Is this election any weirder than that of 1800? Is it as consequential?

October 16th, 2024 by Tom Lynch

On 19 September 1796, Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser published George Washington’s Farewell Address to the nation. The Farewell Address was not meant to be given as a speech, but rather to be distributed to and read by Washington’s fellow citizens.

Washington’s Farewell Address, all 7,641 words of it, was in two parts. The first part was one of gratitude to his fellow citizens for entrusting him with with the immense responsibility of guiding their new nation. It was also a heartfelt explanation for why it was important now, at that moment, for him to retire from public life and pass on the torch of governance.

In the second part of the address, Washington offered advice for the future. In addition to avoiding foreign entanglements, he was particularly concerned about “designing men” who sought to divide the nation into geographic and internecine warring factions. About these, he wrote:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

“Destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Those words are the very definition of how fascism prevails.

Washington warned in his Farewell Address that some citizens would come to “seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” and that eventually an “unprincipled man” would exploit that sentiment. Sound familiar?

Every year since 1896, the U.S. Senate has observed Washington’s birthday by selecting one of its members, alternating parties, to read the Farewell Address, George Washington’s Letter to “Friends and Citizens.” This year, on 22 February, the address was read by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It took only four years for Washington’s fears about “unprincipled men” to become fact.

The fourth American presidential election, known as the Revolution of 1800, marked a turning point in our 12-year-old democracy experiment. Jeffersonian Republicans triumphed over Hamiltonian Federalists, and John Adams became a one-term President. Power shifted from the elite wealthy to the middle of America. Along the way to Jefferson’s election, however, calumny and outright lying were rife through word of mouth,  pamphleteering, and newspaper opinionating.

For example, not unlike current mud-slinging, the dirty work, back in the earliest days of the nation, was left to surrogates. One such surrogate was the influential President of Yale College, Timothy Dwight IV, a John Adams supporter, who wrote that were Jefferson to become president, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.”

This concern was amplified by the Connecticut Courant (now the Hartford Courant), an influential and highly partisan newspaper. The Courant warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.

Firing back, the Scottish James Callender, an influential journalist, “scandalmonger,” and Jefferson ally, wrote that Adams was a “rageful, lying, warmongering fellow;” a “repulsive pedant” and “gross hypocrite” who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”

And that was the soft stuff.

When the election of 1800 was over, Republicans, for the first time, had won control of both the House and Senate. However, both 57-year-old Thomas Jefferson and 44-year-old Aaron Burr, known for his political “flexibility,” had each amassed 73 electoral votes. The soon to be former President, John Adams, had 65, and Charles Pinckney, 64.

The Federalists would control the House of Representatives until the coming inauguration, and the young Constitution required the tie to be settled there. Consequently the defeated Federalists would get to decide between Jefferson and Burr, with each state delegation having one vote to cast as soon as congress officially received the electoral votes in February 1801, so a president could be elected before inauguration day, set for 4 March 1801.

The Federalists sincerely thought they should have won, never could understand why they hadn’t, and agonized over the prospect of turning over power to what they considered the illiterate rabble. So, horse-trading began.

The Federalists wanted their policies, Hamilton’s really, established under Washington and Adams, to continue, but  they feared Jefferson would defang them. Consequently, they thought a viable arrangement might be made with the Virginian.

Aaron Burr was made of different fiber. He was “flexible.” Although a Republican, many Federalists thought they could deal with him. However, Burr was not a principled, virtuous republican politician. Hamilton called him (among other things) an “embryonic Caesar” and was horrified at the idea of the House Federalists making him president.

Hamilton did everything he could to get Congress to change the rules in order for Adams to be re-elected. He wrote to John Jay that any “scruples of delicacy and propriety ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis.” Everything possible should be done to prevent Jefferson, “a fanatic in politics,” from taking over “the helm of the state.”

Although the Federalists sincerely believed the country had nothing to gain from a peaceful transfer of power to Jefferson, and much to lose, after consideration of the terrible consequences, they did not pursue the idea, prevalent among some, of declaring the presidential election invalid. That would have brought out the state militias and created armed conflict. Their better angels prevailed. In reality, they were too divided among themselves to do anything but let the voting begin.

Partisan divisions in the state delegations of the House of Representatives were such that it took six days and thirty-six ballots to choose Jefferson as president (which automatically made the remaining candidate with the most votes—Aaron Burr—vice president).

Everything George Washington had warned about in his Farewell Address regarding factions and partisanship had exploded in the election of 1800. There would be other presidential elections that would descend to vicious levels; 1828, 1860, and 1876 come to mind. But 1800 set the tone for the future.

This year’s election, now 20 days away, has been the most vicious in my lifetime. Perhaps it will also become the most infamous, eclipsing 1972’s Watergate affair.

If Donald Trump wins, which I fear he will, but hope he won’t, will he attempt to implement the Project 2025 American makeover he says he knows nothing about? Recall, if you will, he also said he didn’t even know the document’s authors, although 140 of them served high up in his administration.

Will he surround himself with pliable sycophants who will help him become the “dictator for a day” he said he wants to be?

Will he immediately launch into what he—and the unknown Project 2025—have said will be the “greatest mass deportation in history”

Will he and his allies begin “Destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion?”

Will he?

There are many Americans who, not taking him seriously, believe him to be nothing more than a showman, an entertainer.

If you believe that, allow me to suggest you have not been paying attention.