A tale of two revolutions
1800 and 2024
Late in life Thomas Jefferson wrote to a fellow Virginian reflecting on what he called “the revolution of 1800,” referring to the presidential and congressional elections of that year. “That was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of ’76 was in its form, not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle and electing those of another.”
The elections of 1800 had pitted Jefferson and his Republican allies, believers in limited government and favoring the states over the federal government, against John Adams and the Federalists, who sought an expansive government, especially at the federal level. Adams was the incumbent president, heir of George Washington, who leaned Federalist without endorsing the party explicitly. The Federalists held a majority in Congress. Jefferson and the Republicans were the outsiders seeking to replace the incumbents.
They did so, decisively beating the Federalists for both the presidency and Congress. And, no less crucially, Adams and the congressional Federalists relinquished their offices peaceably, in accord with the Constitution. This peaceful transfer of power from one party to the other was the essence of the revolution of 1800.
Jefferson was writing in 1819, far enough after the fact to appreciate its importance. America had made a habit of honoring the results of elections. The candidates and parties campaigned hard. Their partisanship sometimes grew violently personal, as when Republican Aaron Burr, while Jefferson’s vice president, dueled with and killed Federalist Alexander Hamilton. But once the votes were cast and counted, candidates and parties accepted the results and moved on. The winners congratulated themselves and typically reached out to the losers. “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists,” Jefferson said in his 1801 inaugural address. The losers usually congratulated the winners, graciously if not always sincerely. Rather than dispute the results, they bent their efforts to doing better the next time. This became the standard in American politics.
So it remained until Donald Trump lost the election of 2020. Trump employed legal means to dispute his defeat by Joe Biden. When these failed, he encouraged followers who protested violently, invading the Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the election results. After this too failed, Trump vacated the White House but continued to claim he had won the election. He persuaded his party to join him in rejecting the 2020 results, to the degree that the Republicans nominated him for 2024. And in that election he persuaded American voters to return him to the presidency.
This put America in the unprecedented and paradoxical position of having democratically voted into office a man and a party who rejected the fundamental principle of democracy, going back to Jefferson and Adams: that the losers in an election accept their defeat and go quietly.
This by itself was potentially revolutionary, for as the American republic was about to reach the historic milestone of a quarter-millennium of existence, republicanism — popular self-government — was fundamentally endangered. Trump continued to take the position that the only election results he recognized were those that favored him. He refused to accept restraints on his power as president. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he wrote, apparently referencing Napoleon Bonaparte. After issuing one of his boldest executive orders, he declared, “Long live the the king.” He repeatedly suggested he would not be bound by the Constitution’s ban on third terms for presidents.
A revolution is never known to be a revolution until after it has happened. Time has to pass for its enduring character to become undeniable. Jefferson had to wait almost two decades to call the 1800 election a revolution.
Time might well show the 2024 election to have been another revolution. If Trump is serious about what he says, Americans might have voted into office someone they can’t vote out of office. By the means of self-government, they will have chosen not to govern themselves. Under the Republican party, America will have ceased to be a republic.
Trump has called himself a king and likened himself to an emperor. Some of his supporters cheer. Others say he’s joking.
We’ll see who’s cheering and laughing in January 2029.
The first indicator of our republic’s shaky ground will be in next year’s midterms and how the president reacts if Democrats take one or both legislatures. Or if the fix is truly in-place that we no longer have free and fair elections. The fact that it is a question says a lot about our country now.
From the Federalist Paper 68 by Hamilton. The founders didn't guard against it well enough!
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?
But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.
The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union,