A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign

In the spring and summer of 1800, a man named Gabriel—a slave in Virginia who worked as a blacksmith—organized a slave revolt when he “conspired with other slaves in the region […] and became their general. Others served as captains and sergeants” (191). Gabriel used his smithy skills to forge weapons for the army, including bullets for their guns: “He claimed that thousands of slaves would rise on his call and hoped that free Blacks and poor whites would rally to his banner. Inverting Patrick Henry’s famous cry, Gabriel crafted a flag that read, ‘Death or Liberty’” (191). Governor James Monroe was concerned when the plot became known and informed Jefferson. The plot was foiled by inclement weather on the night that Gabriel and his fellow revolutionaries intended to attack Prosser’s Plantation, but it still became a major campaign issue.

The Virginia court had final say as to sentencing in cases of conspiracy, rebellion, and insurrection, and in this case, Gabriel received the death penalty for his role in the events at Prosser’s. The trial became a point of reference in the national political conversation: “Many articles blamed Jefferson’s egalitarian rhetoric for the slaves’ actions” (195) and so, “[f]rom a political standpoint, Virginia Republicans needed to display sufficient toughness to assure frightened citizens (particularly in key southern states) that a Jefferson administration would keep the peace” (194). The campaign messaging took a sharp turn to focus on this issue through the fall. 

In a move that shocked much of the political establishment, though not the Federalist inner circle, Hamilton officially disavowed Adams in October of 1800. High Federalists had never come to terms with Adams for reaching out to France in the wake of the French Revolution, and the feud between Adams and Hamilton expressed this longstanding rift.

Hamilton didn’t simply avow his support of Pinckney, he also publicly attacked Adams in the press: “Published on October 22, Hamilton’s ‘letter’ ran fifty-four printed pages in pamphlet form and read like one long rant” (216). It questioned everything from Adams’s leadership to his patriotism, scrutinizing his record of public service all the way back to the Revolutionary War. This letter, intended to galvanize support for High Federalist candidate, Pinckney, instead backfired and merely tarnished Hamilton’s reputation, as most people saw it as out of line.

Shortly after the publication of the letter, the final electoral college voters were selected. The results of the Pennsylvania and South Carolina processes were such that the grand total of representatives heading to submit votes through the electoral college were seventy-three Republican electoral college voters and sixty-five Federalist voters. Each voter was allowed two votes to allocate amongst the four candidates: Adams, Jefferson, Pinckney, and Burr. If two candidates earned the same number of votes, the sitting Congress would choose between them, for President and Vice President. This suggested that Jefferson and Burr, as the Republican candidates, would likely be the final two front runners for the presidency, leaving Adams and Jefferson in third and fourth place, respectively. 

The election did, in fact, come to that stunning end: Burr and Jefferson came out ahead of Adams and Pinckney in the electoral college votes. Unfortunately for the Republicans, they ended up ahead in equal measure, with each earning exactly 73 votes in the electoral college.

Due to a hitch in the design of the electoral college voting process, the election of 1800 resulted in a situation where Republicans had enough electoral college votes to put their candidates, Jefferson and Burr, into the first two spots, while Adams and Pinckney did end up taking third and fourth. However, the Republicans could not celebrate, as they had to sit back and allow their Federalist rivals to rank their candidates into the positions of the Presidency and Vice Presidency. This was the method that the founders chose to resolve a tie in electoral college voting.

Congress then met in Washington. Theoretically, there were not supposed to be debates about the vote, but no one, Federalist and Republican alike, could resist the temptation to debate the question of whether Burr or Jefferson should be President. Hamilton, enraged that his longtime rival, Aaron Burr, could be so close to the Presidency, ended up campaigning hard for Jefferson, a great irony after having spent so much of the campaign not only opposing Jefferson, but also Adams, for simply being too similar to Jefferson.

Congress met to cast the tie-breaking votes: representatives either cast their vote for Jefferson, for Burr, or they abstained. The first tie-breaking vote resulted in another tie, so Congress had to vote again, only to produce another tie. All told, Congress cast six tie-breaking votes before Thomas Jefferson finally emerged over Aaron Burr as the winner. Jefferson became the President, and Aaron Burr became the Vice President, all thanks to the votes of a Federalist-dominated Congress.