The Election of 1801 and James A. Bayard's Disinterested Constitutionalism

Abstract: Distinguishing, on the one hand, between the 1800 state-based presidential election contests between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams that resulted in Jefferson's victory and, on the other, the voting in the House of Representatives in early 1801 to resolve the electoral vote tie between Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr, this article focuses exclusively on the latter contest, whose result made Jefferson president of the United States. In doing so, it rejects historian's conventional approach to the congressional deadlock as a mere pendant to what is conventionally known as the "Election of 1800." Second, it brings forth the Election of 1801 as the first major constitutional crisis in American history and thus makes it a major constitutional as well as political event. Third, it focuses on Delaware congressman James A. Bayard, the pivotal figure in resolving the voting deadlock in the House, which threatened to lead to civil violence and the failure of the Constitution. Fourth, taking Bayard to be a serious constitutional thinker as well as a shrewd political character, it argues that his act to resolve the deadlock, coupled with his explanation for doing so, constituted the first of only occasional major instances of disinterested constitutionalism in American history. The article thus contributes to the revival of attention to American constitutionalism, to the role that constitutional principles have played in American political history, and to the interplay between politics and the rule of law in the earliest years of American constitutional government