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Interview with President-elect Thomas Jefferson on the Election of 1800
Background
The election of 1800 was one of the most contentious campaigns in United States history. Presidential electors cast ballots on December 3. When the votes were counted on February 11, 1801, Federalists John Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckey received sixty-five and sixty-four electoral votes respectively. Federalist John Jay received one vote. Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied with seventy-three votes each. Because of the tie, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. On February 17, 1801, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Thomas Jefferson was elected third president of the United States. Aaron Burr became vice president. On March 4, Jefferson became the first president to take the oath of office in Washington, D.C.
Bill Barker, an expert on the life of our third president, has portrayed Thomas Jefferson throughout the United States and abroad. He is a character interpreter with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. (The responses to the following questions are from Bill Barker, speaking as the president-elect.)
(February 1801)
Mr. Jefferson, Congratulations on your election victory. You termed this victory the "Revolution of 1800." Why?
This election resulted in a peaceable overthrow of the government that had been established after our constitutional convention and which had been in office for more than a decade. That Federalist government was overthrown by a party with a new political philosophy, the Democratic-Republican philosophy. This was without any raising of arms or shedding of blood, but done in a peaceable, successful fashion, as revolutions may be conducted.
How do you appeal to those Federalists who see you as one who would (and I quote) "destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society"? A Boston newspaper even reported that some of the ladies there hid their Bibles under mattresses on hearing of the election victory of the Virginia "atheist."
Well, they are certainly free to believe what they choose and to express their concerns accordingly. This is a guarantee under our Bill of Rights. It is the first article in our Bill of Rights, our very first security as Americans, guaranteeing our freedom of speech, our freedom of the press, and our freedom of religion. As the new chief executive, I intend to support that freedom of religion: that the government make no law establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. I do not see that this will incur the destruction of religion or introduce any immorality. I have always believed that that government governs best which attends directly to protecting people from injury by one another, but otherwise leaving them free to pursue their own industry and their own improvement. Such improvement is the more direct and the more successful when the people are free to pursue their own religious convictions and the improvement of their morality and of their character, without the dictates or dogmas of government imposed upon them.
As far as any claims of my own particular religious opinion, whether I be atheist, infidel, blasphemer or heretic, I have never made comment in public of my religious opinion.
I inquire of no person's religion, nor do I bother any with my own, for I believe a person’s religion is solely between them and their maker. Be assured that I do carry my communion with my Maker deep within my heart and endeavor each day to do my duty unto my Creator, which is to do good to my fellow man.
Mr. Jefferson, do you personally support news writers in the expression of their opinions?
I have never paid one cent directly to any of the news writers to support my particular principles on the Democratic-Republican platform, but I do support the freedom of the press to express their opinion and particularly news writers to support their own paper, as I have Mr. Freneau and as I have Mr. James Thomson Callender. Unfortunately, Mr. Callender was wont to print mistruths in his pamphlet "The Prospect Before Us" and was, therefore, thrown into jail under the Sedition Acts of the past administration. He has addressed me upon what he considers the injustice of his position, and I would agree. To be thrown into jail for any comments or attacks against the government is not warranted in equal justice to all men and the preservation of our liberty. But Mr. Callender’s request that I bail him out of jail and that I give him monies that he might begin again to write against the Federalist government I certainly cannot abide. He will remain in jail through his imprisonment unless of course the Sedition Acts may be repealed tomorrow. And I will find it incumbent in my sympathies toward him that he might receive some monies to remit his fine of $200 and would hope he might not consider that a bribe. I do not wish him in his anger to get out of jail and turn against me.
After obviously coming through a very divisive and hard-fought campaign, with slander used freely by both sides, do you think that our late beloved President Washington was prophetic when he warned us about quarreling over section and party? Or do you believe political factions have a place in our republic?
Political factions have a place in our republic, for I believe that the free expression guaranteed under our Bill of Rights is a citation to the people that they are free to voice their opinions even if it is an attack against their own government. Algernon Sidney said a free press is necessary for the freedom of a people and a people have the right to overthrow their government. Should we ignore Mr. John Milton's Areopagitica, which guarantees that a free press is essential to the freedom and happiness of a citizen body? I think well we should reference that the Alien and Sedition Acts that were put forth by President Adams in his administration have served no purpose whatsoever but to agitate against and to harm the freedoms of the citizen body, and I intend very much to repeal them. I do believe that we should all recognize within the dichotomies of our factions that we are still all devoted to certain principles of this nation—that we are all Federalists and that we are all Republicans and that, therefore, we should recognize equal and exact justice for all men, a jealous right of election by the people, a securing of the states in all their rights, while the states must recognize the security of the federal government in all of its constitutional vigor—that we might all recognize amongst our factions the civil over the military authority and to recognize in this new nation that agriculture should ever receive our first attention, with commerce as its handmaiden.
You and Mr. Adams have been friends since the Revolutionary years and yet, now, you and he are political enemies. Can your friendship possibly survive after such a bitter campaign?
When you received word that you and your vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr had tied for votes in the Electoral College, what were your thoughts? Do you think that Mr. Burr, since he was running with you, should have withdrawn in your favor, and, hence, prevented the election from going to the House of Representatives?
I define this as a neglect particularly of our electoral process, that whereas the Electoral College does serve a purpose to represent all of the states equally, I think it denies more directly the right of the people themselves to elect their chief executive. I would have rather seen all of us who stood for the higher office—not only Colonel Burr and myself, but Colonel Hamilton, and again President Adams and Colonel Pinckney of South Carolina—stand equally in the attentions of the people to have been elected by them directly. I would hope in the future that there might be an amendment made to our constitution that two candidates may stand together on one single platform, one to be elected as the president, the other to be elected directly as vice president.
The animosity that exists between you and Mr. Hamilton is known. Yet, he told his Federalist friends that he preferred you as president rather than Mr. Burr; that you were only "a contemptible hypocrite" [crafty, unscrupulous, and dishonest], but Aaron Burr was even worse: "a most unfit and dangerous man." Would you like to comment on this?
Well, Colonel Hamilton has a right to express his opinion, and his opinions as I now heard them as fact, follow directly what I've read in the press, which was certainly free to print this as well. I do not find, however, that Aaron Burr might be considered worse than what Alexander Hamilton considers me. On the contrary, I would think that Mr. Burr has already exemplified himself perhaps as a victim of his own ambition, as he does not seem very satisfied with his election as vice president, nor the fact that after the thirty-third ballot the tie betwixt us was to be broken (I believe it was on the thirty-sixth). Whether Colonel Burr will be seen in the near future to be the most dangerous and unfit man for his office I cannot rightly say at present, but allow the future indeed to witness whether I am to be as crafty, unscrupulous, and dishonest as Colonel Hamilton would have me.
A slave rebellion led by Gabriel Prosser took place in the Richmond area and was put down by Governor Monroe. Do you see these rebellions as a continuous threat to the democratic principles upon which this nation was founded?
I do not. On the contrary, I see them as very much a fire bell in the night to warn us that within our democratic process we should give a greater attention to the dissolution of this barbarous practice of slavery. When I recall that these efforts before the Revolution were quelled in many regards, that our petitions put forth to His Majesty’s government for ending the importation of slaves here were ignored, when my own clause within the Declaration of Independence was struck from that document in reference to calling His Majesty a tyrant for allowing the continued importation of slaves, we must ever take account that as we now hold the reins of this barbarous practice amongst us that we ourselves are most accountable for its future and its dissolution. Therefore, I hope we may continue, as I expressed in my Kentucky Resolutions, and as I’ve ever held, to end the importation of slaves and begin an amiable process of emancipation. It will not happen overnight. We must begin not to extend this barbarism westwards. As new states will come into the Union, as we have already seen with Vermont and Kentucky, we must not allow these new states to decide whether they are slave or free, but put an end to such further expansion. Mr. Prosser's example will be well-followed in the future if we do not see to an amelioration of this situation at present.
Mr. Jefferson, what is your vision for this country at the dawn of this new century? Also, any thoughts about the vast lands to the west that your fellow countrymen seem eager to take up?
The vast lands to the west are our future; as we now settle closer to the Mississippi River, we must look well beyond it. It appears to be our destiny to settle west of the Mississippi. We desire that the kingdom of Spain will readily recognize our intention to peaceably negotiate with her, particularly in reference to our trade through the port of New Orleans and to recognize further that whoever holds the island of New Orleans willbe our natural enemy unless treaties of trade may be peaceably attended there. I would hope that the aggressions thus far seen of the French generals, in particular General Bonaparte, who almost appears to be a dictator among them, may not preclude peaceable negotiations with his people. I think that the affairs of the French have been recognized the past couple of years as provoking a war amongst them with us, and as I have made no particular comment upon that for further provocation I should remain silent. However, we must not go to war with France, but continue to negotiate peaceably with General Bonaparte; we must not send any further delegation there that might recognize a trade with them to the detriment of the trade with any other European kingdom—nor incur indeed another scandal or embarrassment as the XYZ Affair was to bring upon us and hope that we might negotiate for peaceable settlement along the Mississippi. Our future rests in the easy and amiable acquisition of land, that our citizenry may continue to settle upon lands for generations yet unborn, that the ownership of land might inculcate in our future citizenry the great nobility of the cultivation of the soil wherein we provide for our own sustenance, as well as for our own freedom and happiness. As I said earlier, I believe agriculture should receive our first attentions, with commerce as her handmaid.
After seeing some of the great capital cities of Europe, what is your impression of our new capital city on the Potomac?
I am delighted that the peace between Colonel Hamilton and myself was secured by Mr. Madison, to know that with the acceptance of Colonel Hamilton's assumption plan many of the southern states will have to incur again the cost of paying for our late war, but to recognize that indeed the cost has been made to Colonel Hamilton and his associates to seat our federal city upon the banks of the Potomac here in the midst of southern states. I see for the future of our Federal City a great growth of art and science, as the population will grow. No other city on our continent should be so devoted to these interests than the city which hosts the government itself for the preservation of our liberties and our happiness. I hope that it may prove to be a great center of trade and commerce with all the free nations of the world and the kingdoms of this globe yet existing, that it will be in its architecture a monument to the greatest elements of providing for our shelter, to lift in these monuments the human spirit, to provide a greater light within the walls of these buildings, and indeed a greater circulation of air, ever to be more conducive to our health as well as to our happiness.
Your inauguration is coming up on March 4 [1801]. Have you planned your address yet?
Yes, I am writing an address through which I hope we might ameliorate the differences between the Federalists and the anti-Federalist factions. As I mentioned earlier, an address in which I might speak to all of us upon one united ground, one platform, for one purpose—that we are all Federalists, that we are all Republicans. We must realize that our greatest advantage is in proceeding together in an open debate. We welcome the further improvement of our government as it ever allows us a greater attention to ascertain truths towards our greater happiness in this new experiment.
Interview and transcription by Bob Doares and Nancy Milton, instructors in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Department of Staff Development.
Book: "Pewter at Colonial Williams-
Historic Triangle
