Jefferson were again the candidates, with C. C. Pinckney and Aaron Burr for second place. The Federalists were torn with faction. The persecutions under the Sedition Act had neutralized the brief popularity of the administration after the X Y Z disclosures. Adams's courageous peace with France had brought down anathemas on his head. Hamilton, with his chances of military glory gone glimmering and his friends removed from the cabinet, wrote a bitter invective against John Adams to prove his unsuitableness for the chief magistracy --and then urged the Federalists to vote for him. War taxes for a war that was never declared and that was unrecognized by half the country increased the dissatisfaction with the administration. The physician for the country's ills was already at hand, said Jefferson, in the person of the tax-collector. The Federalists hung together in a discordant unity to prevent the calamity of a Republican triumph; but they were powerless to check the rising tide. Every local election in New England and the Middle States showed an increase in the vote, and the increase was largely in favor of the Republicans. Jefferson was tireless in his propaganda and unwearied in his patience. He noted the gain of a Republican congressman here and the State assemblyman there; he cheered Madison with the report of "a considerable change working in the minds of the people to the eastward" [New England], and congratulated

Burr on the visible "dawn of change" in his State of New York. He had full confidence that Republicanism was growing like a sound tissue to possess the whole body politic. Patience and labor! till "time has been given to the States to recover from the temporary frenzy into which they have been decoyed, to rally round the Constitution and rescue it from the destruction with which it has been threatened." Jefferson hoped even to convert the Federalists, while they expected only to defeat and awe the "Jacobins." It was a battle between intrenched privilege and insurgent democracy-between the expiring eighteenth century and the dawning nineteenth.

The battle was close and fiercely fought. Jefferson, as leader of the "opposition," was subjected to extravagant abuse. He was accused of having robbed a widow and her children of an estate of ten thousand pounds; of preaching class hatred and "Jacobinical phrensy"; of slandering George Washington and ridiculing the Christian religion. The direst predictions were made in the event of his election. Government would be at an end and civic virtue a thing of the past. One panic-stricken Federalist declared that every decent man would have to go abroad armed "to defend his property, his wife, and children . . . from the daggers of his Jacobin neighbors." Old ladies in Connecticut hid their family Bibles, believing that the first act

of the "atheistic" President would be a decree confiscating all copies of the Sacred Book. Following his custom, Jefferson ignored these attacks. While he was contradicting one campaign lie, he said, they would publish twenty new ones.

With his usual political sagacity, Jefferson declared that as New York City went the election would go. And so it was. And so it was. Aaron Burr arranged an attractive slate of the city candidates for the State legislature in the spring election of 1800. They carried the city and insured a Republican majority in the legislature which was to choose the presidential electors in November. As a last resort to save a few of New York's votes for the Federalist ticket, Hamilton wrote a letter to Governor Jay, advising him to reconvene the old legislature and put through a law for the choice of presidential electors by districts. He confessed that it was not a "regular or delicate proceeding," but urged that "scruples of delicacy and propriety ought to be laid aside" when it was a question of preventing the election to the presidency of "an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics." Governor Jay filed the letter with the indorsement: "Proposing measures for party purposes which I think it would not become me to adopt."

When the electoral votes were counted in January, Jefferson and Burr had seventy-three apiece, to sixty-five for Adams and sixty-four for Pinckney.

Not a single Republican elector had been thoughtful enough to vote another name than Burr's for second choice, so Jefferson and Burr were technically tied for the presidency, and the decision was thrown into the House of Representatives. Burr knew that every elector had intended to vote for him for VicePresident, and, had he been an honorable man, he would have given first place to Jefferson immediately. But Burr was not an honorable man. allowed himself to be put forward by a caucus of the Federalists in the House against the man of his own party who was obviously the choice of the nation.

He

When the balloting began in the House on February 11, 1801, Vermont and Maryland were equally divided, and lost their vote. Of the other fourteen States six voted for Burr (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and South Carolina), and the remaining eight for Jefferson. Nine States were the majority necessary for an election. Day after day the balloting was repeated with the same result. There were rumors that the Federalists would continue the deadlock till the 4th of March, and then devolve the presidency on John Marshall, who had just been appointed by John Adams as chief justice of the supreme court. The two great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia, with their Republican governors, McKean and Monroe, were ready to appeal to arms rather than see Jefferson cheated out of the prèsi

dency. Hamilton, too, used his influence in behalf of Jefferson, not that he loved Jefferson more, but that he loved Burr less. At last the Federalists in the House gave up the hopeless policy of obstruction. On the thirty-sixth ballot the Federalist members of all the States except New England cast blanks, and Jefferson was elected by a vote of ten States to four.1

Ousted from the presidency and their majority gone in Congress, the Federalists attempted to keep control of the third branch of the government by a reorganization of the judiciary in the last days of Adams's term. A law was passed creating sixteen new federal judgeships, with a number of marshals, attorneys, and clerks. Adams was busy until nine o'clock on the evening of March 3, signing the new commissions. Before sunrise on the morning of the 4th he drove away from the White House, and the reign of Federalism was ended.2

1 The vote of Maryland was still divided, and Delaware had only one representative in Congress, the Federalist Bayard, whose vote could at any moment have elected Jefferson. Jefferson, without making any "capitulation" to the Federalists, seems to have let it be understood among them that he would not disturb the main institutions of the government if elected (bank, tariff, army and navy). He had no hard feeling toward Burr, who, to his credit be it said, did not attempt to influence the members of the House in their choice. The direst effects of the choice of "a feeble and false enthusiast, a profligate without character or property (!)" for President were predicted by the unreconciled Federalists of New England.

2 Two persistent fables have clung to the last days of Adams's presidency. One to the effect that Levi Lincoln, Jefferson's designated attorney-general, appeared with watch in hand, in the office