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This Day in History
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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1792 Election
As in 1789, persuading George Washington to run was the major difficulty in selecting a president in 1792.
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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.
The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.
The Republicans called for more democratic practices and accused the Federalists of monarchism. The Federalists branded the Republicans "Jacobins" after Robespierre's faction in France. (The Republicans sympathized with revolutionary France, but not necessarily with the Jacobins.) The Republicans opposed John Jay's recently negotiated accommodationist treaty with Great Britain, whereas the Federalists believed its terms represented the only way to avoid a potentially ruinous war with Britain. Republicans favored a decentralized agrarian republic; Federalists called for the development of commerce and industry.
State legislatures still chose electors in most states, and there was no separate vote for vice president. Each elector cast two votes for president, with the runner-up becoming vice president.
The Federalists nominated Vice President John Adams and tried to attract southern support by running Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina for the second post. Thomas Jefferson was the Republican standard-bearer, with Aaron Burr as his running mate. Alexander Hamilton, always intriguing against Adams, tried to throw some votes to Jefferson in order to elect Pinckney president. Instead, Adams won with 71 votes; Jefferson became vice president, with 68; Pinckney came in third with 59; Burr received only 30; and 48 votes went to various other candidates.
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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