Almost President: Aaron Burr
On February 17,1801, an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was finally resolved when the House of Representatives voted to elect Jefferson as President of the United States and Burr as Vice President.
Edward Larson's book about the election of 1800 entitled A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 tells the fascinating story of how Jefferson and Burr began on the same side, as Democratic-Republicans fighting the Federalist John Adams in his bid for re-election. Adams was attacked by both the opposition Democratic-Republicans and a group of so called "High Federalists" aligned with Alexander Hamilton. The Republicans felt that the Adams foreign policy was too favorable toward Britain. They feared that the new army called up to prepare for an attack by a foreign power would be used by the Federalists to oppress the people. The Republicans also opposed new taxes to pay for war. They also attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts as violations of states' rights and the Constitution.
"High Federalists" considered Adams too moderate and would have preferred the leadership of Alexander Hamilton instead. Hamilton was scheming to elect vice-presidential candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to the presidency. One of Hamilton's letters, a scathing criticism of Adams that was fifty-four pages long, became public when it came into the hands of a Republican. It embarrassed Adams and damaged Hamilton's efforts on behalf of Pinckney, not to mention Hamilton's own reputation.
Partisans on both sides sought any advantage they could find. In several states, this included changing the process of selecting electors to ensure the desired result. In Georgia, Republican legislators replaced the popular vote with selection by the state legislature. Federalist legislators did the same in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This may have had some unintended consequences in Massachusetts, where the makeup of the delegation to the House of Representatives changed from 12 Federalists and 2 Republicans to 8 Federalists and 6 Republicans, as the result of backlash on the part of the electorate. Pennsylvania also switched to legislative choice, but this resulted in an almost evenly split set of electors. Virginia switched from electoral districts to winner-take-all, a move that probably switched one or two votes out of the Federalist column.
Because each state could choose its own election day, voting lasted from April to October. In April, Aaron Burr's successful mobilization of the vote in New York City succeeded in reversing the Federalist majority in the state legislature. With the two parties tied 65-65 in the Electoral College, the last state to vote, South Carolina, chose eight Republicans, giving the election to Jefferson and Burr.
That didn't resolve matters however. The Republicans neglected to have one of their electors abstain from voting for Burr. Under the Constitution as it then stood, each elector cast two votes and the candidate with a majority of the votes was elected president, with the vice-presidency going to the runner-up. The Federalists, therefore, arranged for one of their electors to vote for John Jay rather than for vice-presidential candidate Pinckney. The Republicans had a similar plan to have one of their electors cast a vote for another candidate instead of Burr, but somebody never got the memo and no one was told which elector was supposed to do this. The result was that all of the Republican electors cast their votes for both Jefferson and Burr, giving them each 73 votes.
The tie had to be resolved by the House of Representatives, with each state casting one vote. Although the election of 1800 had given majority control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans by 103 seats to 39, the presidential election would be decided by the outgoing House, which had been elected in the Federalist landslide of 1798 and was controlled by the Federalists, 60 seats to 46.
When the electoral ballots were opened and counted on February 11, 1801, it turned out that the certificate of election from Georgia was defective; while it was clear that the electors had cast their votes for Jefferson and Burr, the certificate did not take the constitutionally-mandated form of a "List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each". Vice-President Jefferson, who was counting the votes in his role as President of the Senate, immediately counted the votes from Georgia as votes for Jefferson and Burr. No objections were raised. The total number of votes for Jefferson and Burr was 73, a majority of the total, but a tie between them. Jefferson and Burr tied for first place, so the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.
The members of the House of Representatives balloted as states to determine whether Jefferson or Burr would become president. There were sixteen states, and an absolute majority-in this case, nine-was required for victory. It was the outgoing House of Representatives, controlled by the Federalist Party, that was charged with electing the new president.
While it was common knowledge that Jefferson was the candidate for president and Burr for vice-president, many Federalists were unwilling to vote for Jefferson. But there was one important exception: Alexander Hamilton. Seizing an opportunity to deny Jefferson the presidency, most Federalists voted for Burr, giving Burr six of the eight states controlled by Federalists. The seven delegations controlled by Republicans all voted for Jefferson, and Georgia's sole Federalist representative also voted for him, giving him eight states. Vermont was evenly split, and cast a blank ballot. The remaining state, Maryland, had five Federalist representatives to three Republicans; one of its Federalist representatives voted for Jefferson, forcing that state delegation also to cast a blank ballot.
Over the course of seven days, from February 11 to February 17, the House cast a total of 35 ballots, with Jefferson receiving the votes of eight state delegations each time-one short of the necessary majority of nine. During the contest, Hamilton recommended to Federalists that they support Jefferson because he was "by far not so dangerous a man" as Burr. In his way of thinking, he would much rather have someone with wrong principles than someone devoid of any. Hamilton embarked on a campaign to get delegates to switch votes.
On February 17, on the 36th ballot, Jefferson was elected. Federalist James A. Bayard of Delaware and his allies in Maryland and Vermont all cast blank ballots. This resulted in the Maryland and Vermont votes changing from no selection to Jefferson, giving him the votes of 10 states and the presidency. Bayard, as the sole representative from Delaware, changed his vote from Burr to no selection. The four present representatives from South Carolina, all Federalists, also changed their 3-1 selection of Burr to four abstentions. The final tally was Jefferson with ten votes to Burr's four.
But Burr is quite an interesting story in himself. He was the Karl Rove, James Carville or David Axelrod of his day, knowing how to strategize to win elections. Because of his influence in New York and opposition to the Hamiltonian Federalists, Burr was asked by Jefferson and James Madison to help them in the election of 1800 by winning the state of New York for the Republicans and in turn tipping the balance of the election. Burr engineered the Republican victory brilliantly.
Burr sponsored a bill through the New York Assembly that established the Manhattan Company, a water utility company whose charter also allowed creation of a bank controlled by Jeffersonians. This greatly diminished the influence of Alexander Hamilton in the state. Burr was also able to secure the election of his slate of greater New York City area Electors, defeating the Federalist slate backed by Alexander Hamilton. Burr is considered by some to be the father of modern political campaigning. He enlisted the help of members of Tammany Hall, a social club, to win the voting for selection of Electoral College delegates. He was then placed on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket in the 1800 election with Jefferson. At the time, most states' legislatures chose the members of the U.S. Electoral College, and New York was crucial to Jefferson.
Although Burr initially helped Jefferson to win New York, he ran into problems when he and Burr tied for the presidency with 73 electoral votes each. It had been clearly understood going into the election that the party intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice president, but the responsibility for the final choice belonged to the House of Representatives. Burr, considered by many to be unscrupulous, saw the opportunity to get the big chair for himself. He enlisted the attempt of a powerful faction among the Federalists to try and secure his election, as president, playing on their antagonism for Jefferson.
Burr failed in this attempt, partly due to opposition by Alexander Hamilton and partly due to Burr himself. Burr wrote to Jefferson underscoring his promise to be vice president, but it took 36 ballots before the election was decided in Jefferson's favor. Hamilton disliked both Burr and Jefferson, but he considered Jefferson to be the more principled of the two, and encouraged his supporters to back Jefferson.
When Burr became Vice President he was never trusted by Jefferson and was effectively shut out of party matters. However, Burr's even-handed fairness and his judicial manner as President of the Senate were praised even by some of his enemies. Historian Forrest MacDonald credited Burr's judicial manner in presiding over the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase with helping to preserve the principle of judicial independence that was established by Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
In 1804, the last full year of his single term as Vice President, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel. Burr was never tried for the illegal duel, but the death of Hamilton ended Burr's political career. President Jefferson dropped him from the ticket for the 1804 presidential election, and he never held office again.
After leaving Washington, Burr traveled west seeking new opportunities, both economic and political. His activities eventually led to his arrest on charges of treason in 1807. Although the subsequent trial resulted in acquittal, Burr's western schemes had left him with large debts and few influential friends. He left the United States for Europe. He remained overseas until 1812, when he returned to the United States and to the practice of law in New York City. There he spent the remainder of his life in relative obscurity until his death in 1836.
Burr is not completely forgotten. The musical comedy group Lonely Island remembered him in their song Lazy Sunday in which a character in the song spends a lot of ten dollar bills (which have Alexander Hamilton's picture on them) and the character sings "you can call me Aaron Burr from the way I'm dropping Hamiltons."
Edward Larson's book about the election of 1800 entitled A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 tells the fascinating story of how Jefferson and Burr began on the same side, as Democratic-Republicans fighting the Federalist John Adams in his bid for re-election. Adams was attacked by both the opposition Democratic-Republicans and a group of so called "High Federalists" aligned with Alexander Hamilton. The Republicans felt that the Adams foreign policy was too favorable toward Britain. They feared that the new army called up to prepare for an attack by a foreign power would be used by the Federalists to oppress the people. The Republicans also opposed new taxes to pay for war. They also attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts as violations of states' rights and the Constitution.
"High Federalists" considered Adams too moderate and would have preferred the leadership of Alexander Hamilton instead. Hamilton was scheming to elect vice-presidential candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to the presidency. One of Hamilton's letters, a scathing criticism of Adams that was fifty-four pages long, became public when it came into the hands of a Republican. It embarrassed Adams and damaged Hamilton's efforts on behalf of Pinckney, not to mention Hamilton's own reputation.
Partisans on both sides sought any advantage they could find. In several states, this included changing the process of selecting electors to ensure the desired result. In Georgia, Republican legislators replaced the popular vote with selection by the state legislature. Federalist legislators did the same in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This may have had some unintended consequences in Massachusetts, where the makeup of the delegation to the House of Representatives changed from 12 Federalists and 2 Republicans to 8 Federalists and 6 Republicans, as the result of backlash on the part of the electorate. Pennsylvania also switched to legislative choice, but this resulted in an almost evenly split set of electors. Virginia switched from electoral districts to winner-take-all, a move that probably switched one or two votes out of the Federalist column.
Because each state could choose its own election day, voting lasted from April to October. In April, Aaron Burr's successful mobilization of the vote in New York City succeeded in reversing the Federalist majority in the state legislature. With the two parties tied 65-65 in the Electoral College, the last state to vote, South Carolina, chose eight Republicans, giving the election to Jefferson and Burr.
That didn't resolve matters however. The Republicans neglected to have one of their electors abstain from voting for Burr. Under the Constitution as it then stood, each elector cast two votes and the candidate with a majority of the votes was elected president, with the vice-presidency going to the runner-up. The Federalists, therefore, arranged for one of their electors to vote for John Jay rather than for vice-presidential candidate Pinckney. The Republicans had a similar plan to have one of their electors cast a vote for another candidate instead of Burr, but somebody never got the memo and no one was told which elector was supposed to do this. The result was that all of the Republican electors cast their votes for both Jefferson and Burr, giving them each 73 votes.
The tie had to be resolved by the House of Representatives, with each state casting one vote. Although the election of 1800 had given majority control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans by 103 seats to 39, the presidential election would be decided by the outgoing House, which had been elected in the Federalist landslide of 1798 and was controlled by the Federalists, 60 seats to 46.
When the electoral ballots were opened and counted on February 11, 1801, it turned out that the certificate of election from Georgia was defective; while it was clear that the electors had cast their votes for Jefferson and Burr, the certificate did not take the constitutionally-mandated form of a "List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each". Vice-President Jefferson, who was counting the votes in his role as President of the Senate, immediately counted the votes from Georgia as votes for Jefferson and Burr. No objections were raised. The total number of votes for Jefferson and Burr was 73, a majority of the total, but a tie between them. Jefferson and Burr tied for first place, so the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.
The members of the House of Representatives balloted as states to determine whether Jefferson or Burr would become president. There were sixteen states, and an absolute majority-in this case, nine-was required for victory. It was the outgoing House of Representatives, controlled by the Federalist Party, that was charged with electing the new president.
While it was common knowledge that Jefferson was the candidate for president and Burr for vice-president, many Federalists were unwilling to vote for Jefferson. But there was one important exception: Alexander Hamilton. Seizing an opportunity to deny Jefferson the presidency, most Federalists voted for Burr, giving Burr six of the eight states controlled by Federalists. The seven delegations controlled by Republicans all voted for Jefferson, and Georgia's sole Federalist representative also voted for him, giving him eight states. Vermont was evenly split, and cast a blank ballot. The remaining state, Maryland, had five Federalist representatives to three Republicans; one of its Federalist representatives voted for Jefferson, forcing that state delegation also to cast a blank ballot.
Over the course of seven days, from February 11 to February 17, the House cast a total of 35 ballots, with Jefferson receiving the votes of eight state delegations each time-one short of the necessary majority of nine. During the contest, Hamilton recommended to Federalists that they support Jefferson because he was "by far not so dangerous a man" as Burr. In his way of thinking, he would much rather have someone with wrong principles than someone devoid of any. Hamilton embarked on a campaign to get delegates to switch votes.
On February 17, on the 36th ballot, Jefferson was elected. Federalist James A. Bayard of Delaware and his allies in Maryland and Vermont all cast blank ballots. This resulted in the Maryland and Vermont votes changing from no selection to Jefferson, giving him the votes of 10 states and the presidency. Bayard, as the sole representative from Delaware, changed his vote from Burr to no selection. The four present representatives from South Carolina, all Federalists, also changed their 3-1 selection of Burr to four abstentions. The final tally was Jefferson with ten votes to Burr's four.
But Burr is quite an interesting story in himself. He was the Karl Rove, James Carville or David Axelrod of his day, knowing how to strategize to win elections. Because of his influence in New York and opposition to the Hamiltonian Federalists, Burr was asked by Jefferson and James Madison to help them in the election of 1800 by winning the state of New York for the Republicans and in turn tipping the balance of the election. Burr engineered the Republican victory brilliantly.
Burr sponsored a bill through the New York Assembly that established the Manhattan Company, a water utility company whose charter also allowed creation of a bank controlled by Jeffersonians. This greatly diminished the influence of Alexander Hamilton in the state. Burr was also able to secure the election of his slate of greater New York City area Electors, defeating the Federalist slate backed by Alexander Hamilton. Burr is considered by some to be the father of modern political campaigning. He enlisted the help of members of Tammany Hall, a social club, to win the voting for selection of Electoral College delegates. He was then placed on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket in the 1800 election with Jefferson. At the time, most states' legislatures chose the members of the U.S. Electoral College, and New York was crucial to Jefferson.
Although Burr initially helped Jefferson to win New York, he ran into problems when he and Burr tied for the presidency with 73 electoral votes each. It had been clearly understood going into the election that the party intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice president, but the responsibility for the final choice belonged to the House of Representatives. Burr, considered by many to be unscrupulous, saw the opportunity to get the big chair for himself. He enlisted the attempt of a powerful faction among the Federalists to try and secure his election, as president, playing on their antagonism for Jefferson.
Burr failed in this attempt, partly due to opposition by Alexander Hamilton and partly due to Burr himself. Burr wrote to Jefferson underscoring his promise to be vice president, but it took 36 ballots before the election was decided in Jefferson's favor. Hamilton disliked both Burr and Jefferson, but he considered Jefferson to be the more principled of the two, and encouraged his supporters to back Jefferson.
When Burr became Vice President he was never trusted by Jefferson and was effectively shut out of party matters. However, Burr's even-handed fairness and his judicial manner as President of the Senate were praised even by some of his enemies. Historian Forrest MacDonald credited Burr's judicial manner in presiding over the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase with helping to preserve the principle of judicial independence that was established by Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
In 1804, the last full year of his single term as Vice President, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel. Burr was never tried for the illegal duel, but the death of Hamilton ended Burr's political career. President Jefferson dropped him from the ticket for the 1804 presidential election, and he never held office again.
After leaving Washington, Burr traveled west seeking new opportunities, both economic and political. His activities eventually led to his arrest on charges of treason in 1807. Although the subsequent trial resulted in acquittal, Burr's western schemes had left him with large debts and few influential friends. He left the United States for Europe. He remained overseas until 1812, when he returned to the United States and to the practice of law in New York City. There he spent the remainder of his life in relative obscurity until his death in 1836.
Burr is not completely forgotten. The musical comedy group Lonely Island remembered him in their song Lazy Sunday in which a character in the song spends a lot of ten dollar bills (which have Alexander Hamilton's picture on them) and the character sings "you can call me Aaron Burr from the way I'm dropping Hamiltons."