americans grew more energetic in pursuit of money, more heterodox in religion, more noisy in politics, and less deferential to gentlemen. When French revolutionaries took up the self-evident truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, some Americans wore the French tricolor on their hats and joined Democratic Societies.

These differences simmered while George Washington, the untouchable hero, remained president. They boiled over under his successor Adams, particularly after the revolutionary French government in treated American diplomats and ships as roughly as England had for years. In that crisis, Republicans urged meeting insult with caution.

Adams and congressional Federalists instead prepared for war, against foes both abroad and at home. To defray the expense, they passed a direct property tax on houses, land, and slaves. Once eager for immigration to bolster the economy, Federalists by eyed immigrants as enemies within. An initial version would have forever barred naturalized citizens from voting—new citizens had a nasty habit of backing Jeffersonians.

The election of Jefferson's presidency and the turn of the nineteenth century. The Louisiana Purchase and its exploration. Practice: Jefferson's election and presidency. Practice: The War of The presidency of John Quincy Adams. Politics and regional interests. Full-fledged campaigns for president developed everywhere. In states where legislators chose the electors, these campaigns played out in electing legislators. In states where voters chose electors directly, the campaigns were fought over electors who pledged to one party and its candidates.

Although voters did not vote directly for president, for the first time the presidency was clearly the main prize when they cast their votes for partisan candidates for legislator or elector. In a show of solidarity, the Federalist caucus urged Federalist electors to cast one vote each for Adams and Pinckney, with both sides conspiring to gain the advantage in the final count. Republicans called for their electors to vote for Jefferson and Aaron Burr, former attorney general of New York and influential state assemblyman, with the intention of Jefferson becoming president and Burr becoming vice president.

Even though the Constitution mandated that electors cast their votes on the same day, the various state elections that determined the electors were spread out over the better part of a year. Party leaders watched their totals build and the lead change hands repeatedly. No one knew who would win until after the last state—South Carolina—chose its electors on the very eve of the prescribed day for the Electoral College to meet.

Because of the delays in communication, however, the election remained in doubt to the very end. Electors from all 16 states cast their votes on December 3, Although Congress would not open and count the ballots until February 11, , electors could, and did, tell people how they voted.

By the third week of December, a pattern of highly disciplined party-line voting had become quite clear. Republican electors had voted with such unity that Jefferson and Burr would likely end up in a dead heat with 73 electoral votes each. The best estimates had them finishing eight votes ahead of Adams and nine in front of Pinckney. This development, even though he had foreseen it as a possibility, shocked and deeply troubled Jefferson. By December 19, Jefferson knew the final tally.

The Federalists had some reason to be exultant about a tie vote, for a House of Representatives that included many lame-duck Federalists would now choose between two Republican candidates for the presidency, as called for in the Constitution. If the delegation of a state split evenly, that state would abstain.

With 16 states, an absolute majority of nine votes was required for victory. Jefferson keenly calculated and recalculated his chances.

He felt confident that he would receive votes from all eight state delegations that had a majority of Republican members. Under the Constitution, if the top two posts become vacant, the president pro tempore of the Senate acts as president. So, while he remained vice president, Jefferson could stop the Federalist-dominated Senate from electing a president pro tempore simply by attending every session in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, which he vowed to do.

Further, the Constitution clearly authorized Congress to make laws designating which officer would lead the nation in the absence of both a president and vice president.

A specific Cabinet member or judicial officer could assume power in such a crisis, and Jefferson realized that this offered the Federalists a second means to cling to power after March 3. In particular, he worried that they would designate as the next in line for presidential succession either the secretary of state, then Virginia Federalist John Marshall, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court, probably Federalist senior statesman John Jay, who Jefferson presumed would soon fill that then vacant post.

To Republicans, either approach would constitute a naked usurpation of power. Federalist leaders in Congress did in fact consider both options, as well as another—the extraconstitutional alternative of calling a new national election. The Federalist press openly defended all three approaches for retaining power. A more likely scenario, however, had Burr conspiring with the Federalists and a handful of Republican congressmen to win the election in the House. Republicans held only a slender advantage in several of the congressional delegations that they controlled.

If every Federalist congressman voted for him, Burr would need only three or four strategically placed Republican votes to carry the needed nine states. Never short on self-confidence, Burr reportedly believed that he could win the presidency.

To Jefferson, however, he professed his loyalty. Virtually all Federalists in Congress regarded Burr as grasping, selfish and unprincipled.