Remember that in 1796 there were no separate votes labeled "votes for president" and "votes for vice-president"; rather, each elector voted for two persons, and the person with the most electoral votes (if it was a majority) became president and the one with the second most became vice-president. This fact--which proved so nearly disastrous in 1800--could already have led to some bizarre consequences in 1796, as Page Smith noted in his chapter on "The Election of 1796" in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Fred L. Israel and William P. Hansen (eds) *History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1968, Volume I 1789-1824* (New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1985).
As Smith observes, Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina had been prevailed upon by Federalists to run on the same ticket with John Adams. This was designed to draw some southern votes away from Jefferson; it was also hoped that Pinckney's name on the ballot would attract some votes in Pennsylvania and Maryland. (Pinckney at the time was enjoying a modest fame as the author of a favorable treaty with Spain.)
However, Alexander Hamilton--who had only reluctantly accepted John Adams as Washington's successor--hit upon a dangerous plan. The idea was to divert a few electoral votes from Adams to his running mate, thereby giving the election to Pinckney:
"The plan called for the Federalist electors in New England to cast all their votes for Adams and Pinckney for President and Vice-President while the electors from South Carolina, Pinckney's home state, would throw away a few Adams votes and thus give the presidency to the man plainly intended to be Vice-President, leaving Adams in that office. It was a reckless plan with unforeseen consequences. Had it succeeded and the Federalist candidate for Vice-President become President by a ruse, the Federalist party would have become split beyond hope of repair. Adams would almost certainly have resigned as Vice-President, leaving that office presumably to Jefferson or Burr. Equally likely was the election of Jefferson as President.
"Word of the scheme leaked out and in the nick of time. A number of New England electors protected Adams by scratching Pinckney's name from their ballots but in South Carolina 8 votes went to Pinckney and 8 to Jefferson. Between the choice of the electors in November and the counting of the ballots in January endless rumors circlated." (pp. 71-72) (One should remember that since the electors were not bound to vote for a particular candidate or ticket, much of the electioneering went on *after* the electors had been chosen--in some states by the voters, in others by the legislatures--in November.)
Fisher Ames in early December, in a letter to Christopher Gore, expressed concern about the possible outcome of the election:
"Thus, you see, it is very close. Accident, whim, intrigue, not to say corruption, may change or prevent a vote or two. Perhaps some may be illegal and excluded. . . Who can foresee the issue of this momentous election? Perhaps the Jeffs, foreseeing a defeat, may vote for Mr. Pinckney, in which case he might come in by two-thirds of all the votes. But they expect success, and therefore will not throw away their votes. Yet Mr. P. may have more than Adams; and of the three chances, his may be thought the most hopeful. That would be a subject of incalculable consequences. On the one hand, he is a good man; on the other, even a good President, thus made by luck or sheer dexterity of play, would stand badly with parties and with the country. It would wear an ill aspect in Europe, as well as here."
How likely was Hamilton's stratagem to work? Here are the actual results:
JA=John Adams
TJ=Thomas Jefferson
TP=Thomas Pinckney
AB=Aaron Burr
SA=Samuel Adams
OE=Oliver Ellsworth
GC=George Clinton
JJ=John Jay
JI=James Iredell
GW=George Washington
SJ=Samuel Johnston
JH=John Henry
CCP= Charles C. Pinckney
Let's say that the word of Hamilton's scheme had not leaked out "in the nick of time" and that the New England Federalist electors who in OTL voted for Adams and Ellsworth, or Adams and Johnston, or Adams and Jay, had instead all voted for Adams and Thomas Pinckney. This would give Pinckney 18 extra electoral votes--putting him easily in first place. Even if only some of those electors had supported Pinckney, he might narrowly come out ahead of Adams. And that is even ignoring the possibility that one or more additional Jefferson electors would vote for Pinckney as well, as indeed happened in South Carolina. (One could say that South Carolina was a special case because Pinckney was a "favorite son", but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._pr...election,_1796 at least one Pennsylvania elector also voted for Jefferson and Pinckney. It seems perfectly plausible that some additional Jefferson electors might decide to do so. They might not have given up hope of electing Jefferson as president, but they might have been determined in any event to see that Adams did not get the office [1], and they might also realize that even if Jefferson won, it would be unlikely that the Republicans could elect a *vice*-president anyway, given the divisions between Burr, George Clinton, Samuel Adams, etc.)
Page Smith's judgment (pp. 75-6) is that "Had Pinckney become an accidental President as the consequence of Hamilton's plot, the spirit of partisan bitterness so apparent in the country would have increased with results that could hardly have been favorable to stability and good order. Adams Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans would have shared at least one thing in common--a convinction that intrigue and manipulation had thwarted the popular will." One posible consequence that occurs to me--do we get something like the Twelfth Amendment before the 1800 election?
Was Pinckney in on Hamilton's stratagem? According to Richard P. McCormack in *The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics,* (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP 1982) p. 54, Hamilton was informed by Robert S. Harper of South Carolina that Pinckney had strong support in the South. (Harper correctly predicted that Pinckney would get all of South Carolina's electoral votes, and incorrectly predicted that he would get all of North Carolina's and Georgia's as well, and some from Virginia--OK, he did get one from there...) "If he were to be supported equally with Adams in New England and the Middle States as well, he could become President. But there was the possibility that Pinckney could be dissuaded from being a candidate when he returned to America. Writing to a confidant in South Carolina, Harper urged him to prevail on Pinckney to remain in the race. 'Major Pinckney may be assured, I speak from the most certain knowledge,' he insisted, 'that the intention of bringing him forward was to make him President.'"
So assuming that this confidant of Harper's did get in touch with Pinckney, Pinckney was presumably aware that there was a plan to make him President, though not necessarily that Hamilton was behind it. I don't know whether in fact Pinckney was told--he didn't get back to the US until December. In any event, whether or not he was told, and whether or not Harper's letter became public knowledge, a victorious Pinckney's embittered opponents--in both the Adams and Jefferson camps--would *assume* he knew.
There is, incidentally, a case to be made for Hamilton's "plot." Hamilton after all did not *create* the hostility to Adams in the South, and there is no evidence that he urged any elector anywhere to vote *against* Adams (as opposed to urging them to vote for both Adams and Pinckney.) The decision of South Carolina to cast all its electoral votes for Pinckney and Jefferson was not, so far as I can determine, Hamilton's work in any way. According to McCormack, the "seemingly...anomalous" results in South Carolina "are explainable in part by the southern aversion to Adams and even more by the potent influence of Governor Edward Rutledge, who was Pinckney's father-in-law as well as a friend and admirer of Jefferson." (p. 56) In any event this decision--for which Hamilton was not responsible--did create a real opportunity for Pinckney to become President; but it also created a real danger that Jefferson would become President if northern Federalist electors voted for Adams and someone other than Pinckney.
So while Hamilton may have been disingenuous in saying that his purpose was not to elevate Pinckney over Adams but to assure that in any event Jefferson would not become president, still, he was pointing to a real danger (from the Federalist viewpoint). Jefferson, after all, fell just short of winning--he would have prevailed had he gotten all the electoral votes of Pennsylvania (which he very narrowly missed doing) and one vote elsewhere (say the single Adams votes in Virginia or North Carolina). Moreover, there was a possibility of a challenge to Vermont's Federalist electoral votes (the Vermont legislature had simply appointed electors without passing any prior law authorizing itself to do so). Hamilton didn't conceal that he would not be unhappy to have Pinckney president, but there was substance to his stop-Jefferson-by-voting-for-Pinckney argument. In short, there was a genuine dilemma here, and the New England Federalist electors knew it, which is why they agonized so much about their choice, as McCormack explains (pp. 55-7):
"As the first Wednesday in December approached, the day when the electors were to cast their ballots, Federalist managers engaged in frantic calculations. In the face of Hamilton's insistence that Pinckney must be supported equally with Adams, New England Federalists balked. They still retained the hope that Adams could be elected, but they saw that unless they deprived Pinckney of some votes, the South Carolinian would move ahead of Adams. But if Adams failed, and they cut Pinckney too severely, their actions might result in the election of Jefferson. Either course involved great hazard.
"When the Massachusetts electors convened, Stephen Higginson showed them a letter from Hamilton urging a full vote for Pinckney. But amidst great indecision, they decided to give all their first votes to Adams and throw away three of their second votes. New Hampshire and Rhode Island gave no votes to Pinckney. In Connecticut the electors delayed their vote until late in the evening, waiting for the most up-to-date information before deciding what support they would give to Pinckney. 'We stood upon very conjectural grounds,' Oliver Wolcott, Sr., reported, 'but upon such information as we had, and after a perplexing consideration, I was of opinion, and the majority of the electors adopted the same, that we ought to run very considerable risk, rather than not secure, if possible, the election of Mr. Adams, and that it would be expedient to lessen Mr. Pinckney's vote to the amount of four or five'....
"In the Federalist camp, postmorterms on the election revealed some uneasiness. The Hamiltonians continued to justify their strategy on the grounds that their overriding objective had been to defeat Jefferson. 'As the event of the election was all important and extremely critical, we judged it the soundest policy to take a double chance,' explained Robert Troup of New York to Rufus King; 'the contrary policy put everything at hazard, and we have made a hairbreadth escape.' He was greatly concerned, however, that the Republicans were 'fraternizing' with Adams and insinuating that Hamilton had engaged in treachery. Partisans of Adams were irate at what they viewed as a dastardly attempt by the Hamiltonians to win the presidency for Pinckney. Adams, himself, concluded that the Hamiltonians meant no treachery, 'and they were frightened into a belief that I should fail, and they, in their agony, thought it better to bring in Pinckney than Jefferson, and some, I believe, preferred bringing in Pinckney President rather than Jefferson should be Vice President.' but he did confess that 'to see such an unknown being as Pinckney, brought over my head, and trampling on the bellies of hundreds of other men infinitely his superiors in talents, services, and reputation filled me with apprehension for the safety of us all.'"
[1] Though at least one Jefferson elector apparently voted for John Adams as well...
As Smith observes, Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina had been prevailed upon by Federalists to run on the same ticket with John Adams. This was designed to draw some southern votes away from Jefferson; it was also hoped that Pinckney's name on the ballot would attract some votes in Pennsylvania and Maryland. (Pinckney at the time was enjoying a modest fame as the author of a favorable treaty with Spain.)
However, Alexander Hamilton--who had only reluctantly accepted John Adams as Washington's successor--hit upon a dangerous plan. The idea was to divert a few electoral votes from Adams to his running mate, thereby giving the election to Pinckney:
"The plan called for the Federalist electors in New England to cast all their votes for Adams and Pinckney for President and Vice-President while the electors from South Carolina, Pinckney's home state, would throw away a few Adams votes and thus give the presidency to the man plainly intended to be Vice-President, leaving Adams in that office. It was a reckless plan with unforeseen consequences. Had it succeeded and the Federalist candidate for Vice-President become President by a ruse, the Federalist party would have become split beyond hope of repair. Adams would almost certainly have resigned as Vice-President, leaving that office presumably to Jefferson or Burr. Equally likely was the election of Jefferson as President.
"Word of the scheme leaked out and in the nick of time. A number of New England electors protected Adams by scratching Pinckney's name from their ballots but in South Carolina 8 votes went to Pinckney and 8 to Jefferson. Between the choice of the electors in November and the counting of the ballots in January endless rumors circlated." (pp. 71-72) (One should remember that since the electors were not bound to vote for a particular candidate or ticket, much of the electioneering went on *after* the electors had been chosen--in some states by the voters, in others by the legislatures--in November.)
Fisher Ames in early December, in a letter to Christopher Gore, expressed concern about the possible outcome of the election:
"Thus, you see, it is very close. Accident, whim, intrigue, not to say corruption, may change or prevent a vote or two. Perhaps some may be illegal and excluded. . . Who can foresee the issue of this momentous election? Perhaps the Jeffs, foreseeing a defeat, may vote for Mr. Pinckney, in which case he might come in by two-thirds of all the votes. But they expect success, and therefore will not throw away their votes. Yet Mr. P. may have more than Adams; and of the three chances, his may be thought the most hopeful. That would be a subject of incalculable consequences. On the one hand, he is a good man; on the other, even a good President, thus made by luck or sheer dexterity of play, would stand badly with parties and with the country. It would wear an ill aspect in Europe, as well as here."
How likely was Hamilton's stratagem to work? Here are the actual results:
JA=John Adams
TJ=Thomas Jefferson
TP=Thomas Pinckney
AB=Aaron Burr
SA=Samuel Adams
OE=Oliver Ellsworth
GC=George Clinton
JJ=John Jay
JI=James Iredell
GW=George Washington
SJ=Samuel Johnston
JH=John Henry
CCP= Charles C. Pinckney
Let's say that the word of Hamilton's scheme had not leaked out "in the nick of time" and that the New England Federalist electors who in OTL voted for Adams and Ellsworth, or Adams and Johnston, or Adams and Jay, had instead all voted for Adams and Thomas Pinckney. This would give Pinckney 18 extra electoral votes--putting him easily in first place. Even if only some of those electors had supported Pinckney, he might narrowly come out ahead of Adams. And that is even ignoring the possibility that one or more additional Jefferson electors would vote for Pinckney as well, as indeed happened in South Carolina. (One could say that South Carolina was a special case because Pinckney was a "favorite son", but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._pr...election,_1796 at least one Pennsylvania elector also voted for Jefferson and Pinckney. It seems perfectly plausible that some additional Jefferson electors might decide to do so. They might not have given up hope of electing Jefferson as president, but they might have been determined in any event to see that Adams did not get the office [1], and they might also realize that even if Jefferson won, it would be unlikely that the Republicans could elect a *vice*-president anyway, given the divisions between Burr, George Clinton, Samuel Adams, etc.)
Page Smith's judgment (pp. 75-6) is that "Had Pinckney become an accidental President as the consequence of Hamilton's plot, the spirit of partisan bitterness so apparent in the country would have increased with results that could hardly have been favorable to stability and good order. Adams Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans would have shared at least one thing in common--a convinction that intrigue and manipulation had thwarted the popular will." One posible consequence that occurs to me--do we get something like the Twelfth Amendment before the 1800 election?
Was Pinckney in on Hamilton's stratagem? According to Richard P. McCormack in *The Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics,* (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP 1982) p. 54, Hamilton was informed by Robert S. Harper of South Carolina that Pinckney had strong support in the South. (Harper correctly predicted that Pinckney would get all of South Carolina's electoral votes, and incorrectly predicted that he would get all of North Carolina's and Georgia's as well, and some from Virginia--OK, he did get one from there...) "If he were to be supported equally with Adams in New England and the Middle States as well, he could become President. But there was the possibility that Pinckney could be dissuaded from being a candidate when he returned to America. Writing to a confidant in South Carolina, Harper urged him to prevail on Pinckney to remain in the race. 'Major Pinckney may be assured, I speak from the most certain knowledge,' he insisted, 'that the intention of bringing him forward was to make him President.'"
So assuming that this confidant of Harper's did get in touch with Pinckney, Pinckney was presumably aware that there was a plan to make him President, though not necessarily that Hamilton was behind it. I don't know whether in fact Pinckney was told--he didn't get back to the US until December. In any event, whether or not he was told, and whether or not Harper's letter became public knowledge, a victorious Pinckney's embittered opponents--in both the Adams and Jefferson camps--would *assume* he knew.
There is, incidentally, a case to be made for Hamilton's "plot." Hamilton after all did not *create* the hostility to Adams in the South, and there is no evidence that he urged any elector anywhere to vote *against* Adams (as opposed to urging them to vote for both Adams and Pinckney.) The decision of South Carolina to cast all its electoral votes for Pinckney and Jefferson was not, so far as I can determine, Hamilton's work in any way. According to McCormack, the "seemingly...anomalous" results in South Carolina "are explainable in part by the southern aversion to Adams and even more by the potent influence of Governor Edward Rutledge, who was Pinckney's father-in-law as well as a friend and admirer of Jefferson." (p. 56) In any event this decision--for which Hamilton was not responsible--did create a real opportunity for Pinckney to become President; but it also created a real danger that Jefferson would become President if northern Federalist electors voted for Adams and someone other than Pinckney.
So while Hamilton may have been disingenuous in saying that his purpose was not to elevate Pinckney over Adams but to assure that in any event Jefferson would not become president, still, he was pointing to a real danger (from the Federalist viewpoint). Jefferson, after all, fell just short of winning--he would have prevailed had he gotten all the electoral votes of Pennsylvania (which he very narrowly missed doing) and one vote elsewhere (say the single Adams votes in Virginia or North Carolina). Moreover, there was a possibility of a challenge to Vermont's Federalist electoral votes (the Vermont legislature had simply appointed electors without passing any prior law authorizing itself to do so). Hamilton didn't conceal that he would not be unhappy to have Pinckney president, but there was substance to his stop-Jefferson-by-voting-for-Pinckney argument. In short, there was a genuine dilemma here, and the New England Federalist electors knew it, which is why they agonized so much about their choice, as McCormack explains (pp. 55-7):
"As the first Wednesday in December approached, the day when the electors were to cast their ballots, Federalist managers engaged in frantic calculations. In the face of Hamilton's insistence that Pinckney must be supported equally with Adams, New England Federalists balked. They still retained the hope that Adams could be elected, but they saw that unless they deprived Pinckney of some votes, the South Carolinian would move ahead of Adams. But if Adams failed, and they cut Pinckney too severely, their actions might result in the election of Jefferson. Either course involved great hazard.
"When the Massachusetts electors convened, Stephen Higginson showed them a letter from Hamilton urging a full vote for Pinckney. But amidst great indecision, they decided to give all their first votes to Adams and throw away three of their second votes. New Hampshire and Rhode Island gave no votes to Pinckney. In Connecticut the electors delayed their vote until late in the evening, waiting for the most up-to-date information before deciding what support they would give to Pinckney. 'We stood upon very conjectural grounds,' Oliver Wolcott, Sr., reported, 'but upon such information as we had, and after a perplexing consideration, I was of opinion, and the majority of the electors adopted the same, that we ought to run very considerable risk, rather than not secure, if possible, the election of Mr. Adams, and that it would be expedient to lessen Mr. Pinckney's vote to the amount of four or five'....
"In the Federalist camp, postmorterms on the election revealed some uneasiness. The Hamiltonians continued to justify their strategy on the grounds that their overriding objective had been to defeat Jefferson. 'As the event of the election was all important and extremely critical, we judged it the soundest policy to take a double chance,' explained Robert Troup of New York to Rufus King; 'the contrary policy put everything at hazard, and we have made a hairbreadth escape.' He was greatly concerned, however, that the Republicans were 'fraternizing' with Adams and insinuating that Hamilton had engaged in treachery. Partisans of Adams were irate at what they viewed as a dastardly attempt by the Hamiltonians to win the presidency for Pinckney. Adams, himself, concluded that the Hamiltonians meant no treachery, 'and they were frightened into a belief that I should fail, and they, in their agony, thought it better to bring in Pinckney than Jefferson, and some, I believe, preferred bringing in Pinckney President rather than Jefferson should be Vice President.' but he did confess that 'to see such an unknown being as Pinckney, brought over my head, and trampling on the bellies of hundreds of other men infinitely his superiors in talents, services, and reputation filled me with apprehension for the safety of us all.'"
[1] Though at least one Jefferson elector apparently voted for John Adams as well...