Oh, it’s only a little dirty, sure. With but with Democrats like the PUMAs, sometimes you wonder why we need Karl Rove. With Hillary supporters like a few of the PUMAs, who needs Monica Lewinsky?
At the Confluence, anything that displeases the board moderators gets edited to say something completely trivial and, the board’s moderators appear to hope, embarrassing. Even compliments from people they don’t like get edited. So much for robust discussion and debate. So much for fairness.
The Ghost of Goebbels smiles. The Ghost of Alexander Hamilton paces nervously. Hamilton, you recall, paid editors and writers to put all sorts of scandal and calumny against Thomas Jefferson into their newspapers, in 1796 and 1800. Dumas Malone wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Jefferson that fully half the American electorate was convinced that Jefferson was an atheist who hated religious freedom by election day, 1800. Still, Americans voted overwhelmingly for the Jefferson/Burr ticket. So Hamilton’s skullduggery didn’t pay off.
Alas, prior to the 12th Amendment, electors in the electoral college all had two votes, and the rule was that the winner became president, the 2nd place person became vice president. The electors of the Democratic Republican Party (the modern-day Democrats) each cast a vote for Jefferson for President, and a vote for Burr. In electoral votes, there was a tie for the presidency. The election went to the House of Representatives (see the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 3).
The new Congress had not been sworn in yet, so the old, Federalist-controlled Congress got to make the decision between the two top electoral college vote getters (same as today — the old congress decides). A history site at the City University of New York gives the short version:
Uneasy about both men, the Federalists in the House of Representatives took five days and 35 ballots to choose Jefferson over Burr. The deadlocked election between the two allies spawned the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1804, which led to separate Electoral College ballots for president and vice-president. Jefferson called the election the “Revolution of 1800.”
35 ballots in the House of Representatives, before Jefferson was chosen on the 36th! When an election goes to the House, each state gets one vote; the Representatives and Senators must decide how to cast that state’s vote. 34 times that ballot came up inconclusive between Jefferson and Burr, both men despised by the Federalists due to the poisoned waters from the campaign.
Alexander Hamilton knew both men well. Hamilton and Jefferson both served in Washington’s cabinet. He had been a friend of Jefferson and guest at Jefferson’s table for the great compromise that gave us the first U.S. bank and put the capital on the Potomac. Hamilton had worked closely with James Madison on policy and speeches in the Washington administration, an on the conspiracy to get the Constitution before that — Madison was Jefferson’s “campaign manager” in the election. Hamilton also had crossed paths with Aaron Burr in New York, where both men practiced law. Eventually, Hamilton persuaded a few Federalists to vote for Jefferson over Burr, and persuaded a few others to abstain from voting in their state delegations, throwing those delegations to Jefferson, too. Jefferson was thus elected president, and Burr became vice president. Alexander Hamilton had to eat crow to keep his worst enemy, Burr, from becoming president.
Hamilton’s agonies did not end there. After engineering Burr’s defeat in New York’s gubernatorial election in 1804, Burr claimed Hamilton had insulted Burr’s reputation. A string of letters failed to resolve the situation, and Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. On July 11, 1804, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton in a dawn duel at Weehawken, New Jersey (dueling being illegal in New York).
Alexander Hamilton, hero of the American Revolution, created much of the financial underpinnings of our modern economic system, with a central bank and a view looking toward promoting trade to benefit the citizens of the nation. He worked with Madison and Washington to created the Constitution, and worked with Jay and Madison to compose what became the Federalist Papers, originally a set of essays to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, now a legal and history backgrounder in what the Constitution is and how it is supposed to work. Few important events in international or domestic affairs did not feature work by Hamilton, from Washington’s inauguration in 1789 to Hamilton’s death in 1804. When his country called, Hamilton responded.
Hamilton’s death creates one of the greatest “what if” questions in American history: What if Hamilton had lived, perhaps to serve as president himself? Opportunities lost do not knock again.
Resources:
- Joanne B. Freeman on the 1800 election, at History Now
- PBS’s American Experience film on the Hamilton-Burr conflict, “The Duel” (good video for classroom use or supplement to classroom)
Alexander Hamilton’s gravestone, in the courtyard of Trinity Church, close to the location of the former towers of the World Trade Center, New York. AmericanRevolution.com
Another version of the same photo, Alexander Hamilton’s grave.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 