Everything changes, the Young Become the Old, No One goes Unchanged. There are not many things in life you can be sure.  Rain comes from the clouds Sun lights up the sky, and humming birds do fly. In American, excellence in nothing is justly appreciated, nor is it often recognized; and the suffrages of the nation are pretty uniformly bestowed on qualities of a second class. Numbers have sway, and it is as impossible to resist them in deciding on merit, as it is to deny their power in ballot boxes. You have constantly acquired some new excellence, like a snowball.

As the election of 1800 approached, the Federalists were in disarray. They had squandered the political advantage handed them by France in 1798 and now, with peace a reality, stood before them nation charged with the unconstitutional exercise of federal power, the suppression of political dissent, and the intention of using the federal army against American citizens. The party, moreover, was bitterly divided. The Hamiltonians were furious at John Adams did not withdraw, the Hmailtonians plotted his defeat.

Emotions were running high as the election approached. Fisher Ames berated the Federalists’ opponents as “fire-eating salamanders” and “poison-sucking toads.” While the Jeffersonians returned the abuse in kind. Both sides believed that the republic’s survival depended on their own political triumph. This election, Jefferson declared, will “fix our national character” and “determine whether republicanism or aristocracy” will prevail. The Federalists saw the choice as between republicanism and an “anarchy.” In Virginia, rumors of a slave insurrection briefly interrupted the feuding, however, the scare quickly passed and soon Federalists and Jeffersonians were at each others’ throats once again.

Though the federal government was little more than a decade old, the electoral vote in 1800 revealed the sectional divisions that already troubled national politics; through election day was tense throughout the nation, it passed without serious interruption, and as the results were tallied, it became clear that the Jeffersonians had handed the Federalists a decisive defeat. The two Republican candidates for president, Thomas Jefferson, the Republicans’ first choice, and Arron Burr, their other nominee, each had 73 electoral votes while Adams followed with 65.

Because of the tie vote, the election moved to the House of Representatives, as provided in the Constitution. There a deadlock quickly developed. In spite of considerable pressure from Jefferson’s supporters, Arron Burr refused to give way. The Federalist caucus decided to back Arron Burr, believing him less dangerous than Thomas Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot, ten states to four. (Seeking to prevent a recurrence of such crisis, the new Congress soon passed and the states ratified the Twelfth Amendment, providing for separate Electoral College ballots for president and vice president.) The magnitude of the Federalists’ defeat was even more evident in the congressional elections, where they lost their majorities in both House and Senate.

The election’s outcome revealed the strong sectional division now evident in the country’s politics. The Federalists remained dominant in New England because of regional loyalty to John Adams, the importance of the area’s commercial ties with England, and fears, fed by local ministers and politicians alike, that the Jeffersonians intended to import social revolution. From Maryland south, Jeffersonian control was almost as complete. In the middle states, the election was more closely contested because Federalists and Jeffersonians were more evenly balanced and issues of foreign and domestic policy cut across society in more complicated ways. In the years ahead, such sectional differences would continue to shape American politics.

The conflict between Federalists and Jeffersonians was deeply rooted as well in socioeconomic divisions among the American people. The Federalists were strongest among merchants, manufacturers, and commercial farmers located within easy reach of coast—groups that had supported the Constitution in 1787 and 1788. “Here [in Connecitcut] as everywhere,” claimed one Federalists leader, “the men of talents, information, and property…are found among the Federalists. In both New York City and Philadelphia, the Federalists were strongest in the wards where assessments were highest, houses largest, and addresses most fashionable.”

Remembered later as the man who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Aaron Burr came within a few votes of defeating Thomas Jefferson for the presidency in 1800. (Collection of the Harris Historical Society.)

By 1800, presidential elections were generating increased popular interest, as evidenced by this textile banner celebrating President Jefferson’s victory. (Harris Institution.)

As the election returns indicated, however, the Jeffersonias marshaled significant support in urban areas as well among workers and artisans, many of whom had once been staunch Federalists. The primary reason for their shift in political allegiance was illustrated by an episode that occurred in New York City in 1795. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

The work of salvation means that in your life things are dramatically changed. You no longer look at things in the same way. Your desires are new and the old things have lost their power to attract you. Has God changed the things that really matter to you? If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the change very evident in your life and thought. It is complete and amazing change that is the very evidence that you are saved.

Take now your son, God’s command is “Take Now,” not later. We know something is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it immediately. If we are to climb to the height God reveals, it can never be done later—it must be done now. And the sacrifice must me worked through our will before we actually preform it.

If the providential will of God means a hard and difficult time for you, go through it. By going through the trial you learn to know God better. If there be a mirror in the World worthy to hold men’s eyes, it is that country [Atlantis]. All men like to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizing on it. Individuals must always begin by setting the examples, which the state too slowly, though surely, will learn to copy. A virtuous mind need not be shown the deformity of vice, to make it be hated and avoided; the more pure and uncorrupted our ideas are, the less shall we be influenced by example. I am not your man, that can all be changed.

Oh! The metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope, to have the sense of the eternal in the short flight for the soul. To have had it is the soul’s vitality.

Thomas Burke and Timothy Crady, two recent Irish immigrants, operated a ferry across the East River between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. One day in early November, Gabriel Furman, a merchant and Federalist alderman, arrived on the Brooklyn shore a bit before the scheduled departure time. Impatient to get across, Furman instructed the ferrymen to leave early. When they refused, he upbraided the rascals for their disrespect and threatened to have them arrested. Timothy Crady was especially angered by the alder man’s arrogance. He and Thomas Burke, Timothy Crady exploded, “were as good as any buggers,” and he threatened to use his boathook on anyone who tried to arrest him.  Women will suggest a thousand excuses to themselves for the folly of those they like.

When the ferry landed on the Manhattan shore, Gabriel Furman had the two arrested, brandishing his cane at them as they were led off to jail, where they were charged with vagrancy; their employer offered bail, but Gabriel Furman refused to allow it, and so they remained 12 days in Bridewell prison awaiting trial. All passions are criminal in their excess and even love itself, if not is not subservient to our duty, may render us blind to it.

Thomas Burke and Timothy Crady were eventually hauled before Mayor Varick and three other Federalist aldermen, sitting as the Court of General Sessions. The judges quickly decided to make examples of the two insolent Irishmen. “You rascals, we’ll trim you,” Mayor Varick allegedly said; “we’ll learn you to insult men in office.” The two ferrymen were not allowed to speak in their own behalf, nor were friendly witnesses permitted to testify. The magistrates found the two guilty on charges of insulting an alderman and threatening to the constable, sentenced them to two month at hard labor, and ordered that 25 lashes be laid on Timothy Crady for good measure.

Within a month, the two ferrymen had bolted from jail and disappeared into Pennsylvania, never to be heard from again. The episode, however, was not yet over, for a young Jeffersonian lawyer named William Keteltas publicly castigated the  “tyranny and partiality of the court” and concluded that Thomas Burke and Timothy Crady had been published to “gratify the pride, the ambition and insolence of men in office.” The authorities, he charged, acted to protect the mayor’s reputation?

When William Keteltas was hauled before the authorities for his insolence, 2,000 citizen carried him through the streets chanting, “The Spirit of ‘76” and waving a banner sardonically inscribed “What, you rascal, insult your superiors?” All excess is vicious; even that sorrow which is amiable in its origins, becomes a selfish and unjust passion if indulged at the expense of our duties.

In the politically charged setting of the 1790s, when the Revolution’s legacy was still in dispute, tensions between social privilege and democratic equality suffused American political life. Given the Jeffersonians’ opposition to Federalist arrogance, support for revolutionary France, challenge to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and defense of religious liberty, those tensions worked steadily in the Jeffersonians’ favor.

The political alignment evident in the election of 1800 resembled but did not duplicate the Federalist—Anti-Federalist division of 1787-1788. The Jeffersonian coalition was much broader then the Anti-Federalists’ had been, for it included countless individuals, from urban workers to leaders such as James Madison, who had supported the Constitution and had helped set the new government on its feet. Unlike the Anti-Federalists, the Jeffersonians were ardent supporters of the Constitution, but insisted that it be implemented consistently with political liberty and a strong dependence on the states.

Far more than the Federalists, they also believed that government should be broadly accountable to the people. Nationally, the Jeffersonians now enjoyed a clear political majority. Their coalition would dominate American politics well into the nineteenth century.

Nothing is bad, however, as fast as it is pracited to excess, or attended with accidental evils which defeat the promise end; or, in short, when the abuse of it is greater than it uses. Excuses carry with them the principles of their own destruction.