1800 U.S. presidential election

In 1800 Vice President Thomas Jefferson challenged President John Adams in a rematch. Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans won enough states to beat Adams's Federalists, but a flaw in the Constitution turned victory into crisis. Each elector cast two votes for president, and every Republican elector voted for both Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr. The result was a tie, 73 to 73, with Adams at 65, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney at 64 and John Jay at 1. Under the Constitution, the tie went to the House of Representatives, voting by state delegation.¹²

The campaign was among the nastiest in American history. Adams's Federalists had fought an undeclared naval war with France and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a crime to publish 'false, scandalous and malicious' writing against the government; Republican editors were jailed under them. Republicans called Adams a monarchist, and Federalists called Jefferson an atheist and a radical admirer of the French Revolution. The Federalists were also split, and Alexander Hamilton published a pamphlet attacking Adams.¹

The lame-duck House was controlled by Federalists, many of whom preferred Burr, and Burr did not step aside. Jefferson needed nine of sixteen state delegations. Between February 11 and 17, 1801, the House voted 35 times without a winner. Hamilton, who distrusted Burr far more than he disliked Jefferson, lobbied against him, and on the 36th ballot Delaware's James Bayard and Federalists from Maryland and Vermont stopped blocking, giving Jefferson ten states. Adams left Washington quietly, and power passed from one party to another without violence. Congress then proposed the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, so electors would cast separate votes for president and vice president.¹²