MARCH 4, 1801, DAWNED UNSEASONABLY WARM IN WASHINGTON, D. C. For the first time in the history of the young republic, the presidency was about to change from one political party to another, which wasn’t how it was supposed to work, considering how many of the founders had sworn up and down that political parties were poison to republican government.
The previous year’s presidential campaign had been a brutal one. The two candidates and their surrogates, including the hired press, spared no savagery. The challenger’s side referred to the incumbent as “a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The incumbent’s campaign made its opponent out to be the American Robespierre, or worse. When he lost, the incumbent declined to attend the new president’s inauguration.
Most of the country—and
