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Feb 9
Presidential
William Henry Harrison is born, 1773
On this day in 1773, future President William Henry Harrison is born on the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. Harrison went on to serve as the ninth U.S.…
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1796 Election
The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.
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1789 Election
The first presidential election was held on the first Wednesday of January in 1789.
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1800 Election
The significance of the 1800 election lay in the fact that it entailed the first peaceful transfer of power between parties under the U.
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1804 Election
The 1804 presidential election was a landslide victory for the incumbent Thomas Jefferson.
As in 1789, persuading George Washington to run was the major difficulty in selecting a president in 1792. Washington complained of old age, sickness, and the increasing hostility of the Republican press toward his administration. The press attacks were symptomatic of the increasing split within the government between Federalists, who were coalescing around Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and Republicans, forming around Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. James Madison, among others, convinced Washington to continue as president by arguing that only he could hold the government together.
Speculation then shifted to the vice presidency. Hamilton and the Federalists supported the reelection of John Adams. Republicans favored New York governor George Clinton, but Federalists feared him partly because of a widespread belief that his recent election to the governorship was fraudulent. In addition, the Federalists feared that Clinton would belittle the importance of the federal government by retaining his governorship while serving as vice president.
Adams won relatively easily with support from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, except New York. Only electoral votes are recorded here, because most states still did not select presidential electors by popular vote. Nor was there a separate vote for president and vice president until the Twelfth Amendment took effect in 1804. The results were Washington, 132 electoral votes (unanimous); Adams, 77; Clinton, 50; Jefferson, 4; and Aaron Burr, 1.
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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