Alexander Hamilton’s Challenge and the 2020 Election

“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

– Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1

No sooner had the Federal Convention ended in September 1787 than George Washington urged Hamilton and James Madison to explain - and campaign for - the Constitution in the upcoming ratification debates.  The Declaration of Independence proclaimed freedom, but the new nation needed the Constitution to preserve it.  The Federalist, a series of 85 essays, was one result of Washington’s plea. In 2020, we again face, as Hamilton put it, whether “choice” or “force” will guide our destiny. 

The Constitution is designed to restrain power.  The president takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”  No one takes an oath to the president.  One fear of the nation’s architects was that a president would become too powerful, never leaving office.  Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris after the convention, feared the president would be “a bad edition of a Polish king” – re-elected again and again for life.

Washington calmed that worry when he stepped down in 1796 after two terms, shocking the crowned heads of Europe.  But the question of whether Americans could achieve a true and peaceful transition of power took another four years.  John Adams’s presidency followed Washington, but he was, like Washington, a Federalist.  Nascent political parties did not contest in an election until 1800, when Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans beat Adams.  Yet Jefferson tied with his own vice-presidential running mate, Aaron Burr.  Since the Constitution (later corrected by the 12th Amendment) gave the presidency to whoever had the most electoral votes, the decision was thrust into the House of Representatives, in which each state delegation had one vote.  After 36 ballots, Jefferson prevailed, with Hamilton’s help, despite Federalist attempts to elect Burr.   

Without the precedent set by this first peaceful transition of power, American history might often have been decided by force.  Republican state militias were ready to march on Washington in the election of 1800 but they did not.  When Lincoln won in 1860, the southern response was a resort to force.  The Civil War settled that issue of whether the republic would survive, but it is a perpetual question.  We are a nation of people, not just parchment.

The election of 1876 was arguably our most controversial.   Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote and had a 184-165 lead over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the Electoral College.  Yet 20 electoral votes of four states were contested amidst charges of voting fraud, voter intimidation, and improper ballots.  The dispute was resolved only when Democrats acquiesced to giving all 20 votes to Hayes in return for the removal of all federal troops from Southern states, ending Reconstruction.  It was a peaceful transition of power, barely.   

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but conceded to Republican George W. Bush after the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop a recount of ballots in Florida, giving its electoral votes to Bush. 

Yet in none of these contentious elections was a sitting president involved.  In three of them, one candidate accepted defeat rather than encourage violence.  Only in 1860 was secession and war a substitute for concession to the results.  

We will very shortly be tested again.  The president has said he may not agree to step down if he loses, possibly provoking mass protests and violence.  One candidate will win the popular vote, but the Electoral College vote could be thrown into confusion.  Some state legislatures may consider appointing a separate slate of electors than those who won the state popular vote.  The Congress and the Supreme Court may be drawn into the controversy.  The possible scenarios are numerous - and frightening. 

A sense of history and a love of our form of government require soul-searching.  That is the job of both candidates and all elected state and federal officials as well as court justices.  It is also the job of every American, who should love country more than party.  What is at stake is more than who wins.  If winning is the only test, we are but one step from the rule by force Hamilton feared. The contest for political power must give way, in the end, to a just and peaceful transition of power. 

Jefferson understood that his victory came at a fearful price.  In his inaugural address, he pleaded for healing:

 “Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.”

Victory in November must not mean a defeat for democracy.  It’s up to us.

Photo Credit: Washington takes the Oath of Office, courtesy of alamy.com