1804 U.S. presidential election

The 1804 election was the first held under the 12th Amendment, ratified that June, which had electors cast separate ballots for president and vice president. President Thomas Jefferson ran with New York's George Clinton in place of Aaron Burr, whom the Republicans dropped. Jefferson crushed Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, 162 electoral votes to 14, carrying every state except Connecticut and Delaware and losing only two of Maryland's electors.¹²

Jefferson's first term had been popular. He had cut taxes, including the hated whiskey excise, reduced the national debt, and in 1803 doubled the country's size with the Louisiana Purchase from France. The Federalists, strong only in parts of New England, had little to offer. Burr, meanwhile, had lost a race for governor of New York in April and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in July 1804, removing the Federalists' best-known strategist. The landslide confirmed that the Federalists were becoming a regional minority party.³