Black History is American History: The US Constitution and the Election of 1800

Monday Memo: Jefferson versus Adams turned on inequality

Life is full of unintended consequences.

In the election of 1800, five candidates received Electoral College votes under the Constitutional rules where each Elector had two votes and they voted for two different candidates, and whoever came in second place became Vice President of the United States. There were sixteen states in the Union, and the new country faced a changed international situation. Napoleon Bonaparte had just taken over the French Republic.

In the election, the normally pro-French Vice President Thomas Jefferson was challenging his former friend and ex-political ally, President John Adams. The two disagreed about France, Britain, and the situation in Europe. Furthermore, George Washington had died in December 1799, and now America had to get on without him. The direction America would go in was determined by Black Americans and slavery.

Enslaving Africans was a major economic interest in the United States, and it created political tensions. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the economic and political considerations clashed because of the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Here’s why: there was no universal suffrage and no uniform rule on who could vote.

A common oversimplification is to say, “Only white men could vote,” and this gives the impression that all white men could vote, but the reality was far from it. Now the importance of this is that it made it hard to fairly represent people—even European American men—in national elections for the president if there was no uniform rule for who qualified to vote. So, you had to have indirect or virtual representation by “votes” based on state population which would keep things fair more or less. But who counts as the population?

The Three-Fifths Clause emerged from these debates. States with more slaves argued that enslaved Africans should be counted fully for representation, granting the South more seats in Congress. 1 slave = 1 person in your population count.

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention from states with fewer slaves countered that if enslaved people were considered property, then why couldn’t a New England farmer count his property too? The slaves were literally property.

So, the major slaveholding states wanted their slaves counted one-for-one, and the states with few slaves wanted to count zero slaves for population purposes.

Free Blacks already counted as a whole person, so this was not about the worth of Blacks but about the power of slaveholders over the government, including other European Americans.

Whites with few or no slaves did not want to be controlled by the states with many slaves. The major slaveholding states were paranoid that they would have less influence over policies that impacted slavery if they did not get to count their slaves. The argument over the role of African American slaves determined the future of America. The Three-Fifths Compromise essentially counted 60% of the slave population and added them to a state’s free population to get the total number of individuals used to determine how many House seats a state received, which was added to their two senators to sum up their Electoral College votes.

In the election of 1800, there were 138 Electoral College votes, and a candidate needed 70 to win. As we know from the play Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied as the Democratic-Republicans forgot to throw away a second Electoral vote somewhere so that Jefferson would win and Burr would become Vice President.

The final tally was:

Thomas Jefferson: 73 (tie)

Aaron Burr: 73 (tie)

John Adams: 65 (Lost)

Charles C. Pinckney: 64

John Jay: 1

But what if the non-slaveholders had won the U.S. Constitutional debate and the slave states were not given an unfair advantage?

In that set up these states would have likely lost a total of 14 Electoral votes if only the free population was counted: Virginia (6), North Carolina (2), South Carolina (2), Maryland (1), Pennsylvania (1), Georgia (1), and Kentucky (1). In this hypothetical election the Electoral College would have 124 votes, and majority would have required 63 Electoral votes. In 1800 those states actually voted like this:

Virginia; Slave; 21 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (21), Aaron Burr (21).

Pennsylvania; Free (Gradual Abolition); 15 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (8), Aaron Burr (8), John Adams (7), C.C. Pinckney (7).

Georgia; Slave; 4 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (4), Aaron Burr (4).

Maryland; Slave; 10 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (5), Aaron Burr (5), John Adams (5), C.C. Pinckney (5).

South Carolina; Slave; 8 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (8), Aaron Burr (8).

North Carolina; Slave; 12 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (8), Aaron Burr (8), John Adams (4), C.C. Pinckney (4).

Kentucky; Slave; 4 Electoral Votes; Thomas Jefferson (4), Aaron Burr (4).

Now take those votes away:

Without the Three-Fifths Clause, Thomas Jefferson’s tally would have plummeted to 60 Electoral votes as his enslavement-vote cheat code disappeared. Adams wins outright with 64-63 votes. Even if John Adams lost an additional vote in North Carolina due to reapportionment, he would have finished with 62 votes and still in first place. With no candidate winning a majority, the election goes to a Federalist Party-controlled House of Representatives in a contingent election. The Federalists reelect their man and keep Jefferson far from the presidency.

The Three-Fifths Clause was the deciding factor that defeated Adams and changed the trajectory of American political development regarding economics, foreign relations, the meaning of federalism and the Bill of Rights.

And Burr probably does not shoot Alexander Hamilton.

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Photo by Rafik Wahba on Unsplash