Election Of 1800 Essay

Throughout the early years of the United States many events would occur which would help shape and form the country we have today. Back then they were just figuring out how it works to run a country after becoming independent from the British Empire. One of these major events was the presidential election of 1800. This election was won by Thomas Jefferson who is one of the most iconic men in the history of the United States of America. The election and the process of him becoming president wasn’t smooth sailing though.

The race for president was contested between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams was a federalist who was the sitting president at the time going against the democratic-republican Thomas Jefferson. The federalists disagreed
The major controversy came up after this. During this period of voting they failed to distinguish between votes for the office of president and the office of vice president, this led to a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr. Because of the votes being tied article two section one of the U.S. constitution the election was presented to the House of Representatives. Over the next five days thirty-fives ballots were cast but none of them broke the tie between Jefferson and Burr. This was because the federalists were still in power in the House of Representatives, and while a majority of them didn’t like Jefferson, a powerful man by the name of Alexander Hamilton hated Burr and told the federalists that Jefferson was the safer choice. So because of that finally on the thirty-sixth ballot, the house elected Thomas Jefferson as the president of the United States on February 17th 1801. Because of the tie between Jefferson and Burr in 1804 the government passed the 12th amendment which corrected these issues by providing separate Electoral College votes for both the president and the vice