A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

CHAPTER IX
MISTAKES OF HAMILTON AND BURR
1800

The ten months following the Republican triumph in New York on May 2, 1800, were fateful ones for Hamilton and Burr. It is not easy to suggest the greater sufferer, Burr with his victory, or Hamilton with his defeat. Hamilton's bold expedients began at once; Burr's desperate schemes waited until after the election in November; but when the conflict was over, the political influence of each had ebbed like water in a bay after a tidal wave. Although Jay's refusal to reconvene the old Legislature in extra session surprised Hamilton as much as the Republican victory itself, the great Federalist did not despair. He still thought it possible to throw the election of President into the House of Representatives, and to that end he wrote his friends to give equal support to John Adams and Charles C. Pinckney, the candidates of the Federal party. "This is the only thing," he said, "that can possibly save us from the fangs of Jefferson."[92]

But the relations between Adams and Hamilton were now to break. For twelve years Hamilton had kept Adams angry. He began in 1789 with the inconsiderate and needless scheme of scattering the electoral votes of Federalists for second place, lest Washington fail of the highest number, and thus reduced Adams' vote to thirty-four, while Washington received sixty-nine. In 1796 he advised similar tactics, in order that Thomas Pinckney might get first place. For the past three years the President had endured the mortification of having Hamilton control his cabinet advisers. After the loss of New York, however, Adams turned elsewhere for strength, appointing John Marshall secretary of state in place of Timothy Pickering, and Samuel Dexter secretary of war in place of James McHenry. The mutual dislike of Hamilton and Adams had become so intensified that the slightest provocation on the part of either would make any form of political reconciliation impossible, and Adams' reconstruction of his Cabinet furnished this provocation. Pickering and McHenry were Hamilton's best supporters. They had done more to help him and to embarrass Adams, and their dismissal, because of the loss of New York, made Hamilton thirsty for revenge. Pickering suggested "a bold and frank exposure of Adams," offering to furnish the facts if Hamilton would put them together, and agreeing to arrange with George Cabot and other ultra Federalists of New England, known as the "Essex Junto," to throw Adams behind Charles C. Pinckney in the electoral vote. Their plan was to start Pinckney as the second Federalist candidate, with the hope that parties would be so divided as to secure his election for President. It was nothing more than the old "double chance" manœuvres of 1796, when Thomas Pinckney was Hamilton's choice for President; but the iniquity of the scheme was the deception practised upon the voters who desired Adams.

Of course, Adams soon learned of the revival of this old conspiracy, and passionately and hastily opened a raking fire upon the "Essex Junto," calling them a "British faction," with Hamilton as its chief, a designation to which the Republican press had made them peculiarly sensitive. This aroused Hamilton, who, preliminary to a quarrel, addressed the President, asking if he had mentioned the writer as one who belonged to a British faction. Receiving no reply, he again wrote the President, angrily repelling all aspersions of the kind. This the President likewise ignored.

Then Hamilton listened to Timothy Pickering. Fiery as his temper had often proved, and grotesquely obstinate as he had sometimes shown himself, Hamilton's most erratic impulse appears like the coolness of Jay when contrasted with the conduct upon which he now entered. The letter he proposed to write, ostensibly in justification of himself, was apparently intended for private circulation at some future day among Federal leaders, to whom it would furnish reasons why electors should unite in preferring Pinckney. It is known, too, that Hamilton's coolest and ablest advisers opposed such a letter, recalling the congressional caucus agreement, which he had himself advised, to vote fairly for both Adams and Pinckney. Besides, to impair confidence in Adams just at that moment, it was argued, would impair confidence in the Federal party, while at best such a letter could only produce confusion without compensatory results. But between Adams and Jefferson, Hamilton now preferred the latter. "I will never be responsible for him by my direct vote," he wrote in May, 1800, "even though the consequence be the election of Jefferson."[93] Moreover, Hamilton was accustomed to give, not to receive orders. Had Washington lived, Hamilton would doubtless never have written the letter, but now he wrote it, printed it, and in a few days was forced to publish it, since garbled extracts began appearing in the press. Many theories have been advanced as to how it fell into the hands of a public printer, some fanciful, others ridiculous, and none, perhaps, absolutely truthful. The story that Burr unwittingly coaxed a printer's errand boy to give him a copy, is not corroborated by Matthew L. Davis; but, however the publication happened, it was not intended to happen in that way and at that time.

It was an ugly letter, not up to Hamilton's best work. The vindication of himself and the Pinckneys lost itself in the severity of the attack upon Adams, whose career was reviewed from the distant day of an unsound judgment ventured in military affairs during the Revolution, to the latest display of a consuming egotism, vanity, and jealousy as President. In a word, all the quarrels, resentments, and antagonisms which had torn and rent the Federal party for four years, but which, thanks to Washington, had not become generally known, were now, in a moment, officially exposed to the whole country, to the great astonishment of most Federalists, and to the great delight of all Republicans. "If the single purpose had been to defeat the President," said John Adams, "no more propitious moment could have been chosen." Fisher Ames declared that "the question is not how we shall fight, but how we shall fall." In vain did Hamilton journey through New England, struggling to gain votes for Pinckney; in vain did the "Essex Junto" deplore the appearance of a document certain to do their Jacobin opponents great service. The party, already practically defeated by its alien and sedition legislation, and now inflamed with angry feelings, hastened on to the inevitable catastrophe like a boat sucked into the rushing waters of Niagara, while the party of Jefferson, united in principle, and encouraged by the divisions of their adversaries, marched on to easy victory. When the result was known, Jefferson and Burr had each seventy-three electoral votes, Adams sixty-five, Pinckney sixty-four, and Jay one.

It is difficult to realise the arguments which persuaded Hamilton to follow the suggestion of the fallen minister. Hot-tempered and impatient of restraint as he was, he knew Adams' attack had only paid him in kind. Nor is mitigation of Hamilton's conduct found in the statement, probably true, that the party could not in any case have carried the election. The great mass of Federalists believed, as Hamilton wrote Jay when asking an extra session of the Legislature, that the defeat of Jefferson was "the only means to save the nation from more disasters," and they naturally looked to him to accomplish that defeat. Of all men that ever led a political party, therefore, it was Hamilton's duty to sink personal antipathy, but in this attack upon Adams he seems deliberately to have sinned against the light. This was the judgment of men of his own day, and at the end of a century it is the judgment of men who cherish his teachings and revere his memory.

While Hamilton wrote and worried and wrestled, Aaron Burr rested on the well-earned laurels of victory. It had been a great fight. George Clinton did not take kindly to Thomas Jefferson, and stubbornly resisted allowing the use of his name to aid the Virginian's promotion; Horatio Gates and other prominent citizens who had left the political arena years before, if they could be said ever to have entered it, were also indisposed to head a movement that seemed to them certain to end in rout and confusion; but Burr held on until scruples disappeared, and their names headed a winning ticket. It was the first ray of light to break the Republican gloom, and when, six months later, the Empire State declared for Jefferson and Burr it added to the halo already surrounding the grandson of Jonathan Edwards.

It was known that Jefferson and Burr had run very evenly, and by the middle of December, 1800, it became rumoured that their vote was a tie. "If such should be the result," Burr wrote Samuel Smith, a Republican congressman from Maryland, "every man who knows me ought to know that I would utterly disclaim all competition. Be assured that the Federalist party can entertain no wish for such an exchange. As to my friends, they would dishonour my views and insult my feelings by a suspicion that I would submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes and the expectations of the people of the United States. And I now constitute you my proxy to declare these sentiments if the occasion should require."[94] At the time this letter was much applauded at public dinners and other Republican gatherings as proof of Burr's respect for the will of the people.

But the Federalists had plans of their own. "To elect Burr would be to cover the opposition with chagrin, and to sow among them the seeds of a morbid division," wrote Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts.[95] Gradually this sentiment took possession of New England and the Middle States, until it seemed to be the prevailing opinion of the Federal party. "Some, indeed most of our eastern friends are warm in support of Burr," said Gouverneur Morris, which James A. Bayard of Delaware corroborated in a note to Hamilton. "There appears to be a strong inclination in a majority of the Federal party to support Burr," he said.[96] "The current has already acquired considerable force, and is manifestly increasing." John Rutledge, governor of South Carolina, thought "his promotion will be prodigiously afflicting to the Virginia faction, and must disjoint the party. If Mr. B.'s Presidency be productive of evils, it will be very easy for us to get rid of him. Opposed by the Virginia party, it will be his interest to conciliate the Federalists."[97] Theodore Sedgwick, speaker of the House of Representatives, likewise declared that "most of the Federalists are for Burr. It is very evident that the Jacobins dread this appointment more even than that of General Pinckney. If he be elected by the Federalists against the hearty opposition of the Jacobins, the wounds mutually given and received will probably be incurable. Each will have committed the unpardonable sin. Burr must depend on good men for his support, and that support he cannot receive, but by a conformity to their views. At first, I confess, I was strongly disposed to give Jefferson the preference, but the more I have reflected, the more I have inclined to the other."[98]