Our Presidents and how we make themMcClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
History
Our Presidents and how we make them
McClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
Presidents -- United States -- Election
Nineteen ballots were taken on the same day, then a recess was taken
until the 12th, when 9 additional ballots were taken, and 1 ballot
was taken on the 13th, 4 on the 14th, 1 on the 16th (the 15th being
Sunday), and 1 on the 17th, making an aggregate of 35 ballots, all
of which were precisely a repetition of the 1st ballot given in the
foregoing table. Jefferson received the vote of 8 States, Burr of 6,
and 2 were blank, because of divided delegations. The vote of 9 States
was necessary to an election, and there was no choice.
On the 2d ballot cast on the 17th, being the 36th ballot in all,
Jefferson was successful, receiving the votes of 10 States to 4 for
Burr and 2 blank. The changes in favor of Jefferson were made by one
Vermont member declining to vote, thus allowing his colleague to
cast the vote of the State for President, and by four from Maryland
also declining to vote, by which the tie in that State was broken in
Jefferson’s favor.
In addition to these changes South Carolina and Delaware cast blank
votes, but they did not help Jefferson, as he required the positive
vote of 9 States to accomplish his election. It was James A. Bayard, of
Delaware, a leading Federalist, who changed his vote on the last ballot
from a vote for Burr to a blank ballot. Jefferson was thus declared
elected President, and Burr became Vice-President by the mandate of
the Constitution, he having received the highest electoral vote for
President excepting that cast for Jefferson.
It can be readily understood that Burr’s permission of the use of
his name to defeat the election of Jefferson in the House made an
impassable gulf between them, and that contest dated the decline of
Burr’s power in the land. He knew that there could be no future for
him, and his restless genius sought new fields in which to gratify
his ambition, ending in his arrest and trial for treason, and also
staining his skirts with the murder of Hamilton. Hamilton was open in
his hostility to Burr in the contest between Jefferson and Burr in the
House, and it was Burr’s resentment of Hamilton’s hostility to his
election that made him seize upon a trivial pretext to force Hamilton
into a duel, in which Hamilton fell mortally wounded at the first fire.
Burr’s public career was thus ended by the Jefferson-Burr contest, and
although he lived many years thereafter, he drank the bitterest dregs
of sorrow, and died in poverty and unlamented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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