A Republic No More. Jay Cost
in 1820 and even succeeded in rewriting the state constitution in 1821. The tight organization of this “Albany Regency” ensured that there would be no heresies to pervert the true Republican faith. When the New York legislature sent Van Buren to Washington as a senator in 1821, he resolved to take his ideas of party organization nationwide.15
But how to do that? In 1824, Van Buren thought that Secretary of the Treasury Crawford was the best candidate for the old Jeffersonian faith, but Crawford suffered a stroke before the election and ultimately finished third in the balloting. The surprising strength of Jackson pushed Van Buren and the Regency toward Old Hickory’s side in the wake of the disputed outcome, and he worked behind the scenes to deliver the Crawford faction to Old Hickory. Twenty years earlier, Jackson’s popularity might not have counted for much in the presidential contest, but by 1824 two-thirds of the states cast popular votes for the presidency, and the political power of Jackson’s appeal was undeniable.
What Van Buren wished to do, and indeed what he basically accomplished, was unite the political popularity of Jackson to the old alliance of “the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North.” Moreover, this new coalition would be solidified and maintained by an elaborate party organization, a nationwide version of what the Regency had already built in the Empire State, binding political elites to the grassroots in a shared quest for office.16
And the glue that would hold this new organization together? Political patronage. Van Buren and the Democrats (as this coalition would come to be called) would use the public treasury to reward their loyal supporters with jobs, contracts, considerations, and anything and everything they could to incentivize as many people as possible to help elect Jackson president. And in so doing, they would ring in a new era of political corruption, unlike anything the nation had seen before.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution declares:
[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
This power, divided between the Senate and the president, was not handed over lightly by the Framers. In the lead-up to the Revolution, the colonists faced extreme hardship at the hands of royal agents. The Declaration of Independence argues that King George III “has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” It is little wonder, then, that the Framers sought to spread the power of appointment across two branches, and to give the lion’s share of authority to the president, an agent they thought would be sufficiently dissociated from politics.
Little wonder as well that, during the administration of George Washington, the appointment power was not misused for political purposes. The great “Father of His Country” did not face the voters in either 1788 or 1792; his larger-than-life reputation meant that he was immune from the ebbs and flows of politics more than any of his successors; and the fact that he had well and truly earned his sterling reputation meant that his top priority as president was establishing the legitimacy of the new government, not enriching his friends and family. While he excluded opponents of the new Constitution, many of his appointees sided with Jefferson over Hamilton on the most consequential policy questions, without fear of reprisal from Washington. He also refused to allow special consideration for military officers or relatives; his highest priority was finding fit people to fill available positions.17 Executive heads—like the postmaster general—who had the power to appoint inferior officers also followed Washington’s lead in this regard.18
John Adams generally followed the same policy, although the increasing tensions between the Federalists and the Republicans meant that political considerations were more prominent.19 As Adams wrote, “Washington appointed a multitude of Democrats and Jacobins of the deepest dive. I have been more cautious in this respect.”20 In particular, the Provisional Army the Federalists created to prepare for a potential war with France was dominated by supporters of the president, with Republicans on the outside looking in. Even so, patronage was not, by any stretch, a normative rule during this period; it is one thing to staff the government with those who view the world similarly to yourself, quite another to do so as a form of political payoff.
That concept first appeared on the national stage with the Jefferson administration, who not coincidentally was the first president to triumph in a competitive electoral contest. Granted, there were few direct ballot battles between Adams and Jefferson in 1800, but nevertheless many voters made a choice between the two, largely via a series of state-level proxy battles, especially in New York and Pennsylvania. This meant Jefferson faced a burden that his predecessors did not; he owed his victory, in part, to the campaign efforts of his supporters. How to repay them?
Electoral considerations were a key reason why Aaron Burr, a shady character by the standards of the day, was elevated to the position of vice president. He developed one of the first electoral machines in the city of New York to contest the state legislative seats that would determine whether the Empire State’s electors would go for Adams or Jefferson. Burr was even influential in creating the Manhattan Company, an alternative financial institution to the pro-Federalist Bank of New York and the local chapter of the Bank of the United States. This pro-Jefferson institution made credit available to Republican business owners, paving the way for an all-out party effort in the spring of 1800. Little wonder, then, that Burr was rewarded with the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket.21
There is also strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that Jefferson handed rewards to a key member of Congress in the wake of his election. The final tally in the Electoral College left Burr and Jefferson in a tie, even though the former was intended to be vice president. The Constitution requires the House to select a president whenever no candidate has an Electoral College majority. Burr refused to give way to Jefferson, and to create a ruckus, the Federalist representatives voted for Burr on ballot after ballot. Although Jefferson denied making any political deals, it seems probable that Federalist Richard Bayard, Delaware’s lone member of Congress, received special consideration for his important vote. Each state receives one vote when the House chooses the president, so Bayard alone was as important as the entire New York or Virginia delegation. Bayard requested through intermediaries that a new administration retain local port collectors, who ultimately were indeed retained. Bayard later informed one collector, “I have taken good care of you.”22
This would not have been the first time Jefferson used his official capacity for a partisan purpose. While the circumstances surrounding Jefferson and Bayard are somewhat hazy, the deal between the “Sage of Monticello” and Philip Freneau is clear as day. In 1791, as the battle between Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton became increasingly partisan, the former were concerned that Hamilton was using Treasury Department printing contracts to subsidize John Fenno’s proadministration Gazette of the United States. Jefferson and Madison countered by tasking Freneau to run a Republican newspaper, the National Gazette. To cover some of these costs, Jefferson secured Freneau a job as a translation clerk in the State Department.23
With Jefferson installed as president in 1801, he faced a conundrum. On the one hand, the precedents set by Washington and Adams clearly put limits on the extent that federal jobs could be used for political purposes. Moreover, as noted above, Jefferson honestly believed that the mass of the Federalist Party could be separated from its leadership, and widespread removal of Federalist officeholders would only impede that goal. On the other hand, the clamor for offices among Republicans was great, and Jefferson, as the first unabashed president/party leader, could not ignore such demands. And, anyway, Federalists greatly outnumbered Republicans in office (by Jefferson’s estimate there were only six Republicans out of hundreds of presidential appointees, “and those