I wasn’t alone in my fears.
Everyone now talked of civil war, and militias were being mustered. I’d seen this before in France—shouts of violence turned into bloody mayhem. I couldn’t count the revolutionaries I’d known who had, in the end, been eaten by the nation they birthed. As it was, the French Republic was still careening from constitution to directorship to the authority of General Bonaparte, and still the will of the people hadn’t triumphed.
So even though my father’s Republican Party had swept the election, taking both houses of Congress and the presidency besides, the Federalists weren’t prepared to surrender the government. A constitutional defect had allowed a tie between my father and his running mate, Aaron Burr. And now, in a spirit of perpetual war, the vanquished monarchists threatened to make mischief by elevating Burr to the presidency instead of Papa.
But I knew there was a far easier way to keep my father from the presidency. They could, for example, send him the bullet I’d been shielding him from since I was a child. . . .
And I couldn’t sleep, eat, or defeat the guilt consuming me for having secretly wished the Federalists would prevail. For having wished Papa would lose the election and come home to set things right, because it was all, everything, coming apart.
Even my silence.
“I’m so very worried, Tom. We have four children and another on the way. We’ve a house that’s cold, and wet, and too small.” I bit my lip. I knew wives weren’t supposed to know anything about the business of planting, but I was expected to manage the economy of the household, and how could I do it without knowing how bad off we were? “How are we going to pay our debts? How will we survive?”
“We’ll live on the profits from wheat this year,” Tom said, rising to pace at the foot of my bed. “And give up on tobacco.”
I peered up at him through bleary eyes. “I hope so, Tom.”
Then a sudden clenching pain had me groaning and curling into a sweaty ball. Tom rushed back to swab my forehead with a cool cloth on the nightstand. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed my back and whispered soothingly until the cramps eased off.
Later, after I’d managed a few hours of fitful sleep, he came back with some tea, still warm from the kettle. “You’re letting everything frighten you, Patsy. Trust in me to take care of you. Trust in your father to take care of himself. The Federalists don’t have to kill Mr. Jefferson to keep him from claiming the presidency. They just have to resort to legal trickery, and they’ve shown a willingness to do it. Because of the tie vote, the House of Representatives says they may choose neither candidate and settle upon John Marshall instead.”
John Marshall. I remembered that man from the trial of Richard Randolph—his cool eyes appraising me as I stood there with lies on my tongue and my hand on his Bible. It horrified me to think he might become president.
But my husband continued on with his thoughtful, and admittedly well-reasoned, assessment. “Either way, it won’t come to a fight. In spite of all the saber rattling, your father won’t lead us into war. He doesn’t want the presidency that much. The Federalists won’t go to war either, because above all, they cannot bear anarchy and disorder . . . that’s the one thing they have in common with your father.”
He was right. My father was a man of routines, civility, and particularity. In France, at the height of the danger, he’d encouraged Lafayette and the others to principled stands, but pragmatic compromise. He often told them to take what they could get in the hopes of pressing for more later. Papa could write fiery screeds, but he was, in fact, an even-tempered, rational actor.
And in the end we were all saved by it. By my father’s temperament, his reputation, and the respect of his enemies. What else can explain the way Alexander Hamilton stepped into the breach to resolve the crisis? Yes, my father’s bitterest foe threw his full weight behind my father’s election to the presidency. Hamilton hated my father. But he hated Aaron Burr—and perhaps John Marshall—much more.
After the House of Representatives voted thirty-five times in a deadlock, on the thirty-sixth ballot my father was elected, peacefully and democratically, to the presidency of the United States.
PAPA AND HIS PARTISANS called it the Revolution of 1800.