Election of 1796

Washington struggled to appear above
party politics
◦ farewell address stressed need to maintain
a “unity of government” reflecting a
unified body politic
Urged country to “steer clear of
permanent alliances with any portion
of the foreign world.”
 Leading contenders for position
 John Adams of Massachusetts
 Thomas Jefferson of Virginia

◦ in theory agreed with him

around them raged a party contest split
along pro-British versus pro-French
lines.
 Bruised
by conflicts with Hamilton
 Jefferson resigned as secretary of
state in 1793
◦ retreated to Monticello
 Adams's
job as vice president kept
him closer to the political action
 Personality often put people off
◦ Temperamental
◦ thin-skinned - quick to take offense.

Federalists informally chose Adams as
candidate
◦ Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina to run with
him
Republicans settled on Aaron Burr of New
York to pair with Jefferson.
 Constitution did not anticipate parties and
tickets.
 each electoral college voter could cast two
votes for any two candidates - only one ballot.
 The top vote-getter became president, and the
next-highest assumed the vice presidency.

◦ changed by Twelfth Amendment in 1804
 In
stepped Alexander
Hamilton
 Hamilton did not
trust Adams
 preferred Pinckney
 tried to influence
electors to throw
their support to the
South Carolinian
 plan backfired
Adams was elected president with 71 electoral
votes
 Jefferson came in second with 68 and thus became
vice president


Pinckney got 59 votes, while Burr trailed with 30.
Adams's inaugural speech pledged neutrality
in foreign affairs and respect for the French
people
 Retained three cabinet members from
Washington's administration

◦ secretaries of state, treasury, and war
◦ Hamilton loyalists
Vice President Jefferson extended a
conciliatory hand to Adams
 Hamiltonian cabinet ruined the honeymoon.
 Jefferson's advice spurned

◦ withdrew from active counsel of the president.




The XYZ Affair
From start Adams's presidency was in crisis
France retaliated for British-friendly Jay Treaty
by abandoning 1778 alliance with US
French privateers detaining American ships
carrying British goods
◦ by March 1797, more than three hundred American
vessels had been seized



Federalists started murmuring about war with
Adams preferred negotiations
Dispatched three-man commission to France
in the fall of 1797


French officials would not
receive them
Finally Talleyrand
◦ French minister of foreign
affairs

sent three French agentsunnamed
◦ later known to the American
public as X, Y, and Z



$250,000 might grease the
wheels of diplomacy
$12 million loan to the
French government price of
a peace treaty
Incensed, the commissioners
brought news of the bribery
attempt to the president.
Even staunch pro-French Republicans began
to reevaluate their allegiance
 Federalist-dominated Congress
appropriated

◦ money for an army of ten thousand soldiers
◦ repealed all prior treaties with France

1798, twenty naval warships launched the
United States into its first undeclared war
◦ Quasi-War

Main action in Caribbean
◦ more than one hundred French ships were
captured.
No home-front unity
 Antagonism intensified between Federalists
and Republicans.
 Seemed little chance of a land invasion by
France
 leading Republicans feared
 Federalists' real aim might be to raise the
army to threaten domestic dissenters
 President Adams was increasingly mistrustful
 But cabinet backed the military buildup
 beginning to suspect that his cabinet was
more loyal to Hamilton than to the
president.


Pro-French mobs roamed
the capital
◦ Adams stocked weapons in
presidential quarters
Federalists, too, went on the
offensive
 Massachusetts lit a huge
bonfire

◦ burned issues of the state's
Republican newspapers
One Federalist editor
ominously declared that
 “he who is not for us is
against us.”



Alien and Sedition Acts
Tempers dangerously high
◦ Fears political dissent was akin to treason
Federalist leaders moved to muffle the
opposition
 mid-1798 Sedition Act
 made conspiracy and revolt illegal
 penalized speaking or writing anything that
defamed the president or Congress

◦ Criticizing government leaders became a criminal
offense

In all, twenty-five men, almost all Republican
newspaper editors, were charged with sedition;
twelve were convicted.
Congress also passed two Alien Acts
 First

◦ extended waiting period for an alien to achieve
citizenship from five to fourteen years
◦ required all aliens to register with the federal
government.

Second
◦ empowered the president to deport or imprison
without trial any foreigner suspected of being a
danger to the United States

clear intent to harass French immigrants
already in the United States and to
discourage others from coming.

Republicans strongly opposed Alien and
Sedition Acts on grounds that they were in
conflict with the Bill of Rights
◦ did not have the votes to revoke the acts in
Congress,



1798 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions tested
the argument that state legislatures
have the right to judge the constitutionality of
federal laws and to nullify laws that infringe on the
liberties of the people as defined in the Bill of
Rights
Resolutions made little dent in the Alien and
Sedition Acts
◦ But idea of a state's right to nullify federal law did
not disappear

1798, President Adams regained his balance
◦ restrained in pursuing opponents under the Sedition Act
◦ refused to declare war on France
◦ realized how much he had been the dupe of Hamilton

January 1799, letter from France arrived assuring Adams
that diplomatic channels were open
◦ new commissioners would be welcomed in France.
Adams accepted this overture and appointed new
negotiators
 By late 1799, Quasi-War with France had subsided
 1800 negotiations resulted in a treaty declaring “a true
and sincere friendship” between the United States and
France.
 Federalists not pleased - Adams lost the support of a
significant part of his own party

◦ sealed his fate as the first one-term president of the United
States.
Turbulent Times: Election and Rebellion


Election of 1800 openly organized
along party lines
self-designated national leaders of
each group met to handpick their
candidates for president and vice
president.
◦ Adams's chief opponent was Thomas
Jefferson.

Result of the election uncertain
from polling time in November to
repeated roll call votes in the
House of Representatives
February 1801
◦ Adams no longer in race once it got
to the House

Contest between Jefferson and
his running mate, Senator Aaron
Burr of New York
Republican voters slipped up
 Jefferson and Burr had equal
number of votes
 outcome possible because
of the single balloting to
choose both president and
vice president
 Twelfth Amendment to the
Constitution, adopted four
years later, provided for
distinct ballots for the two
offices
 Burr declined to concede so
 Federalist-dominated House
of Representatives took up
its constitutional mandate to
choose which Republican
would become president.


Each state delegation had one vote
◦ candidate needed nine votes to win



Some Federalists preferred Burr
believing that his character flaws made him susceptible to
Federalist pressure
Alexander Hamilton
◦ no friend of Jefferson

recognized that high-strung Burr would be more dangerous
than Jefferson in the presidency

Jefferson was a “contemptible hypocrite” in Hamilton's
opinion, but at least he was not corrupt.
Jefferson received eight votes on first ballot
 Thirty-six ballots and six days later

◦ he got the critical ninth vote, as well as a tenth
Remarkable feature of the new
constitutional government
 No matter how hard fought the campaign,
the leadership of the nation could shift in a
peaceful transfer of power effected by
ballots, not bullets


When the election was finally over, President
Jefferson mounted the inaugural platform to
announce

“We are all republicans, we are all
federalists,”
As the country struggled over its white
leadership crisis
 twenty-four-year-old blacksmith named
Gabriel

◦ slave of Thomas Prossor

plotted rebellion in Virginia
Retrospective – group work
Each group to create a statement
discussing:
 Objectives and results of the American
Revolution for one of the following groups
 African Americans
 Native Americans
 Women
 White males
 Make use of your lecture notes and the
reading you have done




Jefferson sidestepped the problem of slavery
Turned attention to establishing administration
in contrast to the Federalists
For his inauguration, held in the village
optimistically called Washington City
◦ dressed in everyday clothing
◦ walked to the Capitol
For modest swearing-in ceremony
 scaled back Federalist building plans for
Washington
 Cut government budget
 Avoiding formality of state parties and liveried
servants. Jefferson's apparent carelessness was
very deliberate.


Jefferson's paramount goal - roll back federal
power
◦ not Antifederalist


events of 1790s caused him to worry about
the stretching of powers
watched with distrust as Hamiltonian policies
◦ refinanced the public debt
◦ established a national bank
◦ secured commercial ties with Britain


Policies to promote interests of greedy
speculators at the expense of the rest of the
country
In Jefferson's vision, the source of true liberty in
America was the independent farmer
◦ someone who owned and worked his land both for
himself and for the market.

Set out to dismantle Federalist innovations
◦ Reduced the army by a third
◦ Kept navy small

With the consent of Congress
◦ abolished all federal internal taxes based on
population or whiskey.


Government revenue would now derive solely
from customs duties and from the sale of
western land
Strategy benefited the South
◦ three-fifths clause of the Constitution counted slaves
for both representation and taxation

South could exercise extra influence in House
of Representatives
◦ without the threat of extra taxes

end of his first term, Jefferson had deeply
reduced Hamilton's cherished national debt.
Government jobs were kept to a minimum
 President had just one private secretary
young man named

◦ Meriwether Lewis
◦ Jefferson paid him out of his own pocket
Department of State employed 8 people
 Treasury Department was by far largest

◦ 73 revenue commissioners, auditors, and clerks
◦ 2 watchmen

Entire payroll of the executive branch
amounted to a mere 130 people in 1801.

One large set of government workers lay beyond Jefferson's
command. His predecessor, John Adams, had seized the few weeks
between his election defeat and Jefferson's inauguration to appoint
217 Federalists to various judicial, diplomatic, and military posts.



Most of this windfall of appointments came to Adams as a result of
the Judiciary Act of 1801, passed in the final month of his
presidency. Its predecessor, the Judiciary Act of 1789, had
established a six-man Supreme Court and six circuit courts. The
new law authorized sixteen circuit courts, each headed by a new
judge. If he acted quickly, Adams could appoint sixteen circuit court
judges with lifetime tenure, plus dozens more attorneys, marshals,
and clerks for each court. The 1801 act also reduced the Supreme
Court from six to five justices. Prior to its passage, however, Adams
appointed solidly Federalist Virginian John Marshall to a vacant sixth
seat. After the 1801 act became law, a future president would not
be able to fill the next empty seat.

In the last weeks of February 1801, Adams and Marshall worked feverishly to secure
agreements from the new appointees. In view of the slowness of the mail, achieving 217
acceptances was astonishing.The two men were at work until 9 p.m. on the last night
Adams was president, signing and delivering commissions (appointment papers) to the
new officeholders.


The appointment of the “midnight judges” infuriated the Republicans. Jefferson, upon
taking office, immediately canceled the appointments of the nontenured men and refused
to honor the few appointments that had not yet been delivered. One of them was
addressed to William Marbury, who soon decided to sue the new secretary of state, James
Madison, for failure to make good on the appointment. This action gave rise to a landmark
Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803.The Court, presided over by
John Marshall, ruled that although Marbury's commission was valid and the new president
should have delivered it, the Court could not compel him to do so. What made the case
significant was little noted at the time: The Court found that the grounds of Marbury's
suit, resting in the Judiciary Act of 1789, were in conflict with the Constitution. For the
first time, the Court acted to disallow a law on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
John Marshall quietly established the concept of judicial review; the Supreme Court in
effect assumed the legal authority to nullify acts judged in conflict with the Constitution.

The Promise of the West:The Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark
Expedition



The reach of the Marbury decision went largely unnoticed in 1803 because the president
and Congress were preoccupied with other major issues, among them the acquisition of
the Louisiana Territory. Up through the Seven Years' War (see chapter 6), France claimed
but only lightly settled a large expanse of land west of the Mississippi River, only to lose it
to Spain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Spain never sent adequate forces to control or settle
the land, and Spanish power in North America remained precarious everywhere outside
New Orleans. Meanwhile, American farming families were settling Kentucky and
Tennessee, along rivers emptying into the upper Mississippi, and for a time, the Spanish
allowed them to ship their agricultural produce downriver and even encouraged American
settlements across the river, in an effort to augment the population. By 1801, Americans
made up a sizable minority of the population around the lower Mississippi. Publicly,
Jefferson protested the luring of Americans to Spanish territory, but privately he
welcomed it as a potential move toward appropriating territory immediately west of the
Mississippi. He wrote, “I wish a hundred thousand of our inhabitants would accept the
invitation; it will be the means of delivering to us peaceably, what may otherwise cost us a
war.”

Jefferson's fears of war were not unrealistic. In 1802, the Spanish governor revoked
American shipping privileges through or past New Orleans. Congressmen began
muttering about taking the city by force. Talk of war, especially in Federalist newspapers,
became commonplace.



In the same year, rumors reached Jefferson that Spain had struck a secret bargain with
France to hand over a large part of Spain's trans-Mississippi territory to Napoleon in
exchange for some land in Italy. Spain had proved a weak western neighbor, but France
was another story. Jefferson was so alarmed that he instructed Robert R. Livingston,
America's minister in France, to try to buy New Orleans. At first, the French denied they
owned the city. But when Livingston hinted that the United States might simply seize it if
buying was not an option, the French negotiator suddenly asked him to name his price for
the entire Louisiana Territory, from the Gulf of Mexico north to Canada. Livingston stalled,
and the Frenchman made suggestions: $125 million? $60 million? Livingston shrewdly
stalled some more, and within days the French sold the entire territory for the bargain
price of $15 million (Map 10.2). The French, motivated sellers, needed cash because of
their impending war with Britain and the recent failure, despite committing twenty
thousand troops, to prevent Haitian independence.


Jefferson and most of Congress were delighted with the
outcome of the diplomatic mission. Still, Jefferson had some
qualms about the Louisiana Purchase. The price was right,
and the enormous territory fulfilled Jefferson's dream of
abundant farmland for future generations. But by what
authority expressed in the Constitution could he justify the
purchase? His frequent criticism of Hamilton's stretching of
the Constitution came back to haunt him. His legal reasoning
told him he needed a constitutional amendment to authorize
the addition of territory; more expedient minds told him the
treaty-making powers of the president were sufficient.
Expediency won out. In late 1803, the American army took
formal control of the Louisiana Territory, and the United
States grew by 828,000 square miles.



Even before the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson had eyed the trans-Mississippi West with
intense curiosity. In early 1803, he had arranged congressional funding for a secret
scientific and military mission into Spanish and Indian territory. Jefferson appointed
twenty-eight-year-old Meriwether Lewis, his personal secretary, to head the expedition,
instructing him to investigate Indian cultures, to collect plant and animal specimens, and to
chart the geography of the West. Congress had more traditional goals in mind: The
expedition was to scout locations for military posts, open commercial agreements for the
fur trade, and locate any possible waterway between the East and West coasts.
For his co-leader, Lewis chose Kentuckian William Clark, a veteran of the 1790s Indian
wars. Together, they handpicked a crew of forty-five, including expert rivermen, gunsmiths,
hunters, interpreters, a cook, and a slave named York, who belonged to Clark. The
explorers left St. Louis in the spring of 1804, working their way northwest up the Missouri
River. They camped for the winter at a Mandan village in what is now central North
Dakota. The Mandan Indians were familiar with British and French traders from Canada,
but the black man York created a sensation. Reportedly, the Indians rubbed moistened
fingers over the man's skin to see if the color was painted on.

The following spring, the explorers headed west, accompanied by a
sixteen-year-old Shoshoni woman named Sacajawea. Kidnapped by
Mandans at about age ten, she had been sold to a French trapper as
a slave/wife. Hers was not a unique story among Indian women;
such women knew several languages, making them valuable
translators and mediators. Further, Sacajawea and her new baby
allowed the American expedition to appear peaceful to suspicious
tribes. As Lewis wrote in his journal, “No woman ever accompanies
a war party of Indians in this quarter.”


The Lewis and Clark expedition reached the Pacific Ocean at the
mouth of the Columbia River in November 1805. When Lewis and
Clark returned home the following year, they were greeted as
national heroes. They had established favorable relations with
dozens of Indian tribes; they had collected invaluable information
on the peoples, soils, plants, animals, and geography of the West; and
they had inspired a nation of restless explorers and solitary
imitators.