A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign | 
 enlarge | Author: Edward J. Larson
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 10038
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0743293177
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.973
EAN: 9780743293174
ASIN: 0743293177
Publication Date: June 10, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
"They could write like angels and scheme like demons." So begins Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Larson's masterful account of the wild ride that was the 1800 presidential election -- an election so convulsive and so momentous to the future of American democracy that Thomas Jefferson would later dub it "America's second revolution." This was America's first true presidential campaign, giving birth to our two-party system and indelibly etching the lines of partisanship that have so profoundly shaped American politics ever since. The contest featured two of our most beloved Founding Fathers, once warm friends, facing off as the heads of their two still-forming parties -- the hot-tempered but sharp-minded John Adams, and the eloquent yet enigmatic Thomas Jefferson -- flanked by the brilliant tacticians Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who later settled their own differences in a duel. The country was descending into turmoil, reeling from the terrors of the French Revolution, and on the brink of war with France. Blistering accusations flew as our young nation was torn apart along party lines: Adams and his elitist Federalists would squelch liberty and impose a British-style monarchy; Jefferson and his radically democratizing Republicans would throw the country into chaos and debase the role of religion in American life. The stakes could not have been higher. As the competition heated up, other founders joined the fray -- James Madison, John Jay, James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, George Clinton, John Marshall, Horatio Gates, and even George Washington -- some of them emerging from retirement to respond to the political crisis gripping the nation and threatening its future. Drawing on unprecedented, meticulous research of the day-to-day unfolding drama, from diaries and letters of the principal players as well as accounts in the fast-evolving partisan press, Larson vividly re-creates the mounting tension as one state after another voted and the press had the lead passing back and forth. The outcome remained shrouded in doubt long after the voting ended, and as Inauguration Day approached, Congress met in closed session to resolve the crisis. In its first great electoral challenge, our fragile experiment in constitutional democracy hung in the balance.A Magnificent Catastrophe is history writing at its evocative best: the riveting story of the last great contest of the founding period.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Expanded classroom lecture April 22, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
As explained in the notes, the author took a classroom lecture and expanded it for a book. Not a great read, but the information on how the press started to influence elections and how we drifted to the practice of electing both President/VP in one vote is educational (use to be the second highest vote getter became VP). I had the priviledge of meeting the author and he is very entertaining speaker.
Though we disagree on our opinions of Alex Hamilton (I like Alex)..the book talks less than flattering of Hamilton, so if you want the rest of the story on him, I suggest reading the Ron Chernow book.
An Election by Superdelegates April 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This was, given the consensus for Washington to be President, our first national election. Its result re-oriented the country in its promised direction and solidified the two party system.
Larson tells the saga of this 16 month pre-media electoral slog. The Constitution had not anticipated political parties. It called for electors (today, our vestigal electoral college) to cast the presidential ballots and left each state to determine its own election rules. The parties studied the rules, did the math, and attempted to manipulate rules, events and perceptions to change the outcome before and after the fact.
The story is reported with facts and quotes. By nature of its content, there is a lot of technical detail. Slavery, which gives the south disproportionate electoral influence due to the Constitution's specified population count, is not an issue for the participants, and perhaps not the rank and file free male voter either. It faintly emerges when the Republicans need to show their "toughness" in response to a slave revolt.
The author does a good job of cataloging, state by state, the electioneering. The actual votings, by the electors and by the the House of Representatives, could have had a more detailed and interpretive treatment.
After having recently read Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr I am sensitive to the portrayal of Burr. Larson, like others, refers to Burr's negative qualities (such as extreme ambition or untrustworthiness) without evidence. There is mention of his potential profiting from founding a NY bank, but other banks, oriented towards Hamilton, favored the American aristocrats and essentially cut out the average person in lending decisions. In the absence of hard data showing that that he profited, should he not be celebrated for this? (Did Andrew Jackson accomplish this much?)
The treatment of Hamilton differs from that in Chernov's Alexander Hamilton. To Larson he is an extremist schemer, to Chernov, an achiever, albeit an contentious one. John Adams is portrayed as learning too late that he has been used by this party's extremists. The detail in the treatment here, defines the limitations of drama, such as the recent HBO series on John Adams, in portraying this time.
To me, the book does not have a fitting title. What was catastrophic about this election? Chaos, tumult or even pandemonium are better nouns than "catastrophe" which implies ruin or destruction. One of its participants calls it a catastrophe, but was destroyed?
 Must rate this book a 'Less Than Magnificent Catastrophe' March 23, 2008
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
Having read with interest dozens of books about this period in American history, my view is this work falls sadly short. To the point, it's about the author's views being portrayed as facts. On page 6 'America, however, never enjoyed abler representation in a foreign capital.' 'Never' certainly covers a lot of ground... Page 9 Larson definitively states Abigail Adams was Jefferson's 'itellectual equal'. Really??? She was certainly a savvy woman and a good letter writer, but Jefferson's equal? Page 11 casually relates that Jefferson's father had instilled in him a 'craving for material possessions'. Is having an appreciation for finer things the same as craving material possessions? This is nearly a 300 page book which, if read in its entirety, will keep you on your guard for the questionable and gratuitous.
 Clash Of The Titans: The Election Of 1800 February 24, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Recent American history has seen some fairly contested, highly partisan Presidential elections. In 1992 we saw the most successful run by a third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt in 1916. In 1996, we saw Republicans fresh off an historic take-over of Congress convinced they could defeat a sitting President. In 2004, the race between Bush and Kerry brought up memories of a war that had ended almost thirty years in the past. And, of course, 2000 saw the closest and most controversial Presidential election since Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Samuel Tilden.
But nothing that we've experienced can compare to the first partisan Presidential election in American history, the election of 1800.
In A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign, Edward Larson tells the story of a campaign that changed the way we elect Presidents and changed the course of American history.
Prior to 1800, the United States had not had a contested Presidential election. George Washington ran essentially unopposed in 1788 and 1792, and could have done the same in 1796 if he had chosen to. In the campaign of 1796, the partisan alignments that Washington had resisted and naively hoped would not come about were still forming. There were two factions, for sure, but formal political parties were still a few years away. The seeds for what would happen for years later, though, were planted when the Electoral College selected a President (Adams) and Vice-President (Jefferson) from opposing factions.
By the time the election of 1800 approached, those factions had developed into true political parties. The Federalists dominated New England and much of the North, the Republicans the South. Up for play, and all important to the election of 1800 were mid-Atlantic states like Pennsylvania.
In a relatively short, easy to read 276 pages, Larson takes the reader form one part of the country to the other as the two parties, and the factions within them, struggle to navigate the sometimes byzantine way in which President's were picked in the late 18th century.
In addition to Adams and Jefferson, much time is spent on the role played by two bitter political rivals who would eventually end up on a dueling field overlooking Manhattan Island -- Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. In 1800, Hamilton and Burr battled in the even-then rough and tumble world of New York City politics. The New York legislative elections would determine who won that state's electoral votes and Burr put together a strategy to win the city, and the state, from Hamilton. Hamilton, meanwhile, was fighting two enemies; the Republicans and John Adams who he believed had betrayed Federalist Party principles during his time in office. By October, Hamilton would openly break with Adams and back Vice-Presidential candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for President, thus guaranteeing a Federalist loss and the end of the Federalist Party.
One of the more extraordinary things about the election was the fact that neither Jefferson nor his supporters seemed to realize that Burr, through the guarantees he had exacted from them, had virtually guaranteed that the two men would end up tied in the Electoral College and the election would be thrown to the Federalist dominated House of Representative. In the end, after thirty-six ballot, the House choose Jefferson and American history was set on a new course.
Larson's book is an excellent read for anyone interested in electoral politics and American history.
 Further serendipity January 7, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
When I purchased this book I mistakenly ordered another on much the same subject. The first book "American Creation" dealt with the formation of the country and its revolutionary separation from Britain up to the election campaign between Adams and Jefferson. This book "A Magnificent Catastrophe" deals almost exclusively with the Adams versus Jefferson election of 1800. It is a thorough grounding in the complexities of American politics against the background of vast distances and poor communications which applied in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States. What is made clear is that each state was determined to go it alone in the way that the President was to be elected. The author also discusses how people changed their views on electoral procedures if they thought that their party could get a political advantage from a different electoral system. The author shows how party politics began in the United States and it is a useful contrast to learn that the Republicans were the (almost)radicals in 1800. The author also shows the importance of religion or the lack of it in American elections -- something which is still aparently with us today. However, the coverage is probably too detailed in many ways with too many quotes from the newspapers of the day, many of which, were openly partisan or more or less official organs of the parties they favoured. What is clear is that the papers were printing mostly opinion and facts sometimes we hard to come by, no doubt because of the difficulty of communications. An interesting revelation was that the candidates sought to alter the views of others by lengthy rebuttals and complex arguments. I know the subject is complex and difficult but I have marked the book down a bit because the endless quotations, for me at least, got a bit tedious. A valuable book nonetheless. An interesting sub-topic was the description of the way that Washington, DC began. As I live in Canberra, Australia and my city is partly based on the pioneering that went on in the District of Columbia, I was interested to be able to compare the differences and similarities.
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