aged, solidified; the Federalists it dismayed, divided, overwhelmed with confusion.

After the fiercest combat ever known, Jefferson and Burr were elected-the result being largely due to Burr's splendid victory over Hamilton in New York.

Mr. Jefferson has said that the Federalists, routed at the polls, retreated into the judiciary.

This is true. Mr. Adams and his party knew where their haven, their fortress was, and they ran into it. Congress increased the judgeships, establishing circuits with three judges each, besides attorneys, clerks, and marshals. These posts were hurriedly filled with stalwart partizans. President Adams kept on filling up the offices with Federalists till nine o'clock of the last night of his term. The whole administration was made a deep, solid political color. No Republican spot, stripe, or trimming appeared anywhere to relieve the dull monotony of Federalism.

John Marshall, already Secretary of State, was given an additional office. He was appointed Chief Justice, a place from which he was to fulminate rank Federalism with authoritative voice for more than a generation.

The time being short and the object worthy, Mr. Adams continued to sign commissions, and John Marshall, by candle-light, continued to countersign. At midnight, so the story goes, Levi Lincoln stepped

into the room, drew Jefferson's watch upon the industrious Marshall, and made him stop.

One of the least happy of men must have been President John Adams! His administration condemned, his party dead, his Secretary watched and arrested like a thief in the night, his plight was lamentable.

It had been bad enough for him at his inauguration that the shouts should be for George Washington-not for John Adams; it would be infinitely worse now at his rival's inauguration, when the shouting would be for Thomas Jefferson.

Who would cheer for John Adams?

Not the Republicans, for they hated him; not the Federalists, for they loved him no more.

Hamilton had denounced him, and the very men who had slain the Federalist party accused Adams of the crime.

Why remain and face the humiliations of inauguration day? Why not order the carriage for an early hour and slip away from John Randolph's "vast and desolate city" before the crowds were churning the mud? In short, was it not time for John Adams to go?

Home-home to Quincy and to Mistress Abigail. Not that he was scared, for fear made no approaches to him; but because he was not feeling well, because his heart was sore and his temper sour and his mind droopy; and because shame,

envy, jealousy, rage, and disappointment were tearing him like evil spirits, he would order his horses for the very early morning and give an exhibition of petty spite and childish petulance, for a similar display of which the naughty urchin would be punitively spanked.

CHAPTER XL

THE JEFFERSON AND BURR CONTEST

UNDER the old system of conducting presidential elections, that candidate who received the highest number of votes became President, the next Vice-President.

Mr. Jefferson in 1796 had not been a candidate for the second place; nobody had voted for him to be Vice-President; yet he took the vice-presidency, because that was the law. He and John Adams had each striven for the presidency, while other candidates contested the second place. Yet neither of the candidates whom the people had voted for as Vice-President was allowed to serve.

Such was the law, and it should be remembered in gaging the moral guilt of Aaron Burr.

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in the campaign of 1800 received 73 votes each; John Adams, on the opposition ticket, had 65.

Thus the election was thrown into the House, and the law plainly directed that a President should be chosen by the House from the candidates who had received the highest number of votes. Appar ently the makers of the Constitution intended to

vest the House with some discretion. The area of this discretion was limited, but it was there. Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams acted upon this idea when they afterward combined to defeat the will of the people, and to oust the majority candidate, Andrew Jackson.

They were punished politically for this combination, but history has not placed Clay and Adams in her Rogues' Gallery.

Now in 1800 the custom as to presidential elections was not settled. By law, the electoral colleges were vested with the power of choosing for President and Vice-President men whose names had not been before the people at all. The Hamiltonian anti-Democratic plan gave them this power for the express purpose of depriving "the great beast" of the right to choose its rulers. Only by the irresistible force of popular sentiment have the electors been made the mere registers of the will of the people.

In 1800 the ideas controlling the case were so vague that nobody claimed the election of Jefferson to the first place, and Burr to the second.

Ballots did not specify for which place the presidential candidate had contested. Therefore the Republican ticket of 1800 was simply Jefferson and Burr-represented by 73 votes in the electoral college.

These two names being the highest, the law re