The Revolution of 1800

During the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson succeeded in defeating the incumbent, John Adams, and assumed the presidency. In terms of elections though, the election of 1800 itself was a fascinating election in that it a heavily-contested election and was effectively the first time political parties ran smear campaigns against each other during an election. The Republican Party attacked the Federalists for being anti-liberty and monarchist and tried to persuade the public that the Federalists were abusing their power through acts such as the Alien & Sedition Acts and the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion (Tindall and Shi 315). The Federalists, on the other hand, attacked Jefferson for his atheism and support of the French Revolution and warned that his election would result in chaos (316). By the end of the presidential election, neither Adams nor Jefferson emerged with his reputation completely intact. Still, rather than an election between Adams and Jefferson, the election of 1800 ultimately boiled down to a deadlock between Jefferson and his vice presidential candidate, Aaron Burr, who each held seventy-three electoral votes, resulting in the election was sent to the House of Representatives. In the end, the deadlock was resolved only by Alexander Hamilton, whose immense hate for Burr allowed Jefferson to claim the presidency. However, the election of 1800 was more than just a simple presidential election. The election of 1800 was the first peaceful transfer of power from the incumbent party to the opposition and represented a new step in politics, as well as a new direction in foreign policy that would emerge from Jefferson’s policies, and to this extent, the election of 1800 was a revolution.

For several reasons, Jeffer...

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...th of these ideas were significant, they did not truly change how the nation operated as a whole. For all his talk, Jefferson did little to change the Federalist policies established by his predecessors and ultimately ended up embracing many of them. Yes, the election represented change, but was the election was really the “Revolution of 1800”, as claimed by some? Perhaps the greatest proof against this idea is that the national government has more or less existed in the same form since it was established by the Constitution.

Works Cited

" Jefferson's Revolution of 1800." shmoop. 1 Nov. 2009. .

Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Tindall, George B., and David E. Shi. America: A Narrative History. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007.