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The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic. Edited by James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002, Pp. xix, 431. Cloth, $59.50; paper, $22.50.)
Well-tilled subjects in the history of the early republic can still be rewarding. This is the conclusion reached on reading The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, a collection of sixteen essays presented in 2000 at a conference held at the International Center for Jefferson Studies commemorating the disputed 1800-01 election. The election itself and its domestic and international consequences form the two pivots around which these essays revolve. Although they vary in quality and significance, most of the essays advance our understanding, offer new insights, and point to subjects of future inquiry.
Surprisingly, none of the essays offer much that is new about the actual conduct of the election or about its contested aftermath, which finally was resolved when the House of Representatives ended the stalemate between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in Jefferson's favor after thirty-six ballots. James E. Lewis Jr. deftly summarizes the familiar steps that led to this resolution as well as how the crisis appeared to participants. Whether military usurpation, secession, or civil war were ever the real possibilities that many feared, both Federalists and Jeffersonians, as Michael A. Bellesiles persuasively contends, had powerful logistical, political, and psychological reasons not to take up arms. Most of all, as Lewis emphasizes, respect for the constitutional process by the participants helped break the deadlock. Addressing why this crisis over the election of a president developed in the...