Chapter 11

The election of 1800 pitted Federalist John Adams against Republican Thomas Jefferson in a bitter, mud-slinging contest. Federalists accused Jefferson of atheism and warned that his triumph would bring the excesses of the French Revolution to America.

Adams was crippled by the unpopular taxes and the Alien and Sedition Acts, and by a Federalist party split between Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson won the electorate but tied in the Electoral College with his own running mate, Aaron Burr.

The deadlock threw the election into the lame-duck House of Representatives, where — ironically with Hamilton's quiet backing — Jefferson was finally chosen on the thirty-sixth ballot. Jefferson called his victory the "Revolution of 1800," proudly noting that power had passed peacefully from one party to another. The near-crisis led to the Twelfth Amendment, requiring separate electoral ballots for president and vice president.

Jefferson deliberately embraced republican simplicity — dressing plainly, walking to his own inauguration, and dining with guests seated at a round table without ceremony. His inaugural address struck a note of reconciliation: "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

Though he had campaigned against Federalist policies, President Jefferson proved surprisingly moderate. He pardoned those jailed under the Sedition Act and let the Alien and Sedition Acts expire, and he restored the naturalization requirement to five years. He also repealed the hated excise tax on whiskey.

Yet Jefferson largely left Hamilton's financial system — the national bank and the funding of the debt — in place, showing that in power the Republicans embraced much of what they had once condemned.

Jefferson relied on his talented cabinet, including Secretary of State James Madison and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, a financial genius who worked to reduce the national debt while keeping the government solvent.

Overseas, Jefferson abandoned the tribute payments the United States had long paid to the Barbary pirates of North Africa. When the pasha of Tripoli declared war in 1801, Jefferson — despite his distrust of a large military — dispatched the infant navy to the Mediterranean, launching the four-year Tripolitan War.

In their final hours in power, the Federalists passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, creating sixteen new federal judgeships that Adams filled with loyal Federalist "midnight judges." The incoming Republicans, furious, repealed the act in 1802.

One would-be justice of the peace, William Marbury, sued when his commission was withheld. In the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall dismissed Marbury's claim — but in doing so declared part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional, establishing the Supreme Court's power of judicial review.

Jefferson struck back by encouraging the impeachment of the intemperate Federalist justice Samuel Chase, but the Senate refused to convict him. The failed effort set an enduring precedent against using impeachment for mere political disagreement, helping preserve the independence of the judiciary.

In 1800 Napoleon secretly acquired the vast Louisiana territory from Spain, alarming Americans who depended on the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans for western commerce. When the right of deposit at New Orleans was suddenly revoked, war fever flared.

Jefferson sent envoys to Paris to buy New Orleans and as much land to the east as possible for up to $10 million. To their astonishment, Napoleon — needing money for a renewed war with Britain and having lost his army in Santo Domingo to yellow fever and Toussaint L'Ouverture's rebellion — offered to sell all of Louisiana for about $15 million.

The bargain doubled the size of the United States for roughly three cents an acre. Jefferson, a strict constructionist, worried that the Constitution said nothing about buying territory — but he swallowed his scruples and submitted the treaty, which the Senate approved in 1803.

To explore the new territory, Jefferson sent his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and army officer William Clark on the Corps of Discovery. From 1804 to 1806 they traveled up the Missouri River, across the Rockies, and on to the Pacific and back.

Guided in part by the Shoshone woman Sacagawea, the expedition returned with a wealth of scientific and geographic knowledge, hundreds of new plant and animal specimens, and strengthened American claims to the Oregon country.

Other explorers such as Zebulon Pike ventured into the southern Louisiana territory and the Colorado region, sighting the peak that bears his name. These expeditions bolstered American interest in the trans-Mississippi West.

Dropped from the ticket in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr joined a group of Federalist extremists plotting to secede New England and New York. Alexander Hamilton exposed and blocked the scheme. Enraged, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and mortally wounded him at Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804 — killing one of the nation's greatest statesmen.

His political career ruined, Burr turned west and conspired — his exact aims still disputed — either to separate the western territories from the Union or to seize Spanish land. Arrested and tried for treason in 1807, Burr was acquitted, partly because Chief Justice Marshall insisted on the Constitution's strict definition of treason.

As the Napoleonic Wars engulfed Europe, both Britain and France seized American merchant ships that tried to trade with the enemy. Most galling of all was impressment — the British practice of forcibly seizing American sailors and pressing them into the Royal Navy.

In 1807 the British warship Leopard fired on the American frigate USS Chesapeake, killing three and impressing four alleged deserters. The Chesapeake affair outraged the nation, and Americans clamored for war.

Jefferson, however, hoped to avoid armed conflict. Committed to a policy of "peaceable coercion," he gambled that America could bring the warring powers to terms through economic pressure rather than force.

The result was the Embargo Act of 1807, which forbade the export of all goods from the United States. Jefferson reasoned that Britain and France depended so heavily on American trade that they would be forced to respect American rights.

Instead, the embargo backfired disastrously. It devastated the American economy — especially the commercial New England states, where ships rotted at the wharves — while barely inconveniencing the European powers. Smuggling flourished, and mocking critics spelled the law "O-grab-me" ("embargo" backwards) and "Dambargo."

The self-inflicted wound revived the dying Federalist party in New England. In 1809 Congress repealed the embargo, replacing it with the milder Non-Intercourse Act, which reopened trade with all nations except Britain and France. Jefferson's failed experiment in economic coercion was left for his successor, James Madison, to untangle.