Sometimes it feels like American politics are in the worst state they have ever been, but in 1800 the problems they faced were unfathomable. The issues faced stemmed from the 1796 Election of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr versus John Adams and Charles Pinckney, but the rematch in 1800 replicated the issues and made them worse. Even with George Washington’s warning against political parties, they were quickly evolving into what we know them to be today. The party lines were drawn, and there was intraparty and interparty turmoil boiling up until the election. 

Nowadays, the Electoral College is a point of contention, but the whole electoral system was functioning improperly as soon as there wasn’t a universal choice like Washington. In the Election of 1800, there were 4 leading candidates from two different parties and none of them reached the required majority to be elected President. There was no distinction between votes for President or Vice-President, and the candidate with the second amount of votes became Vice-President. Because no candidate got the majority of votes, the election went to the lame-duck House of Representatives. The choice for the tie-breaker was between the two Democratic-Republicans, Burr and Jefferson. The Democratic-Republican issue was that Burr didn’t specify that the House of Representatives should vote Jefferson for President and many speculate that Burr wanted to take the glory of the Presidency for himself.

Because of this, the Federalists in the House of Representatives had the option of disrupting the opposition by electing Burr, the Vice-Presidential candidate as President. A letter from Alexander Hamilton to Harrison Gray Otis, a fellow Federalist on December 23rd, 1800, was a perfect representation of the problems in this election. Two of the main points in the letter that Hamilton brought up were that, “Mr. Jefferson is respectably known in Europe” and “Mr. Burr, as I believe, a bankrupt beyond redemption”. In the letter, Hamilton laid out the situation as two bad choices, but he believed Jefferson was the better choice for President. Although Hamilton disagreed with Jefferson’s foreign policy, specific to France, he still had respect for him and knew that Europe did too. He believed that Jefferson had his own beliefs because of his conviction in himself, which was the opposite of how he viewed Burr. He thought Burr’s opinions could be changed with ease as his only goal was monetary gain. On the flip side, Jefferson believed that Federalists were attempting to uproot everything that the Nation believed in and return to a monarchical ruling. The fact that the House of Representatives had so much power over the fate of the Presidency in this situation was a fault of the system.

Jefferson was eventually elected by the House of Representatives, but the electoral system had to be changed afterwards. This election revealed the awkward nature of the system because of the development of party systems and the lack of distinction between Presidential candidates and Vice-Presidential candidates. Originally it was thought that the two best candidates should be President and Vice-President, but the party system wouldn’t allow this. The problems of the Election of 1800 were so consequential, it was coined the Revolution of 1800. After the national complications, the 12th Amendment was quickly ratified which attempted to solve the problems from the election.