Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [261]
New York Federalists had no time to savor their victory over the Time Piece. Party moderates, believing there was still room for negotiations with France, made clear to President Adams that he couldn’t get a formal declaration of war through Congress. Adams, for his part, was annoyed that most of his cabinet took their cues from Hamilton, and he came to see the New Yorker’s hubristic visions of military and imperial glory as positively dangerous. “That man,” he told Abigail, “would in my mind become a second Buonaparty [sic] if he was possessed of equal power.” Though prowar Federalists fought him bitterly, Adams prevailed, and soon American negotiators were on their way to Paris, where the Directory had developed sober second thoughts about war with the United States. The Irish rebellion fizzled. Admiral Horatio Nelson smashed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. In the maritime quasi-war, the scales shifted in favor of the United States as a thousand-odd privateers and three new frigates—the United States, the Constellation, and the Constitution—cleared American coastal waters of enemy vessels. By the end of 1799, if not before, they controlled the Caribbean as well. In November of that year Napoleon overthrew the Directory and communicated his readiness to settle quickly. French and American negotiators came to terms in 1800.
FEDERALISTS IN RETREAT
Having reaped major political benefits from the quasi-war with republican France, New York Federalists contemplated the prospect of peace with something akin to panic. With the spring 1800 elections at hand, Hamilton appealed to the mechanic vote by arranging a legislative ticket that included a ship chandler, a baker, a potter, a mason, a shoemaker, and two grocers. However, deprived of war with France, none of the Federalists did well at the polls. Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, a Democratic-Republican Columbia professor, won the city’s congressional seat, taking over from Edward Livingston. All thirteen of the city’s Assembly seats went to Democratic-Republicans, giving the party a narrow majority in the state legislature. As that body chose the state’s federal electors, the sweep guaranteed that New York would back Jefferson’s second run for the presidency against Adams later that year.
No one deserved more credit for the victory than Aaron Burr. As head of the General Republican Committee, Burr prepared a roster of all voters in the city and had party workers visit every known Democratic-Republican to round up support and contributions. His house was crowded with messengers and committeemen and poll watchers who ate while they mapped strategy and napped on the floors rather than go home to sleep. Burr also introduced “fagot voting” into the party’s political repertoire during this campaign, enfranchising scores of working people who failed to meet the property requirement for voters by making them joint owners of a single piece of property. “Fagot” or “bundle” voters made all the difference in several close contests.
Suddenly, everyone in the country knew about Aaron Burr. Democratic-Republicans hailed the New Yorker as a master of the electioneering arts—a political genius who had found the fulcrum upon which the mighty Federalists could be levered from power. Even Federalists were impressed. One asked Burr how the Democrats had won the election. He replied: “We have beat you by superior Management.” When the congressional Democratic-Republican caucus nominated Jefferson for the presidency, it selected Burr as his vice-presidential running mate.
Among the Federalists, all was confusion and recrimination. In an extraordinary letter to Governor Jay, Hamilton proposed a maneuver to prevent the state legislature from choosing Democratic-Republican electors. Call a special session of the outgoing legislature, he advised Jay, and have it alter the procedure so as to ensure victory for the Federalists. No matter that everyone would see this as a brazen attempt to thwart the popular