Board 8 > BOARD 8 ELECTS - Election of 1804 - Jefferson (i) (R) v Pinckney (F)

(+) Yeah! (+)

1788/1792 - The Federalists took the House and Senate with 100% of the vote
1796 - John Adams (F) d. Thomas Jefferson (DR) with 73.6% of the vote
1800 - John Adams (F) d. Thomas Jefferson (DR) with 80% of the vote

Hey all welcome to Board 8 Elects! a topic series in which we discuss each historical election from the perspective of the year it took place in!

The idea here is to re-litigate each election from the perspective of when it took place. I will be providing each candidates platform (where possible) so the merits of the election can be discussed and voted on. If possible lets speak of the issues in the present tense.

I am going to ask you vote via BOLDING the name of the candidate rather than providing a poll because I feel the poll encourages gut voting and I would really like to see some discussion.

Topics will be live for 3 or 4 days - basically until I make the next topic voting will be active in this one.
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Welcome to the Election of 1804.

The last four years have been eventful indeed. Jefferson spent the early part of his presidency trying to reconcile after the bitter campaign, declaring at his inaugural address that "We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." But Adams, bitter at his defeat, spent the day appointing as many Federalists as he could to the bench and snubbed Jefferson by skipping the event. Setting the stage for one of the most bitterly divided Congresses in history.

Jefferson has been busy at work drastically altering the makeup of the navy and engaging in another foreign war. But most dramatically, just last year when negotiating terms with Napoleon to purchase the port New Orleans, he was instead offered an opportunity to purchase all of Louisiana and he did! But this has opened many question about the future of the nation and that brings us to the election of 1804!

Meet the Candidates

The Democratic-Republicans or just "Republicans" as they are now called in the common parlance, have nominated the sitting president, 61 year-old Thomas Jefferson to be their candidate. His running mate is the current Governor of New York, George Clinton. Aaron Burr has been dropped from the ticket after his coy late-in-the-day schemes to steal the presidency failed and was a leading candidate for the Federalist nomination before his duel/slaying with Alexander Hamilton made that impossible.

The Federalist Party has nominated the 58 year-old former French Ambassador and former Vice Presidential candidate from South Carolina Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for the presidency on the basis of national fame for his tough stances regarding France. His running mate is former New York Senator and former Ambassador to Great Britain under Adams, Rufus King. The hope is Pinckney will win Southern votes and that King will help contest the middle colonies.

The Issues

• Looming largest over everything was the purchase of Louisiana, in which Jefferson had effectively doubled the size of the nation. Jefferson had surprised everyone when he pushed for the purchase of that massive territory. The purchase was not a power explicitly granted by the constitution and was exactly the sort of use of executive power that Jefferson ran swearing against during the campaign. It has been denounced by many in his party, to include the Speaker of the House and his vice presidential candidate. It has however cast the Federalists in the awkward position of opposing it on constitutional grounds, the very sort of thing they would have been defending under other circumstances.
• Also regarding Louisiana is a difference of opinion on how it should be governed. Jefferson wants to slowly integrate the territories and allow them to continue to self-govern under Spanish law under direct federal supervision managed by the Executive Branch. The Federalists by contrast want to have the new territory formed into states or territories and governed according to American principles as soon as possible.
• There are concerns that if Spain should regain its independence from France that there will be potential for a war with Spain as a result of this purchase and Middle Staters and New Englanders alike have noticed that most of the new territory that is ready to be admitted as states would probably be admitted as slave states which would limit the political power of their regions and present economic challenges for their agriculture. This issue is evenly split among the two parties given, again that both tickets are led by slave-owners.
• The Purchase also signals a significant warming of the French-American relationship. Given that the French and British relationships are more or less a zero sum game, there are still many who are wary of the consequences of choosing France in the long run.
• Given that Napoleon planned to use the money from that purchase in part to fund his wars against Haiti, Jefferson has revoked his recognition of the Haitian government and is tacitly supporting Napoleon's efforts to bring them to heel. Pinckney, as a Southern slave owner, disapproves of the support of Napoleon but quietly is happy to see Haiti being seemingly brought to heel given the potential risk of a slave revolt in South Carolina.
• Jefferson has drastically reduced the size of the Navy opting to go for fast and mobile gunboats designed to protect ports but eliminating larger war vessels of the sort needed to wage a naval war with a foreign power. The Federalists maintain that the nation requires a large standing military while relations with France and Britain remain tense, considering mutual interests in the Caribbean.
• Relatedly, the United States has gotten into a war in Northern Africa, the First Barbary War. On one side, the United States and Sweden have banded together to oppose Tripoli and the other North African or Barbary states. The Pasha of Tripoli demanded tribute from the United States in exchange for not attacking their merchant vessels attempting to trade in the Mediterranean. Under Adams and Washington, the US had paid such a tribute, but Jefferson refused and is entangled in a naval war with his new, smaller navy. The Federalists criticize his handling of the military and his recklessness in picking an unnecessary war, though it remains relatively uncontroversial among the voting populace.
• Jefferson has repealed the excise taxes on whiskey, repealed the Property Tax, and repealed the Alien Act, lowering the time required to become citizen of the US from 14 years to 5 years. Federalists still worry over the effect of allowing citizenship after such a short period considering the ease with which foreign powers could exert influence over american politics under those rules. They also support the use of direct taxes to raise income, mostly in support of the large standing army they want.
• You know what isn't an issue in this election? Slavery. The Federalist candidate owns slaves and while the party still seeks to differentiate itself from Jefferson by needling him on the issue, Pinckney himself refuses to.

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The Campaign

• Adams retired from public service after his bitter loss to Jefferson. He held a grudge against the Federalists in Hamilton's faction of the part they played in undermining him ahead of the election of 1800 and refused to help. With Hamilton dead and Adams refusing to get off the bench, the Federalist Party was leaderless and disorganized and was unable to mount an effective organized campaign in 1804. This was made worse by Pinckney's insistence on not openly campaigning for office, which undermined the Federalist strategy of trying to win South Carolina, the entire basis for his candidacy.
• That said, a major scandalous accusation was presented in the Federalist papers before Hamilton's death alleging that Jefferson held one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, as a concubine at Monticello and that her Son, Tom, was a dead ringer for the President. These accusations were alluded to in 1800 but presented with more evidence and force in the 1802 article. (you can read the article for yourself here: https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_The_President_Again_by_James_Thomson_Callender_September_1_1802). There is in general an attempt to make Jefferson appear decadent and amoral portraying this relationship as tawdry and indicative of Jefferson's overall lack of ethics.
• Pinckney's service as Ambassador of France is somewhat tainted by his involvement in the XYZ affair in which French diplomats demanded bribes in order for negotiations regarding France's collection of their debts. While they made him popular in the run-up to the Quasi-War the mood of the country has softened on France following the Louisiana Purchase.

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Ok so let's talk Louisiana Purchase!

The Louisiana Purchase saw the United States nearly double in size overnight, with the purchase of almost all of Spains North American territory north of Texas and East of the Rockies. It looks something like this.

<img src="https://www.enchantedlearning.com/lgifs/Louisianapurchase.GIF">

Prior to all of this, more or less the entire continent west of the Mississippi was Spanish territory and had been since the settlement of the Seven Years War (known in the US as the French and Indian War) in which the French were forced to give up their North American holdings, with half going to the British and half going to Spain. In 1795, Pinckney, as Ambassador to Spain, negotiated for the Americans to get more or less free use of the port of New Orleans to handle the flow of goods down the Mississippi into the Gulf.

The Spanish revoked this treaty in 1798, which led to the acquisition of New Orleans becoming a significant foreign policy goal of the Adams administration. The Federalists had planned to simply take the territory surrounding New Orleans and had been making inroads to that effect dealing with a Spanish government that was desperate for funds.

In 1800 Spain ceded the territory to Napoleonic France, ceded the territory of Louisiana back to France as part of Napoleon's attempt to reassert French Prestige by rebuilding the French Colonial Empire. However following the failure of the French to put down a revolt in Haiti in 1801 and the war of the Second Coalition against Great Britian limiting his ability to respond to that crisis, Napoleon instantly realized that he did not have the ability to defend the Louisiana territory and saw Jefferson's attempts to purchase the port of New Orleans as an opportunity to replenish his war chest. He thus offered to sell the territory to Jefferson for 15 million dollars in a move that shocked French Ambassador James Monroe.

Jefferson thought the purchase would require a constitutional amendment and started to pursue one, but realized that if the details of the deal were debated in congress and in the states that that would guarantee opposition to the move would develop and that Napoleon might re-think the offer and thus pushed for a swift ratification of the sale treaty with France and shoved it through Congress with nearly no debate allowed instead.

The move made way for American expansion and ensured that the primary North American rival for the United States would be Great Britain, effectively eliminating France/Spain from the arena. Jefferson had high hopes for the new territory and immediately commisioned an exploration team, allowing Merriweather Lewis and William Clark unlimited access to his library on natural sciences and to take whatever they needed to map and study the new territory and to establish an american presence in the unclaimed/disputed Oregon territory in the Pacific Northwest. Though they have not yet returned, their early reports indicate that the plains in the center of country are incredibly fertile and that the United States should not ever struggle to feed itself and indeed could even become a food exporter with this new territory.

The move had its costs however, with Britain seeing the material aid provided to France at this time as a major reason the War of the Second Coalition failed to restore the French Monarchy and soured the American-British relationship.

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(Voting again after having read the new post, nothing changed, though)

Since the Louisiana Purchase is already a done deal, I suppose we don't need to vote for what the candidates think of it specifically, only about how they plan to integrate the land. I see the problem of voting for the president to be able to do things not explicitly laid out in the Constitution there, but the purchase has already been made, which makes that question less directly important. I think the Federalists would be right about this and the land should be formed into states and territories, but that would effectively give a lot of power to slave states, which I'm opposed to. I guess I'd give some points to the Federalists here, but not by much.

I'm not overly concerned about the issue of Spain; I'm sure they'll be busy with Napoleon for the foreseeable future. No need to be extra friendly to France, though, and sour relations with Britain. Haiti's not a major issue, but I'm ansty about supporting France there since it's implicitly supporting slavery. Points for the Federalists there.

Having a large navy sounds reasonable given that our military interactions with Europe are likely to be largely naval in nature. Speaking of which, dealing with Barbary piracy also clearly requires such a navy. Points for the Federalists there.

I'm not overly fond of the Alien Act, so points for the DRs there. Direct taxes also seem like a necessary evil to maintain the country and its infrastructure, so points for the Federalists.

Gonna go with Pinckney.

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Will board 8s love of Federalism survive Charles Cotesworth Pinckney?

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Let's Talk about where Slavery is at the moment !

So as you may or may not know, the international slave trade was given a sunset provision as part of the constitution, with the slave trade meant to end by 1808. By the time of the election of 1804, only South Carolina still allowed the legal importation of slaves, nearly entirely from Africa but some from the Caribbean as well. This isn't to say they slave trade stopped - slaves were still taken from South Carolina to other states or were smuggled up through either the unorganized Mississippi Territory or Spanish Florida but demand was genuinely drying up.

In general by this time it seemed that slavery was going to sort of wean itself out of existence anyway. Virginia Maryland and North Carolina found tobacco production on the scale that required slave labor was impractical given how rough tobacco production was on Virginia's soil. The only true cash crops were sugar and cotton, neither of which grew well in Maryland or Virginia or even most parts of North Carolina.

Georgia and South Carolina however had vibrant sugar and cotton production and remained good markets for slaves but even with that there was a large excess of slaves in the United States and the question of what to do with all of the slaves that were now in surplus was being kicked around. The Cotton gin, invented during the Washington admin and popularized during the Adams had changed the calculation however. Prior to its invention cotton production was an onerous process that took a lot of time and production was limited by the long process of 'ginning' the cotton from the seeds which limited the scope of cotton growing plantations. With the invention of a machine that did the ginning for you, cotton production became much easier and cotton production exploded in the Carolinas, Georgia and the Mississippi territory.

By 1804, South Carolina and Georgia were more or less at capacity and trade on the Mississippi river was too unsure to make expanding new plantations into Mississippi worthwhile. This is what made the Louisiana purchase so tantalizing. Not only did it open new land for plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana but it meant new markets for Virginia and Maryland slave owners who began to pride themselves on their slave breeding practices, tracing bloodlines and achievements not entirely unlike horsebreeding.

Unchecked the Louisiana Purchase is sure to allow for an explosion in plantation production and a renewal/deepening of slave culture - something which has northern farmers nervous about their ability to compete

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up for the night crowd

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Gonna go with Jefferson this time.

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Woof this is a bad election. The Federalists are falling apart and Jeffersons relationship with France may have already paid off more than all our dealings with Britain.

That said he is weakening the military while getting into more wars and potentially making Britain a real enemy. Not a recipe for success.

And the new land while great for our food growing is currently under the control of Native American tribes meaning more fighting to come. And more slavery potential.

Not sure who I would vote for.

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Yeah this is the first really tricky election I think because while board 8s values are with the Federalists generally, this ain't really the party of Adams at this point.

It was well-known for instance that the famous Burr maneuver would have probably been attempted by Hamilton to make Pinckney president had the Federalists won last time - Adams is well-justified in telling these people to take a hike.

And so on the merits, Jefferson and Pinckney aren't really so different - the main differences being tax policy, defense policy and relationship with France and England.

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Jefferson's hatred of taxation is going to hurt badly now that the US a)needs to exert control over the new territory of the Louisiana purchase, and b)really needs a stronger navy both to deal with irritations like the Barbary War and serious problems like the fucking British. That being said, after purchasing a huge amount of... Spanish territory from France and essentially telling the Brits to piss up a rope, I don't think a harder stance on the French and a softer one on the Brits is going to pull off very much except making the US look like a hugely feckless actor. That ship has sailed. Jefferson's cheaper approach to governing the Louisiana purchase (ie let's just watch them do what they were already doing) is probably the only reasonable action at this time.

So despite not liking his tax policy OR his foreign policy, I think this needs to go to Jefferson because of the previous choices... of Jefferson. Reversing course on foreign policy is heading into 'shit we have no allies at all' territory, since remember the US is very much a rebellious banana republic in the eyes of Europe right now. Trying to establish a strong central government with no money and expanded territory is similarly hopeless.

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Jefferson but this election fucking blows and I probably write-in Adams as a protest

Yeah gonna echo everyone else that this is a bad election. Jefferson admittedly had a strong first term (even though I could swear we voted for Adams...!), but his biggest achievement, the Louisiana Purchase, arguably came about through a combination of utter hypocrisy regarding government overreach (though we've known for a long time this man does not practice what he preaches), Napoleon's ambivalence in regards to the territory, and James Monroe's shrewdness.

In both these cases, the running mates would actually be better candidates than the heads of their respective tickets. Pinckney is a nothing candidate who the Federalists are suddenly seemingly obsessed with for some reason, Jefferson's a hypocrite, both are big Southern slavers. George Clinton and Rufus King, on the other hand, are respectable enough, if not exactly exciting either.

Gotta go with Jefferson because he's proven he can get at least some results, but damn I wish the Federalists would find someone even half as worthy of running as Adams was.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

Jefferson but this election fucking blows and I probably write-in Adams as a protest

Yeah think I'm ending here.

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Jefferson I guess
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Let's give this crappy election one last go

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Jefferson.

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Pinckney I suppose. Weakening the navy while worsening relationships with Britain seems like a pretty bad call. Port defense is good, but if Britain wants to fuck with us their navy can probably operate fine at harassing our merchants further from shore uncontested.

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