There has arguably never been a more bitter election than the presidential race of 1800. Incumbent John Adams sought a second term, but he faced a powerful challenge from his own Vice President, Thomas Jefferson.
The
campaign was brutal and characterized by malicious insults by partisan presses
on both sides. Federalists claimed that the Republicans were the enemies of
"all who love order, peace, virtue, and religion." They were said to
be libertines and dangerous radicals who favored states' rights over the Union
and would instigate anarchy and civil war. Jefferson's rumored affairs with
slaves were used against him. Republicans in turn accused Federalists of
subverting republican principles through punitive federal laws and of favoring
Britain and the other coalition countries in their war with France to promote
aristocratic, anti-republican values. Jefferson was portrayed as an apostle of
liberty and man of the people, while Adams was labeled a monarchist and accused
of everything from insanity and marital infidelity.
When
the electoral votes were counted, Adams finished in third place with 65 votes,
and Jefferson and Burr tied for first place with 73 votes each. Because of the
tie, the election devolved upon the House of Representatives, with each state
having one vote and a supermajority required for victory. On February 17, 1801
– on the 36th ballot – Jefferson was elected by a vote of 10 to 4 (two states
abstained)
To compound the agony of his defeat, Adams's son Charles, a long-time alcoholic, died on November 30. Anxious to rejoin his wife Abigail, who had already left for Massachusetts, Adams departed the White House in the predawn hours of March 4, 1801, on the publish stagecoach for Baltimore and did not attend Jefferson's inauguration. This was the first time an outgoing President would not attend his successor's inauguration -but it would not be the last.
1829: President John Quincy Adams
Adams's victory made him the first child of a president to serve as president himself and his 1828 re-election campaign against opponent Andrew Jackson was marked by unprecedented levels of mudslinging, as both parties attacked the personal qualities of the opposing party's candidate. Jackson's marriage, came in for vicious attack. When Jackson married his wife Rachel in 1791, the couple believed that she was divorced, however the divorce was not yet finalized, so he had to remarry her once the legal papers were complete. In the Adams campaign's hands, this became a scandal. Charles Hammond, in his Cincinnati Gazette, asked: "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?" Jackson also came under heavy attack as a slave trader who bought and sold slaves and moved them about in defiance of modern standards of morality (noteworthy that he was not attacked for actually owning slaves used in plantation work). Jackson was also attacked for his courts-martial, execution of deserters and massacres of Indian villages, and also his habit of dueling.
With
the ongoing expansion of the right to vote to most white men, the election
marked a dramatic expansion of the electorate, with 9.5% of Americans casting a
vote for president, compared with 3.4% in 1824. Several states transitioned to
a popular vote for president, leaving South Carolina and Delaware as the only
states in which the legislature chose presidential electors.
Adams
won the same states that his father had won in the election of 1800 (the New
England states, New Jersey, and Delaware) and Maryland, but Jackson won all
other states and won the election in a landslide.
Rachel
Jackson had been having chest pains throughout the campaign, and she was
traumatized by the personal attacks on her marriage. She became ill and died on
December 22, 1828. Jackson accused the Adams campaign of causing her death,
saying, "I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who
have slandered her must look to God for mercy."
Andrew
Jackson was sworn in as president on March 4, 1829 without his predecessors attendance.
After the ceremony, a mob entered the White House to shake the new president's
hand, damaging the furniture and lights. Jackson escaped through the back, and
large punch bowls were set up to lure the crowd outside. Conservatives were
horrified at this event, and held it up as a portent of terrible things to come
from the first Democratic president
1869:
President Andrew Johnson
Vice
President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
Johnson
implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction, a series of
proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to
reform their civil governments. Southern states returned many of their old
leaders and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties,
but Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and
advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their
bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the
remainder of his presidency. Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which
gave citizenship to former slaves. As the conflict grew between the branches of
government, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act restricting Johnson's
ability to fire Cabinet officials. He persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary
of War Edwin Stanton, but ended up being impeached by the House of
Representatives and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate.
In
November 1868, the nation elected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Johnson's archenemy,
to the presidency by a large electoral margin. Johnson hosted a large public
reception at the White House on his final full day in office. Grant had made it
known that he was unwilling to ride in the same carriage as Johnson, as was
customary, and Johnson refused to go to the inauguration at all. Despite an
effort by Seward to prompt a change of mind, he spent the morning of March 4
finishing last-minute business, and then shortly after noon rode from the White
House to the home of a friend.
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