Posted on 10/01/2004 6:37:56 PM PDT by Valin
It was a contest of titans: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two heroes of the Revolutionary era, once intimate friends, now icy antagonists locked in a fierce battle for the future of the United States. The election of 1800 was a thunderous clash of a campaign that climaxed in a deadlock in the Electoral College and led to a crisis in which the young republic teetered on the edge of collapse.
Adams vs. Jefferson is a gripping account of a true turning point in American history, a dramatic struggle between two parties with profoundly different visions of how the nation should be governed. Adams led the Federalists, conservatives who favored a strong central government, and Jefferson led the Republicans, egalitarians who felt the Federalists had betrayed the Revolution of 1776 and were backsliding toward monarchy.
The campaign itself was a barroom brawl every bit as ruthless as any modern contest, with mud-slinging--Federalists called Jefferson "a howling atheist"--scare tactics, and backstabbing. The low point came when Alexander Hamilton printed a devastating attack on Adams, the head of his own party, in "fifty-four pages of unremitting vilification." The election ended in a stalemate in the Electoral College that dragged on for days and nights and through dozens of ballots. Tensions ran so high that the Republicans threatened civil war if the Federalists denied Jefferson the presidency. Finally a secret deal that changed a single vote gave Jefferson the White House. A devastated Adams left Washington before dawn on Inauguration Day, too embittered even to shake his rival's hand.
Jefferson's election, John Ferling concludes, consummated the American Revolution, assuring the democratization of the United States and its true separation from Britain. With magisterial command, Ferling brings to life both the outsize personalities and the hotly contested political questions at stake. He shows not just why this moment was a milestone in U.S. history, but how strongly the issues--and the passions--of 1800 resonate with our own time.
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One of the infinite number of reasons I get so tired of people these days bitching and moaning about negative campaigning, "attack ads," "politics of personal destruction." etc. What utter rot.
Campaigns in the 19th century were so vicious they make the worst of this campaign look like a joke.
"My seconds shall call upon you on the morrow."
I could see that.
youre right
I wonder what Washington would have thought had he still been alive at the time?
Ping
Not Alexander Hamilton's finest hour.
My only complaint with the book -- a minor point, really -- is that Vidal refers to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party (today the longest surviving political party in world history, the Democratic Party, having dropped the "Republican" part of their name in the 1830s) by the then-common shorthand "Republican Party," which may cause confusion among readers not knowledgeable about the history of American political parties. (Vidal assumes his readers know that the modern-day Republican Party didn’t come along until decades after most of the Founders were dead, being a semi-resurrection of the Whigs, who, in turn were a semi-resurrection of the Federalists).
A crowd of over 500 watched as Miller place a ball in Matthews' heart with his 1837 McAvoy dueling pistol.
The seconds awarded Miller both ears and the tail.
It was Jackson who embraced the "Democratic-" part of the name, and after the splintering of Jefferson's Republican Party, Jackson, Van Buren and Crawford dropped the Republican part altogether when the created the Democratic Party.
Gore Vidal is a leftist. I'm sure he wasn't trying to hide the fact that Jefferson et al were the Party of Democrats.
Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle is reported to be "deeply saddened".
It could never happen today. The dead could not vote back then. And it would have been tough to work a deal to change their vote.
You and me both.
Right you are, my friend. Back in the late 1700's the word "democrat" and "democratic" was another word of Jacobin; as in French revolution Jacobin, the Reign of Terror and other assorted spin-offs from the European "Rights-of-Man" crowd.
The serious soiling of Matthews pants is believed to have occured before the shooting but just after he said "You're just kidding, Zell, right?"
Yep....and we're still dealing with the Islamic extremists, too!
Ping
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