all right over the course of the next few lectures we're going to be looking at uh this concept that at the turn of the uh century here heading into the 1800s the new nation uh has come out of this period of struggling right uh where we see the rise of political parties there's great division in the country and there's a lot of angst among a lot of americans about what the future holds but what we begin to see starting in the 18 at around 1800 and into the 1820s is the nation really maturing and starting to grow up and it wasn't a coincidence that during this time period we had a lot of political stability in the country uh in what was known as the virginia dynasty beginning in 1800 and running all the way to 1825 we had three presidents all from virginia which we know is a very important very influential state three presidents all from virginia they were jefferson madison and monroe they're known as the virginia dynasty they were all democratic republicans as well and so there was a lot of stability then in not just the presidency being held by a influential virginian but the presidency being held by a single political party for three presidencies three administrations and both and all three of these presidents serving two terms each so you have a lot of political stability right which then lends itself to stabilizing the country and so that's what we want to do here is we want to look at what unfolded during the virginia dynasty that helped to cement the country and stabilize the country as it came out of the turbulent 1780s and even more turbulent 1790s and we're going to start by looking at the administration of thomas jefferson now we don't have time to cover every single aspect of jefferson's administration so we want to we want to kind of look for events and things that signify and show the nation maturing and the election that resulted in thomas jefferson's first term in office is perhaps the best example i can give you so we're going to use this lecture to talk about the presidential election of 1800 now to do this we're going to have to talk for a little bit at the beginning about the electoral college about what it was or what it is and how it worked in 1800 as opposed to how it works today then we'll get into a brief discussion about the candidates in this presidential election because we were going to have political parties uh and it turns out that political parties uh we only had two of them but it was gonna turn out we were gonna have four candidates for president we'll talk about that in a second then we'll talk about the election itself right the election results and what happened as a result of these election results and then we'll talk about the significance of the election but let's first start by talking about the electoral college because i've already in this course talked a lot about presidential elections but i don't think i've given the process of choosing the president its due diligence and i think a lot of students even today are a little confused about how we elect presidents and why we elect presidents in the way we do so let's let's talk about the electoral college now the next slide i'm about to show you has a lot of verbiage on it and the only reason i do that is because i know a lot of students like to pause this and and and take really good notes and that and this next slide is really going to help you i think in terms of your federal government courses so let's talk about the electoral college first what the heck is it the electoral college in its most simplistic description is the process right or the mechanism that was created by the founders by the founders and the framers of the constitution uh to elect the president it's the mechanism that was created and still used today to choose the president of the united states now the mechanism or the college uh favors the more populated states of this country it meaning that the more people living in your state the more influence or the larger say that state will have in the election of the president and if you remember our conversations about the virginia plan and the formation of the u.s constitution this was a pivotal idea for a lot of the framers that representative government works best when states that are more populated have a bigger say than smaller populated states and nowhere is that more important than in the election of the president of the united states now most students stop and say well why don't we just use a popular vote then we don't use a popular vote and the founders didn't want to use a popular vote because remember this was about the states the people don't choose the president of the united states the states choose the president of the united states now what part do the people play well in 1800 they played very little and i'll explain that in a second today the people play a role in the election of the president by going and voting and telling their state who they want okay so we do not directly elect the president of the united states in this country because that's not what the founders intended the founders intended for the states to be the ones that elect the president because after all the only way to get that constitution ratified was to protect in many cases the sovereignty of the states and this was a very important process okay so how does it work then well it's called the electoral college because the people that actually vote for the president they are known as electors and in 1800 electors were chosen by the state legislatures and it was determined how many electors a state would get by a simple formula of adding the number of representatives that state had in the u.s house to the number of senators it had in the u.s senate so that means at least every state had three electoral votes because every state's guaranteed at least one representative and we know because of equality in the senate two senators but as states have more population than others that's where it creates disparity in the total number of electoral votes so for example if south carolina in 1800 had six representatives in the u.s house and two senators south carolina in 1800 would have been given eight electoral votes and that would have meant that the state legislature needed to have chosen eight individuals trustworthy individuals to go and vote in the electoral college in late 1800 for the presidency of the united states now the electors are actually given two votes even today they are in 1800 the electors that are chosen are instructed to cast one vote for whoever they want to be president somebody in the country they think would make a good president and they're instructed to cast their second vote for another person they believe would make a good president you see in 1800 the electors would be casting votes both of their votes for two separate people they believe should be president of the united states and once all the votes are casted right they add them all up and whoever has the most electoral votes and they have to have a majority of the electoral votes available that person is going to be your president and whoever has the second most that person is going to be your vice president and that's the way the electoral college worked in 1800 now that's not the way it works today and i'll i'll describe i'll talk more about that at the end of this lecture but that's how the process works that's what the college does and so even today come every four years we elect a president and in november of a presidential election year we the people go to our individual state polling districts and we vote on presidential candidates and what we're doing is we're telling our state legislatures who they should pick to go vote in the electoral college meaning the state legislatures are going to wait to see what the people of the state tell them to do and if the people of a state say you know we want a the democrat presidential candidates well then the state legislature would choose individuals that would go to the electoral college and cast their votes for the democrat candidates that's how it works today a little bit okay now it's a little bit more different but that's how it's going to work in 1800 electors will be chosen they're going to be chosen based upon chosen by the state legislatures based upon who they're going to vote for and then it's their job to go and vote with both of their votes in the electoral college for who the state legislatures have told them to vote for that's how it works now is there a problem with something like this oh yes the problem with the process as i've just described it and the way it worked in 1800 is that it's possible that if you have political parties you could wind up with a president from one party and a vice president from another party so it begs a question if that is a big flaw and that's a big flaw why did the founders make that mistake and it's simple your founders did not see or foresee the rise of political parties and this election was going to be greatly hampered by the fact that we had political parties okay so i hope that was thoroughly confusing for you if you have any questions just just let me know uh i i can explain this further that was kind of your cliff notes version of it but look the electoral college is complicated um but if you just boil it down to its most simplistic form you know that it's it's the mechanism we we use even today to elect the president of the united states and it's designed to allow the states to have the say in who's president and those states that are more populated have a bigger say okay all right so now let's turn our attention to the candidates in this election i mentioned uh just earlier briefly that we have political parties in this election and what both political parties are going to want to do is prevent the other party from winning one of the two offices of either presidency or vice presidency so the way you do that then is that both political parties are going to need to run two candidates for president so that when the electors are chosen and they go vote they'll cast their first vote for candidate one from the democrat republican party and their second vote for for candidate two uh from the democrat republican party or vice versa for the federalists right if federalists are chosen by the state legislatures to go and vote their their uh in the elect in the electoral college they'll vote for candidate a uh with one vote and candidate b for the other and you do that hoping that there's more electors for your party that are going to vote for your candidates so that you deprive the other party of one of those valuable offices okay so who were the candidates then well before i get in that so you see what the parties are doing because of the situation because of the way the constitution is set up and the manner in which we ha we're going to elect the president you see both parties have to they're they're scheming right they're playing loose and fast and a colleague of mine always has a great saying says when you play stupid games this is a stupid game they're all playing you win stupid prizes so we'll see if a stupid prize is won here so who were the candidates well for the democratic republicans remember this is the party that's that grew in opposition to federalist control uh they of course were going to nominate thomas jefferson he was the uh the vision and the philosophy behind the party so it made sense that he would be uh the candidate for president in 1800 his running mate and what everybody understood was this was supposed to be the vice president was a guy from new york his name was aaron burr and we'll talk more about aaron burr here in a second now this ticket as it was called you know presidential candidate vice presidential candidate was a very strong ticket and the reason it was is jefferson was from virginia the most influential um of all the states and aaron burr is from new york one of the other very influential states so this is a very powerful very strong ticket and a lot of people thought this was a winning ticket easily a winning ticket for the federalists they were going to nominate the incumbent president john adams who had won the 1796 presidential election he's running for reelection now it was understood by the federalists that he would be the presidential candidate and his running mate was our old friend charles pinckney from south carolina again this was a strong ticket too adams being from the north from massachusetts and pikmi being from south carolina a lot of people thought this was a winning ticket so both parties are running two candidates in order to prevent a president from one party and a vice president from another so let's see how it worked out when it came november of 1800 and the electors were chosen by the state legislatures and chosen based on who they would go vote for it turned out that there were going to be more democratic republican electors chosen by the various states than federalists in fact 73 total electors were chosen across all of the states to go cast their votes for the two democratic republican candidates and only 65 federalist electors were chosen across the various states to go cast their votes for the federalist candidates so when all of those electors were finally chosen and then sent uh uh to the capitol to vote in the college because that's what actually happens people show up even today in washington dc the electors that are chosen and they cast their votes in a college okay i mean we already know the results of the election so at this point it's more of a formality but nobody really knew in november when the election was held who would be president immediately right it'd take about a week or so when the candidates all got together in in in the capitol to cast their votes those that were chosen to cast their votes for the democratic republicans did so they all cast their first vote for thomas jefferson and they all cast their vote their second vote for aaron burr now when all of the electors got there they didn't know how many people there would be when the federalist electors showed up they all cast their first votes for john adams and all of them but one cast their votes for thomas pinkney now why why did why did all the federal selectors cast their first vote for adams and all of them but one cast their second vote for thomas pinckney well because you can't have a tie it was hoped the federal selectors would outnumber the democratic republicans therefore john adams would be the president with 65 votes and thomas pinkney coming in second would be the vice president but there weren't enough federalist electors there were more democratic republican electors but look at what the democratic republicans have done somebody missed the memo of the 73 democratic republican electors that cast their votes in this college they all cast their vote for jefferson and they all cast their second vote for burr somebody of those 73 should have taken their second vote and thrown it away or voted for their mother or their dog or their house plan it doesn't matter anybody but burr but they screwed it up hence when you play stupid games you win stupid prizes when this election was held in november of 1800 the only thing we knew was that the federalists were out john adams is out the only thing we knew is that the power of the executive branch of the government was going to pass into the hands of the opposition party for the first time in american history and that scared the hell out of everybody there were a lot of people in this country that were convinced the federalists were never going to relinquish control of the government and they were worried that should jefferson and burr win the election we might get a civil war as the federalists violently opposed the transfer of power others were greatly concerned that jefferson and this democratic republican party were democrat democratic democrats run wild right just anarchy and that once jefferson was president the country would be nose-diving into ruin we would have anarchy just looked like the french revolution all over again people were convinced of it just convinced of it this election just really scared the hell out of people does it sound familiar does that sound for mayor all right we have a tie so who's president well i mean it's it was all assumed right it was all assumed that john adam or thomas jefferson would be president everybody recognized it and aaron burr at this point should have said look i don't want to be president so transfer your votes to jefferson and let's move on but let's talk about aaron burr aaron burr was different than most of the founding generation uh where most of the founding generation like to hide their ambition and like to play the part of a disinterested politician someone that didn't want power didn't it was was uh uh would only accept power after being forced to accept it while most founders took the george washington approach to politics burr did not burr was a highly ambitious person he didn't care who knew it uh he was considered loosely affiliated with the ideals and principles of uh the declaration he was considered a person that was loosely affiliated with the spirit of 76 as they called it meaning in some circles aaron burr was a pretty dangerous person now why was he chosen by jefferson to be the running mate because he was incredibly influential in new york his family goes his family is one of the most long-established families in new york this guy was incredibly connected incredibly influential it was a great running mate but to everyone's shock he did not back down instead he encouraged people to vote for him uh so instead of stepping down right instead of kind of backing out of this thing to everyone's shock he he stays in the race right he he does not tell the electors that voted for him to cast their votes for somebody else so that jefferson could be president he'd be vice president he doesn't do that so what happens then in the event of a tie in the electoral college between two candidates for president well while your founders did not foresee the rise of political parties they were smart enough to realize that this possibility could happen that two candidates could tie or a single candidate doesn't receive a majority of the electoral vote now that didn't happen in this case uh jefferson and burr both received the majority but they did tie and the founders in the constitution wrote specific instructions about what needs to happen in the event of a tie and what happens is the presidential election is handed over to the u.s house of representatives now how does this work the u.s house of representatives will then hold a ballot they'll hold a vote on the two candidates now the house of representatives are proportioned the states are proportioned representatives based upon population so the more populated states in the house have more representatives there but in the event of the house having to decide a presidential election it's very simple one state one vote you either cast your vote in this case for burr or you cast your vote for jefferson but you only get one vote and you add up all those votes and whoever has the most is president whoever has the second most vice president it's done we move on okay when the u.s house of representatives got together and held their first vote they tied uh burr was out there actively campaigning for people to vote for him in the house uh which was a big no-no and there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that resulted in this tie in the house and that's fine you know the first vote okay it's tied they scheduled another vote a little bit later on it ties okay they schedule another vote a little bit a few days later it ties again it keeps winding up a tie from november 1800 on into the next year january february 1801 now got today we inaugurate presidents in january of the year after the presidential election so if we have an election in november we will inaugurate the winner of that election in january the next year okay that's a shorter amount of time but in 1800 we did not inaugurate presidents until march of the following year this is a long period of time and from november until march of 1801 november 1800 and march 1801 the u.s house of representatives scheduled and held 35 separate votes to decide this election and every single one of them ended in a tie now this is problematic and it's problematic for this if we hit inauguration day and we haven't broken this tie what do we do who's president we don't know you see the founders didn't envision these political parties creating this type of problem so let's talk for a second about why they kept being a tie it really came down to two things one was burr actively campaigning for the job which turned a lot of people off but another reason there was a tie is that the us house of representatives was filled with federalists and they were incredibly upset and being petty about having to lose the executive branch to the democratic republicans and so they're just being nasty jerks and they're dragging this election out so that they can drag jefferson through the mud drag the democratic republicans through the mud by claiming look what these republicans have done look what they've done they've created this situation their scheming and gaming has placed the country in a precarious position but it's actually the house of representatives that's placing the country in a precarious position the longer this goes on the greater a crisis grows and this is a special type of crisis this will be a constitutional crisis meaning when we get to march 1801 and we haven't broken this tie nobody knows what happens and everybody was pretty sure we're gonna have war so the tie needs to be broken who can break the tie if it's the federalists that are causing these ties perhaps somebody influential in the federalist party can break it and that was of course hamilton alexander hamilton absolutely despised every thing that thomas jefferson stood for but he did not despise hamilton himself burr however was somebody that alexander hamilton considered to be overly ambitious to be corrupt and to be of no moral scruples in short hamilton believed byrd to be dangerous for this country now jefferson well like i said he was no great friend of jefferson but he couldn't say that jefferson didn't have a good moral character uh he considered jefferson to be less dangerous than aaron burr that jefferson you could at least reason with but burr believe he believed was just someone intent on grabbing as much power as possible and giving someone like that the power of the executive branch in such an early time in our nation's history hamilton believes would have been disastrous so what does hamilton do well in early 1801 as we approaching as we are approaching inauguration day hamilton will use his influence to break the tie in the u.s house of representatives and on the 36th vote that's what happened jefferson will receive 10 10 votes from members of the hou or from states in the house burr 4 and two states abstained now this will make thomas jefferson the third president in american history he will be inaugurated on march 4th 1801 and he will serve two terms and this was the presidential election of 1800 so let's talk for a second about why it was important there's three principal reasons this election is significant so let's talk about each of them in order the first concerns how did we get into this situation we got into this situation of almost having a constitutional crisis here because of the constitution itself because the founders did not foresee the rise of political parties and they did not foresee then these political games that could be played that could give rise to this constitutional crisis meaning there was a flaw in how we were electing the president of the united states the flaw was it doesn't account for political parties so here is how we solved it the 12th amendment to the u.s constitution which was pushed for quickly after this election with bipartisan support in the congress and submitted to the states very quickly was ratified before jefferson's first term was over and the 12th amendment tweaks the manner in which we choose the president of the united states now today what happens is the electors that are chosen they still have two votes but they're voting in two ballots the first for president and the second for vice president two distinct ballots now why this will prevent then us getting to inauguration day and not knowing who will be president of the united states let me explain is it still possible that two candidates for president could tie yes is it possible that two candidates for vice president could tie not likely and what's going to happen according to the us constitution is that if we get to election day and we don't know who the president is the vice president assumes office until that dispute is handled so you see the 12th amendment is put into the u.s constitution to tweak the manner in which we choose the president of the united states to account for these political parties and to prevent a constitutional crisis down the road so the first reason the election of 1800 is significant is that it leads directly to the 12th amendment of the u.s constitution two more the second reason the presidential election of 1800 is important concerns the role that the u.s house of representatives played in it now the u.s house of representatives is given the constitutional authority to break ties in the electoral college as well as decide presidential elections where a candidate does not receive a majority of them and again the way that works is if there's a lot of candidates running for president they're all kind of pulling votes from one another well the second reason then this election is important is that this was not only the first but it turns out one of only two times in american history that the u.s house of representatives has had to decide a presidential election it's only happened twice it happened here in 1800 and the second time that it decided an election was in 1824 but the last and perhaps the most important reason the election of 1800 is significant concerns the fact that jefferson and the democratic republicans won this meant that the the authority of the executive branch the highest and most powerful office in the country was now going to pass into the hands of the opposition party for the first time in american history the power of the government was now going to be transferred to the political party that had been out of power now this was a scary moment for the country it's unprecedented it hasn't happened before and history had shown americans that any time the party or a group that was in power lost it to another you almost always had violence and conflict and bloodshed history from the greeks the romans and even their own history in england has shown them this and a lot of people were convinced it was going to happen here militias were being called up by the individual states people are arming themselves people are convinced it's about to happen that once jefferson is inaugurated he's going to wage war against anyone that was a federalist right he's going to abuse the the power of the government others were concerned that the federalists were simply going to use the power of the government to prevent jefferson from taking office but none of that happened on the day jefferson was inaugurated the power of the executive branch passed to him and to the democratic republicans peacefully quietly and without a single incident this was the not only the first transfer of power between the political parties the power of the government but it was the first peaceful transfer of power between the political parties and that makes it incredibly significant it could have been completely different every four years if we had a change in party and power oh my god we could have bloodshed and violence but it didn't happen so it begs the question if so many people were convinced it was going to happen why didn't it well jefferson i think hit it right on the head in his first inaugural address he said that every difference of opinion among the american people was not a difference of principle and what he meant by that opening line was what divides the american people is simply a difference of opinion about the role of government and about the interpretation of our constitution that the differences between the american people are not differences of principle meaning there's not a group out there there's not a political party that wants to overthrow the government shred the constitution that's not that's a difference of principle and that's not what he said divided us the only thing that divided us was a difference of opinion he claimed that we had been called different names brethren are the same principle meaning we are called different names of a political party but yet we identify with the same principle that this is our government it is our constitution it is the law of the land he went on to famously say that we were all republicans and that we are all federalists and if there be any among us who wish to dissolve the union or change its republican form let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it this is why it didn't happen the differences that divided the american people in the 1780s and 1790s they were not differences of principle that will come later what divided us here was simply a difference of opinion you don't kill people over that so why was the presidential election of 1800 so important it was important uh because it led directly to the 12th amendment forever changing the manner in which we choose the president of the united states it was important because it was one of only two presidential elections in american history decided by the u.s house of representatives and number three it resulted in the first ever peaceful transfer of power between the political parties and it's been that way ever since