Jefferson and Hamilton (54 page)

When Adams wrote to Jefferson early in 1796, he was fishing to discover his former friend’s intentions in the pending election. Both were cordial but insincere in their brief correspondence, and both knew it. Adams waxed on about his longing to retire; Jefferson replied that he hated politics.
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Jefferson knew that Adams would seek the presidency. Adams assumed that Jefferson could not avoid seeking it.

For some time Jefferson had encouraged Madison to run for the presidency when Washington retired. In turn, Madison asked Jefferson to run, once beseeching him not to “abandon [his] historical task.” Madison wrote, “You owe it to yourself, to truth, to the world.” Jefferson evinced no interest. He would not abandon retirement to become the emperor of the universe, he once said, and
fifteen months after leaving Washington’s cabinet, he declared that returning to public office was a “question [that] is for ever closed with me.” The springs of ambition that once had driven him, he added, have long since withered.”
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Madison and others who visited Monticello throughout 1796 implored Jefferson to enter the race, but they did so gently, fearing that if pushed too hard, he would bind himself with an unequivocal refusal. Jefferson’s mind on this subject remains impenetrable, though if his correspondence is a guide, at this juncture he was genuinely uninterested in the presidency. It is true that he was disturbed by the unchecked successes of the “Anglomen” since he had retired. He told a correspondent that there were two American political parties, “One which fears the people most, the other [fears] the government.” That which feared the people, the Federalist Party, had enjoyed a resurgence. In the past two years it had suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion, nearly silenced the Democratic-Republican Societies and others who applauded the French Revolution, and ratified the Jay Treaty. Disconcertingly, it had grown more popular in the process. But Jefferson attributed its success to having Washington—whom he called “the colossus”—on its side, and now the president was stepping down.
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Jefferson’s reluctance to enter the contest in 1796 may also have stemmed from a belief that Adams was virtually assured of winning. The vice president seemed certain to capture all the electoral votes from New England, New York, and New Jersey, giving him fifty-eight of the seventy needed for victory. As the Federalists were also strong in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, Adams was likely unbeatable. The prospect of Adams’s election did not trouble Jefferson. The two disagreed on important issues, but Adams was neither an extremist nor an adventurer, and as a solid Yankee, he could be depended on to harbor no wish of shaping the United States on the template of Great Britain. However, from Jefferson’s point of view, Adams’s greatest virtue was his fierce independence. Unlike Washington, Adams would not be dominated by Hamilton or anyone else.

The election in 1796 was to be the nation’s first contested battle for the presidency, although four years earlier the vice presidency had been an object of contention. Alarmed by Adams’s pro-monarchical writings, some Republicans had conspired in 1792 to prevent his reelection, “removing the monarchical rubbish of our government,” as one put it.
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For the vice presidency, Pennsylvania’s Republicans backed Aaron Burr, while the Republican leaders in Virginia preferred George Clinton.

Burr’s political rise had been rapid. Following a stint in the state assembly, Governor Clinton named him attorney general of New York. Two years later, in 1791, Burr became a U.S. senator, unseating Hamilton’s father-in-law,
Philip Schuyler. Paradoxically, his surging popularity may have cost him the vice presidency in 1792. It at least sank him with Madison and James Monroe. Fearing Burr as a looming rival to a Republican Party led by Jefferson, both did what they could to block the New Yorker’s candidacy. As little escaped Jefferson’s attention, and as Madison and Monroe consulted with him regularly, it is probable that Jefferson was aware of their activities, and not inconceivable that he was behind what they did.
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But the Southerners had not been Burr’s only problem in 1792. Earlier that year, Hamilton had worked behind the scenes to thwart Burr’s hopes of becoming governor of New York, and in the autumn he acted covertly to blacken Burr’s reputation before the Electoral College met to vote in the presidential election. Hamilton assailed Burr as “unprincipled both as a public and private man” and the “worst sort” for high office, as he purportedly stood for nothing but that which “suits his interest and ambition.”
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In some respects, the rivalry that had developed between Hamilton and Burr was odd, as the lives and careers of these two were strikingly similar. Both were orphaned—Burr while still a baby—and both became soldiers soon after college. During the Revolutionary War, each had seen considerable action and each had served as aides-de-camp—to Israel Putnam and Alexander McDougall in Burr’s case. Each endured the grim winter at Valley Forge and each fought at Monmouth, where Burr suffered a serious heatstroke that ended his military service. Like Hamilton, Burr had married and started a family by the early 1780s, and at about the same time as Hamilton, he had opened a law office in Manhattan. At times, the two crossed swords in the courtroom, but on occasion they partnered to form a defense team. The two even bore something of a resemblance. They were nearly the same age and height—Burr was one year younger and one inch shorter—both were slightly built, and both impressed others as being noticeably striking, dashing even, in appearance.

But political activists make enemies. Once Burr captured Schuyler’s Senate seat, his relationship with Hamilton changed. That same year, 1791, Burr met with Jefferson and Madison when the Virginians passed through Manhattan on their botanizing tour. From that moment forward, he was the target of “Hamilton’s relentless political and personal attacks,” as Burr’s biographer Nancy Isenberg put it. During the presidential contest in 1792, Hamilton’s sharp attacks on Burr were inspired by the realization that his rival loomed as a more serious threat than was Clinton to siphon votes from John Adams in the mid-Atlantic states.
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In the end, the Republicans in 1792 had backed Clinton for the vice presidency. He ran a distant second to Adams. Burr received only a single electoral vote.

In 1796 both the presidency and vice presidency were up for grabs. That year, and for some time thereafter, the nominees were selected by caucuses of each party’s congressmen. As the Constitution mandated that each member of the Electoral College was to “vote by Ballot for two Persons” for the presidency, each party nominated two candidates. The Constitution also stipulated that the recipient of the greatest number of electoral votes, if a majority, was to become president; whoever received the second most votes, whether or not a majority, was to be the vice president. The Federalists in 1796 selected Adams and South Carolina’s Thomas Pinckney, who had negotiated the recent treaty with Spain. Jefferson, the best-known Republican, had always been the first choice of the party’s leaders. He never said that he would run for the presidency, but he never said unconditionally that he wouldn’t, and in the end, the Republican caucus picked him. Burr had actively sought to be selected as one of the nominees. He politicked in Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after which he took the stage south to Pennsylvania and Virginia. He lingered in Virginia for three months mending fences, and made a one-day visit to Monticello to call on Jefferson.

Only Burr actively campaigned that autumn, spending six weeks in New England. It was a counterproductive tactic, as many southerners, especially Virginians, concluded that his objective was to beat out both Jefferson and Adams for the presidency.
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The other nominees, following what had been the customary practice in the colonial era, remained at home throughout the campaign, trying their best to appear disinterested. But while most of the candidates were inactive, others were busy. Somewhere in the vicinity of 60 percent of all adult white males could vote in 1796, and they were courted by party activists with liquor and food at banquets and rallies that usually featured political speeches.
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Above all, voters were wooed through broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Republican screeds depicted Jefferson as experienced and trustworthy, and as a champion of human rights. They assailed the Federalists as Anglophiles and aristocrats who wished to preserve a society with limited opportunities for commoners, and they portrayed Adams as a monarchist, limning the portly vice president as the “His Rotundity” and the “Duke of Braintree.” The Federalists responded by calling Washington one of their own and painted Adams as a hero of the American Revolution. They boosted Adams as Washington’s logical successor and depicted the Republicans as democrats, a term that had long been associated with social unrest and radical change. Federalists attacked Jefferson as “weak, wavering, indecisive,” more a philosopher than a politician. He was probably suited to be a college president, it was said, but not the president of the United States. Some Federalists
twisted Jefferson’s commitment to religious liberty to mean that he was secretly an atheist and a danger to Christianity. Jefferson was likely most disturbed by the tactics of Virginia Federalists, who dredged up his record as a wartime governor and represented him as inept and timorous and as a leader who had left the state in the lurch when he fled the enemy raiding party that descended on Monticello. Jefferson did not respond to any of the attacks, but supporters in Virginia rushed into print depositions defending his conduct as governor, touting his bravery, and in one instance, arguing that in 1781 “the government had abandoned Jefferson rather than the reverse.”
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Hamilton remained in the shadows during this campaign, but he was a major player nonetheless. His dictum was: “ ’Tis all-important to our country that [Washington’s] successor shall be a safe man” and “that it shall not be Jefferson. We have every thing to fear if this man comes in…. [E]very thing must give way to the great object of excluding Jefferson.”
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Driven by fear and loathing, Hamilton in October and November rushed out twenty-five newspaper essays under the pen name “Phocion.” He maligned Jefferson from pillar to post, but especially sullied his character. Hamilton charged that in three “critical moments”—in 1776, 1781, and again in 1794—Jefferson had “skulked to a snug retreat,” abandoning the nation in its hour of peril, fleeing danger, failing to lead. Hamilton not only lauded Washington, but also insisted that Jefferson had “greatly disapproved and perseveringly opposed” the first president’s policies. He portrayed Jefferson as having “countenanced” Genêt’s malignant behavior, backing off only when public opinion turned against the “meddling and crafty foreigner.” He contended that Jefferson had sought “to entangle the United States into altercations with England.” Hamilton additionally vilified Jefferson for having “vindicated the horrors and cruelties” of the French Revolution, claimed that he had plagiarized others when preparing a report on weights and measures, and blasted the criminal code that Jefferson had conceived in the 1770s as filled with “atrocious and sanguinary cruelties.”
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Almost alone, Hamilton raised questions about Jefferson and race. He drew on passages from
Notes on the State of Virginia
to demonstrate Jefferson’s racism. His objective was to reveal “the confusion of ideas which pervaded” the Virginian’s thinking—son of the Enlightenment, yet a racist—and to question Jefferson’s right to be considered a “moral philosopher.” However, Hamilton did blast Jefferson’s proposal that liberated slaves be uprooted and colonized elsewhere, saying that, rooted in racism, such a practice would be nearly as inhumane as slavery itself. The heart of his assault focused on Jefferson’s seeming obsession with “preserving the beauty” of the white race, a topic that led Phocion to bring up the allegedly rampant sexual exploitation
of female slaves on southern plantations. Miscegenation inevitably led to race mixing, or the “
stain of blood
of … her … master,” to which Hamilton added: “He [Jefferson] must have seen all around him sufficient marks of this
staining of blood
.”
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Knowledge of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings was a topic of conversation in Charlottesville and among Virginia’s politicians, and it was probably through his contacts with the latter that Hamilton had been made privy to the rumors. However, the general public outside Virginia was unaware of the gossip, and they could not have understood the meaning of Hamilton’s swipe. So why did he allude to Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings? In all likelihood, he was telling the Jeffersonians that he was aware of the story and would make it public if they revealed his tryst with Maria Reynolds. Neither Hemings nor Reynolds surfaced in this campaign.

Hamilton was active in other ways, just as he had been during the two previous presidential elections. In 1789, Hamilton had labored behind the curtain to see that Washington was unanimously elected and that no second-choice candidate received an equal number of votes. In 1792, he had worked undercover to wreck both Burr’s and Clinton’s hopes of being chosen vice president. Adams knew little or nothing about Hamilton’s intrusiveness in those campaigns, but he was aware of the rumors of the New Yorker’s machinations in 1796.

Hamilton’s greatest worry in 1796 was that some northern Federalist electors would withhold their second vote from Pinckney in order to assure Adams’s election. If that occurred, Jefferson might slip in, capturing either the presidency or vice presidency. Hamilton wanted neither. He doubtless shared the view of Oliver Wolcott, who had succeeded him as treasury secretary, that Jefferson as chief executive would destroy the Constitution, as well as be “fatal to our independence.” Like Wolcott, Hamilton may also have believed that Jefferson could do even greater harm as vice president, for in that office he would “become the rallying point of faction and French influence,” sowing divisions and subverting Adams’s presidency.
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Acting on these presumed threats, Hamilton declared that his foremost objective was “the exclusion of Jefferson.” He advised party stalwarts that “good calculation [and] prudence” dictated the avoidance of “unfortunate” risks. His wish, he said, was that every Federalist elector would cast his two votes for Adams and Pinckney. But Hamilton often had a hidden agenda, and that was the case in the election of 1796. He preferred Pinckney to Adams, as the South Carolinian might be more easily manipulated than the fiercely independent Yankee. Moreover, Hamilton believed that Pinckney had a better chance than Adams of accumulating some votes in the South. By calling for every Federalist elector
to vote for Adams and Pinckney, Hamilton in reality was trying to engineer Pinckney’s election as president.
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