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 17 Slavery in the Election of 1800 Edward J. Larson In 1800, the aristocratic slave state of Virginia stood at the Republican epicenter of the first truly partisan political campaign for president. Republican members of Congress had nominated Virginia plantation owner ThomasJefferson,theauthoroftheDeclarationofIndependence,whichhad proudly declared that “all men are created equal,” as their party’s candidate for president. Although his partisans then called themselves Republicans, they were often denounced as Democrats by their conservative Federalist opponents and would eventually adopt that name for themselves. As he had in the 1796 presidential election after George Washington declined to stand for a third term, Jefferson faced John Adams of Massachusetts, his former friend and fellow Revolutionary Era patriot. That first contested election had not involved a full-blown partisan campaign, but the tight finish pushed each side to organize itself into a formal national party for the next election. Adams had narrowly won in 1796 and was renominated four years later by the Federalist caucus in Congress. Both men had held office during the Washington administration, with Jefferson serving as the secretary of state and Adams as vice president. Events had driven them apart, however. By 1800 they were bitter partisan foes. Jefferson’s Second Revolution ThedifferencesdividingAdamsandJeffersonreflectedadeepeningideological rift that divided Americans. Even as the Washington administration first took shape, the people and their leaders vigorously debated various issues regardingtheauthorityofthenationalgovernmentandthebalanceofpower among its branches and between it and the states. Whether the national government could charter a bank and thus create a national banking system became an especially heated topic, for example. Adams and those calling themselves Federalists saw a strong central government led by a powerful president as vital for a prosperous, secure nation. By preempting state regulation of business, they hoped that the central government could provide a basis for a truly national market economy that would facilitate the development of manufacturing and commerce. Strong proponents of this nationalistic viewpoint, like Alexander Hamilton of New York, who favored transferring virtually all power to the national government and consolidating it in a strong executive 18  Edward J. Larson and aristocratic senate, become known as the High Federalists. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Hamilton had unabashedly depicted the monarchical British government as “the best in the world” and famously proposed life tenure for the president and senators.1 Befitting their support for business, Hamilton and the High Federalists favored close trading ties with Britain, which remained the nation’s principal trading partner even after the Revolution. The new government’s resulting pro-British foreign policy inevitably resulted in tensions between the United States and France, especiallyaftertheFrenchRevolutionresultedinopenwarbetweenEurope’s ancient monarchies, led by Britain, against Europe’s rising republican regimes, led by France. Jefferson and his emerging Republican faction viewed such thinking as inimical to individual freedom. A devotee of enlightenment science, which emphasized reason and natural law over revelation and authoritarian regimes, Jefferson trusted popular rule and distrusted elite institutions, particularly entrenched aristocracies and organized religions that seemed to subvert the individual. “The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of men,” Jefferson wrote in 1790.2 He had no love of Britain or its institutions and great hope for the liberating effect of the French Revolution. Indeed, he viewed the upheaval in France as a European manifestation of the American revolutionary spirit. In contrast, Adams and the Federalists tended to distrust the common people and instead placed their faith in the empowerment of what they saw as a natural aristocracy, though one that should be restrained by civil institutions such as those provided by a written constitution with checks and balances. “The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God, and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true,” Hamilton reportedly told the Constitutional Convention. “The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.”3 Though more moderate in his views than Hamilton, Adams agreed that every nation needed a single strong leader who could rise above and control self-interested factions. Neither an aristocracy nor a democratic majority would safeguard individual rights, he believed. Only a disinterested chief executive—the fabled philosopher king of old—would protect liberty and justice for all. Accordingly, Adams supported a strong presidency. Although preferring an elected leader to a hereditary one, Adams’s thinking leaned too much toward monarchism for Jefferson to stomach, especially when Federalists in high positions around Adams...

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