The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance

Abstract

The last decade has brought a flurry of new publications on the presidential election of 1800 intended for both scholarly and popular audiences. James Roger Sharp's The Deadlocked Election of 1800 occupies a curious position relative to those works. As part of a series of brief histories of American presidential elections, it seems designed for classroom use and thus appears to be a hybrid of the scholarly and the popular. As the latest work on its subject, it engages much of the recent historiography. At the same time, it also echoes the analysis of Sharp's own American Politics in the Early Republic (1995)—a book that served as a touchstone for that historiography. In this book, Sharp emphasizes two arguments: that the election of 1800 was “one of the two most critical elections in American history” (p. xii) and that the politics of the era lacked crucial characteristics of modern democracy. These arguments are closely connected. The election “held the potential for violence, secession, and armed conflict” precisely because there was no acceptance of a loyal opposition, no “distinction between a political party that would temporarily hold power and the government itself” (pp. xii, xi), and no sense of a shared devotion to republican government and national union. Sharp develops these arguments through a chronological narrative that begins with the election of 1796, ends with the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, and covers the expected incidents and issues in between—the Quasi-War, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the clash between John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, and the two phases of the presidential election.