The election of 1800 was the first hotly contested partisan election in American history. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued for the next two centuries. But how? Carol Berkin, author of A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism, and H.W. Brands, author of Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics, join for an Election Day program to explore political partisanship and nationalism in early America. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Carol Berkin is Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, of Baruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has written extensively on the creation of the Constitution and the politics of the early Republic. She is the author of many acclaimed books, including A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution, The Bill of Rights: The Struggle to Secure America’s Liberties, and most recently, A Sovereign People: The Crisis of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism. Her book, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written more than a dozen biographies and histories, including New York Times bestseller The General vs. the President; Our First Civil War; and most recently, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics. Two of his biographies, The First American and Traitor to His Class, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- H.W. Brands, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
- Carol Berkin, A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism
- Genet Affair
- National Constitution Center Founders' Library, The Alien and Sedition Acts
- Virginia Resolutions
Excerpt from interview: Carol Berkin on the Alien and Sedition Act and how it extended national authority.
Jeffrey Rosen:... Tell us about that story and then take us up to the effects of the state of parties in the election of 1800 and beyond.
Carol Berkin: Let me start here, much is made about the Alien Acts are very easy to understand. The Jeffersonians were mobilizing the German voting population and the Irish radicals who had come over, intellectual radicals, who had in fact meddled in foreign policy. And in order to stop this one of the Acts said you had to live in America 14 years before you had the right to vote. And this was really a straightforward effort to destroy this voting block potential that had been used in, in Pennsylvania and in New York and in other areas where there was a German population and the French, the Irish intellectuals. The Sedition Act, which is what everyone talks about, you have to take a look at what happen.
I did a very careful count of all the sedition cases. First of all, it was to end in 1800, it was not permanent. Was to end in 1800, which is sort of interesting since that's when Jefferson took over the government. Of all the cases, there were maybe 20 cases, maybe. It's been a while since I did this book, so I might not have the number exactly right. Five people ever went to jail and they were allowed five editors of newspapers. They were allowed to continue to edit their newspapers while they were in jail, that is the Sedition Act did not clamp a lid on protest in America, it was ineffectual in effect.
And what's interesting is the Federalists who really believed a Sedition Act was important, believed in the rule of law. So you had to be arrested. You can get out on bail. They had to bring charges against you. You had to have a jury trial. And almost no one was convicted and the ones who were convicted were told, "Okay. While you're in jail you can still edit your newspaper or your magazine." So it's not as if the Sedition Act was really a powerful statement of government oppression. The Alien Acts never did anything. He refused to enforce them. What's the phrase today? It was a big nothingburger in a sense right?
But the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions not only introduced the concept of nullification and Jefferson said, "If worse comes to worst, blood must be shed." I mean, he was always ready to shed somebody's blood as long as it wasn't his. But in writing the two resolutions they acknowledged that the Constitution was the law of the land. And the reason they had to write these was to correct an abuse, they believed, of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. And in that sense, both sides wound up resolving, finally, the anti-Federalist/Federalist debate. Both sides conceded that the Constitution was the law of the land. One might find one way to prevent its excesses, the other might find another way, but they both acknowledge the legitimacy. And, in many ways, that decision is the crowning moment of American nationalism. Not the kind of nationalism today, the kind of recognition that there was a nation. This becomes so well established that, I found this very interesting, people refer to, "these United States of America." After the war of 1812, they began to call it, "the United States of America." And that is the final triumph of a national identity is after the war of 1812.
But the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions both introduce the snake in the garden of nullification, but they also acknowledged that they were not attacking the Constitution as the legitimate source of the national government. So it's really a striking turning point in the rise of a belief in the national government.
Excerpt from interview: H. W. Brands on the evolution from a faction-less Constitution to a the Federalist/Republican divide.
Jeffrey Rosen:...Help us understand the evolution from the time when Madison says in the Federalist Papers, that the main goal of the Constitution is to avoid factions or class-based or ideology-based politics to the period very early in the Washington administration, as you describe it, where the split between Hamiltonian Federalist and Jeffersonian Republicans is beginning to emerge.
H. W. Brands: Madison's a key figure here because he is the driver of the movement to create a new constitution, which is going to replace the Articles Confederation, this very loose central government, with a much stronger more coherent one. And he is, of course, one of the writers of the Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. So he really is, as much as anybody else, he is the creator of the Constitution. And while he's arguing in favor of ratification of the Constitution, of course he's gonna argue that a new, stronger central government will be a good thing for American self-government. And he does this, famously in Federalist 10, by pointing out that factions will exist in any political entity. And the role for a government or a constitution, whoever's designing the system, is to minimize the deleterious effects of factions, because factions that the term that they would use instead of parties, he at that point was arguing that these are a negative influence on politics.
So how do we corral them? And he says that in an extensive republic, one that goes from South Carolina to Massachusetts, it's easier to keep them under control because no faction will be able to gain a majority or strong influence all across the nation. And maybe a faction could gain control in New York or Virginia or Massachusetts, but it would be offset by other influences elsewhere. So at that point he's saying very clearly, factions are a bad thing and this new government will keep them under control. Now, he wins the argument, the Federalists win the argument, the Constitution takes effect. And before too long, he's changing his view because he's coming to realize that, well, in competitive politics, especially in in political situations where votes are either yes or no, where you have a binary choices, one or the other, it's not a multiple choice test, it's basically a true or false, political expediency requires people, encourages people to form alliances wherever they can.
And so people with different ideas voted in favor of the Constitution, just as people with different ideas voted against the Constitution for different reasons. Once we get the government, then all of American politics are based on this, you get 51% of the vote and you win, you get 49% and you lose. So there's nothing like proportional representation in American politics in those days, which would allow a minority to grow over time. And so as Madison's views begin to shift from this really strong view in favor of a stronger central government to something more subtle. Some of this comes out of the arguments during the ratification process over a Bill of Rights. So Madison, being the principal author as he saw it, the Constitution, took the typical author's attitude that every word is perfect, don't touch a thing, to, "Okay. Well if this is the only way we're gonna get the Constitution passed, well we have to agree to have a Bill of Rights. Okay, we'll do it, but I'm gonna write the Bill of Rights." And so he does. And the Bill of Rights is added to the Constitution, first 10 Amendments.
And in doing this, he begins to realize sort of the depth of suspicion of this new central government. And as he watches Hamilton develop these very strong programs of federal authority assumption of debt, the creation of a national bank, various other things that are gonna centralize control, then Madison starts to think, "Well, I don't know, maybe we went too far. Or at least maybe I don't wanna go as far as Hamilton wants to go with this." And so Madison basically shifts sides. He was an arch Federalist, but then he becomes, eventually, Jefferson's principal lieutenant in the anti-Federalist Republican Party in the, the 1790s. And, it's all about the issues that emerge with the new government, but it betrays this underlying philosophy, if you are comfortable with a strong central government, you're likely to be a Federalist.
Now, there are various things that will feed into why you are comfortable with a strong central government. And if you are less comfortable with that, and if you are more comfortable keeping, as Carol said, keeping power close to home with those elected officials that you can keep your eye on, then you're gonna lean toward the Republicans.
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