Burr "wins" the election of 1800… then what?

[jycee]

During the election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Dem-Republican nominees for President and VP respectively got the same number of electoral votes. At the time the votes for POTUS and VP were cast in the same pool with the Presidency going to the person with the most votes, and VP to the runner up. The parties tried to coordinate votes so their choice for VP ended up with one less vote than their choice for President, but the party failed to execute on this plan; thus all of the Democratic-Republican electors cast their votes for both Jefferson and Burr, 73 in all for each of them.

According to a provision of the United States Constitution, a tie in a case of this type had to be resolved by the House of Representatives in a contingent election. The outgoing house retained a Federalist majority who was wary of electing Jefferson, while Burr refused to concede to Jefferson. This resulted in a deadlocked series of votes, until Hamilton (a Federalist) rallied enough vote to back Jefferson. But what if Hamilton failed and Burr is voted in as President? This would surely result in a constitutional crisis. Who fills the VP slot? Would Jefferson accept it, if he doesn’t would Adams accept a “demotion” as the candidate with the third most votes. Or Burr ends up with Pinckney who had the forth most votes? And under these circumstances what would a Burr Presidency look like?

 

[Archduke]

I think Jefferson said something about calling up militias if Burr was elected. Not sure though.

 

[Nivek]

I think Jefferson said something about calling up militias if Burr was elected. Not sure though.

WHAT MADNESS IS IT!?!

And under these circumstances what would a Burr Presidency look like?

Hamilton commit suicide by shooting..even if that doesn't look that way

 

[Archduke]

WHAT MADNESS IS IT!?!

Hamilton commit suicide by shooting..even if that doesn't look that way

I know that Jefferson made some mentionof calling up the militias. However, it may have been due to the suspicion that Adams would try to retain the presidency if the House could not elect anyone.

 

[Mikestone8]

I know that Jefferson made some mentionof calling up the militias. However, it may have been due to the suspicion that Adams would try to retain the presidency if the House could not elect anyone.

Iirc some Federalists were talking about rushing through a law to allow Sec of State John Marshall to act as POTUS if none had been elected by March 4. Someone (not sure if it was Jefferson) reportedly said that if they wanted a civil war that was a quick way to get it.

 

[jycee]

I think Jefferson said something about calling up militias if Burr was elected. Not sure though.

I know that Jefferson made some mention of calling up the militias. However, it may have been due to the suspicion that Adams would try to retain the presidency if the House could not elect anyone.

IIRC some Federalists were talking about rushing through a law to allow Sec of State John Marshall to act as POTUS if none had been elected by March 4. Someone (not sure if it was Jefferson) reportedly said that if they wanted a civil war that was a quick way to get it.

Either way, it goes to show that Jefferson won't accept the result without raising some level of fuss. Even if he doesn't go as far as calling the militia (and I am not convinced he wouldn't), Jefferson is highly unlikely to accept the VP post and very likely to rally his supporters against the administration from the get-go. Depending on how far Jefferson pushes the Federalists may fully rally behind Burr (Hamilton and company excluded).

It seems this will end up with Congress deadlocked between Jefferson supporters, Hamiltonian Federalist, and an uneasy alliance of Federalist and Dem-Rep supporters of Burr. How could this administration handle the end of the quasi-war, the Louisiana Purchase, western expansion (most importantly Georgia's frontiers)... it seems that overall it wont be able to handle much.

 

[Mikestone8]

QUOTE="jycee, post: 20648693, member: 8569"]It seems this will end up with Congress deadlocked between Jefferson supporters, Hamiltonian Federalist, and an uneasy alliance of Federalist and Dem-Rep supporters of Burr. How could this administration handle the end of the quasi-war, the Louisiana Purchase, western expansion (most importantly Georgia's frontiers)... it seems that overall it wont be able to handle much.[/QUOTE]

Could you miss out on the Louisiana Purchase - or would it just be acquired a year or two later?

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Did some quick research on this. First, this is the text of the relevant section of the Constitution in operation at the time. The 12th Amendment was passed afterwards to prevent this situation from happening again:

"The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse [sic] by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse [sic] the President. But in chusing [sic] the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse [sic] from them by Ballot the Vice President."

The election was decided by the House of Representatives because of a coordination failure (or trick by the Burr faction) so that all the Jefferson electors voted for both Jefferson and Burr, meaning they both got 73 votes, while one of the Adams electors did not vote for his running mate, Pickney, so Adams came third with 73.

There apparently was confusion at the time as to who would become Vice President after the House of Representatives chose the President. Though the drafting of the 1787 Constitution was horrible, to me the text clearly reads that once the House chooses the President, the candidate with the most electoral votes who did not become President would be Vice President, which IOTL in fact was Burr, and if Burr had been elected would have been Jefferson. Jefferson already was Vice President, having gotten the office through a similar coordination failure on the part of the Federalists in the previous election. The procedure was really horrible until the 12th Amendment sort of fixed it.

One change the 12th Amendment made was to allow the House of Representatives to choose the third place finisher in the Electoral College, had this been operational in 1800 they could have picked Adams.

To complicate things further, there was the idea among the Federalists of just maintaining the deadlock in the House. The relevant Wikipedia article states that John Marshall, then Secretary of State, would have become acting president until the deadlock was resolved, which might have taken until the 1802 congressional election. However, the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 made the President Pro Tempore of the Senate next in line, and the Senate not having selected a President Pro Tempore, the next in line after that was Theodore Sedgwick, Speaker of the House. The Presidential Succession Act provided that whoever became acting president would serve as such until a new permanent president was chosen. Marshall would only be appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court IOTL after the House elected Jefferson.

If the Federalists had just elected Burr, then constitutionally Burr becomes President, and Jefferson remains as Vice President, whether he takes the oath or not. If Jefferson resigns as Vice President, the next in line for presidential secession would have been whoever the House elected as Speaker (IOTL Nathanial Macon), though this could have been Jefferson himself, and the Senate could still have elected a President Pro Tempore.

Politically, Burr's election would have been corrupt bargain of 1824 on steroids (actually the 1824 election of Adams was completely above board and entirely in accordance with the rules, and unlike Jefferson, Jackson never had an Electoral College majority). However, IOTL, there have been two instances where a Vice President of a different party than the President became President due to a vacancy (1841 and 1865), two instances where a President was assassinated and there were suspicions that that his successor or his followers were behind the assassination (1881 and 1963), and four or five instances of an Electoral College/ Popular Vote reversal (1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016, possibly also 1960), with one of them (1876) being highly suspicious and needing to be resolved by another bargain between the parties. Based on these examples, Burr would have become President, though probably serving only one term. There might be a genuine three way contest for the Presidency in 1804, but by then the 12th Amendment or something similar would have passed.

Where this becomes interesting is how Burr handles negotiations with Napoleon and the Louisiana purchase.

 

[Mikestone8]

One change the 12th Amendment made was to allow the House of Representatives to choose the third place finisher in the Electoral College, had this been operational in 1800 they could have picked Adams.

Only if Adams had an equal number of votes with Jefferson and Burr. OTL he had only 65 votes to their 73.

 

[Mikestone8]

During the election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Dem-Republican nominees for President and VP respectively got the same number of electoral votes. At the time the votes for POTUS and VP were cast in the same pool with the Presidency going to the person with the most votes, and VP to the runner up. The parties tried to coordinate votes so their choice for VP ended up with one less vote than their choice for President, but the party failed to execute on this plan; thus all of the Democratic-Republican electors cast their votes for both Jefferson and Burr, 73 in all for each of them.

Trouble is, just one elector might not have been enough. Say one elector did this, and the Federalists became aware of it, then *two* Federalist Electors might give their second votes to Burr, putting *him* in the lead.

To prevent this, it would be necessary for an entire state to "throw away" its second votes. Lets say it was SC who did so, voting for Jefferson and, say, John Randolph. Then Jefferson still has 73 votes, but Adams and Burr are tied at 65 each.

But - - at this point, just a few days before the Electors meet, Adams writes to the Governor of Massachusetts along the following lines "For several days past it has been clear that Mr Jefferson shall receive a majority of the electoral votes, and that I shall not. However, there remains a possibility that I may receive the second largest vote, and so find myself chosen to serve as Vice President with Mr Jefferson. This I am not prepared to do, so I request, when the Electors shall meet to cast their votes, that you read this letter to them, making it clear that I do not wish any votes to be cast for myself, and my desire that each of them shall cast one vote for Mr Pinckney, and the other for whichever of the remaining contenders shall appear to him the lesser evil.".

If MA gives its 16 votes to Pinckney and Burr, this gives Burr 81 votes to Jefferson's 73. I should guess that it was precisely the fear of such a contingency that made Electors so reluctant to throw away their second votes.

 

[redjirachi]

He can kiss his chances of getting re-elected goodbye. 1804 is going to look way more interesting than OTL

 

[David T]

An old post of mine:

***

Usually, the "Burr wins" scenarios here have been about his winning in the House (if Hamilton didn't convince enough Federalists to oppose him). But suppose he wins in the Electoral College? Two scenarios:

(1) For some reason, one Democratic-Republican elector dislikes Jefferson and prefers Burr, so he votes for Burr and some other D-R.

(2) Some Federalist elector hates Jefferson (of course) but also hates Adams--even more than Hamilton did. And he doesn't share Hamilton's antipathy to Burr--or at least he feels that the opportunist Burr is a lesser evil than the "fanatical" Jefferson. So he votes for Pinckney (whom he sincerely hopes will win) but also for Burr...

The Jeffersonians of course are going to be very angry. Besides the Twelfth Amendment as in OTL, may we see some sort of constitutional amendment prohibiting faithless electors?

As for why Burr would accept the presidency under such circumstances--with both parties disliking him--rather than yielding to Jefferson and hoping for the Democratic-Republican presidential nomination in 1808 or even 1804 (after all, as John E. Ferling once noted in *Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800,* p. 183, Jefferson had shown a "penchant for retiring to Monticello--he had done so in 1776, 1781, and 1793" https://books.google.com/books?id=j0wB9SX1VrEC&pg=PA183), Ferling observes,

"While the odds were good that Burr would live another twenty years, dying young was not uncommon in the eighteenth century. In fact, Burr's mother and father had died at ages twenty-seven and forty-two, respectively, while his wife, Theodosia, had passed away at forty-seven. Furthermore, Burr like every other activist, was all too aware of the vagaries of politics. Any politician who attempted to plan career moves eight or even four years down the road was on shaky ground. Any veteran of the American Revolution would have known as much, having seen the political landscape turn topsy-turvy by the overthrow of British rule and the demise of the Articles of Confederation. For that matter, within a six-month span in 1798 the Federalist Party had fallen from the giddy heights of supremacy to division and despair, and in two years John Adams had gone from being hailed as the equal of Washington in popularity to a defeated president who was being sent packing."

Of course it may be objected: Didn't Burr realize that even if he won the presidency in 1800--either through "faithless electors" or in the House--he would be regarded by a majority of Democratic-Republicans as a usurper, and that his presidency would become a shambles even before he took the oath of office? The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes that the future lay with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans, and that the wise thing for an ambitious man like Burr to do was to ingratiate himself with them. This is obvious enough *to us* because we know that Jefferson's party was to dominate American politics for decades after 1800. But of course Burr could not know that in 1800. To quote Ferling again (p. 184):

"However, it must be remembered that the political parties in existence in 1800 were not entrenched institutions like those of today. They were less than a decade old and only recently had become reasonably well-disciplined entities. Both parties had members who shifted to the other side as new issues emerged or as the political wind changed direction. In fact, in the run-up to the canvass of 1800 many had been convinced that a party restructuring was under way. There had been much talk in 1799 and early 1800 that Adams and Jefferson would conclude a bargain that resurrected the so-called Adams-Lee Junto, the Virginia-New England alliance that had controlled the Continental Congress during the first several years of the American Revolution. Such a turn of affairs had probably never been in the works, but even some savvy politicians had believed it and suspected that a new party might supplant one of the two in existence or that a third party might come into being. In January and February some who pushed Burr's candidacy appeared to believe--and to welcome--his presidency as the means of restructuring the existing parties along sectional lines. If so, it would not have been inconceivable for Burr to have had the solid backing of a viable new party." http://books.google.com/books?id=j0wB9SX1VrEC&pg=PA184

Given all that, Burr's decision to go after the big prize immediately rather than waiting four or eight years was actually a more reasonable decision than it may look like in retrospect. And anyway in this ATL he has not done anything actively to seek it: the office has been thrust on him, he explains...

 

[LuckyLuciano]

"However, it must be remembered that the political parties in existence in 1800 were not entrenched institutions like those of today. They were less than a decade old and only recently had become reasonably well-disciplined entities. Both parties had members who shifted to the other side as new issues emerged or as the political wind changed direction. In fact, in the run-up to the canvass of 1800 many had been convinced that a party restructuring was under way. There had been much talk in 1799 and early 1800 that Adams and Jefferson would conclude a bargain that resurrected the so-called Adams-Lee Junto, the Virginia-New England alliance that had controlled the Continental Congress during the first several years of the American Revolution. Such a turn of affairs had probably never been in the works, but even some savvy politicians had believed it and suspected that a new party might supplant one of the two in existence or that a third party might come into being. In January and February some who pushed Burr's candidacy appeared to believe--and to welcome--his presidency as the means of restructuring the existing parties along sectional lines. If so, it would not have been inconceivable for Burr to have had the solid backing of a viable new party." http://books.google.com/books?id=j0wB9SX1VrEC&pg=PA184

In such a case what are the likely resulting parties, a Virginia-New England alliance and a New York - Deep South alliance? What are the sectional lines being referred to? And if a three party system were to develop what would be the power bases?

Additionally and unrelated, assuming Burr does not pursue a Louisiana purchase due to not wishing to expand slave power, what becomes of French Louisiana? Or if he is more likely to pursue it, why?

 

[marktaha]

Anthology "Alternate Presidents" included "The War of '07" with President Burr.