# SDMB Retrospective US Presidential Elections 1796 **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 30, 2014, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109 "2014-01-30T05:12:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/1 "2014-01-30T05:12:22Z")
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_presidential\_election,\_1796](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1796) Voting for John Adams ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/2 "2014-01-30T16:00:22Z")
Voting for Adams, but [I know I’m gonna regret it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts) . . . ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/3 "2014-01-31T07:26:27Z")
If you are gonna regret it then why do it? Sometimes I think it’s funny when people complain about having no candidates to vote FOR these days. Here is the first contested presidential election and the candidates stink. Jefferson and Adams made great contributions to founding the nation but that didn’t make them good presidents. Both dithered and had glaring blind spots which would cost their administrations dearly. Jefferson (and nearly all Republicans) didn’t understand trade and Adams (and nearly all Federalists) didn’t understand popular opinion or the importance of it. I think that as individuals it’s a wash. So we have two parties. The Federalists see themselves not as a party but the wise caretakers elected to run the new federal government after which the common people should politely step aside while the leaders got on with things. They deem themselves perceptive enough to pick winners and losers (credit being rightly restricted to gentlemen) and are wistful about the good old days before the nasty newspaper wars when politics was largely a discussion the elite held behind closed doors. They see their opponents as Antis who are against the newly empowered federal government just because and also because they control the patronage of state jobs. They also see them as democrats who cater to popular opinion to gain power. The Republicans (the term Democratic-Republican, though widely used even by scholars, is anachronistic) also do not see themselves as a party. They see themselves as the virtuous opposition to the centralizing forces of Federalism. Their leaders certainly don’t think of themselves as democrats but as Southerners they feel less threatened by levelling impulses and rhetoric because of the stark differences between the planter class and their white neighbors. (And because they completely deny any connection of equality to the condition of slavery, of course.) The Jeffersonians believe themselves to be fully aware of of the political and economic condition of the United States but with few exceptions this is laughably optimistic. They see their opponents as monarchists who are looking to ingrain aristocratic privilege into American culture culminating with the devolution of the Republic into a new monarchy. Of the two I tend to favor the Republicans. Their worldview certainly sucked for the slaves though so on that basis I can understand opposition to them. I think an early Jefferson Administration might be better timed. There would be no quasi-war with France and while given their single-minded pursuit of some discrimination against British goods, despite the million-pound shithammer that this would bring down upon American commerce, they weren’t likely to be friendly with Great Britain at least the newly worked out Jay Treaty would forestall an immediate confrontation. Basically haven’t all the benefits of Federalism already occured? The centralization of political power was solidified by the demonstration of military force in the Whiskey Rebellion and the co-opting the support of the capitalists by assuming all of the debt. Relations with the mother country were normalized. Everyone was for neutrality and the nation stood to gain commercially by supplying the belligerents. Almost all that Adams adds are negatives. He doesn’t take the nation to war against France and he doesn’t resort to arms to keep the presidency after the election of 1800. Other than that there is only the legacy of John Marshal. The Chief Justice was masterful to be sure but given the rigid nature of the political branches the likely outcome is for power to accrue to the judicial branch as has happened. Why not bring in Jefferson now before Federalism forever taints itself with the Alien and Sedition Acts? Leave it as a viable national movement with a chance to recover from its aristocratic arrogance. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/4 "2014-01-31T12:11:47Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > If you are gonna regret it then why do it? I’m assuming that 1796 **Brainglutton** doesn’t know that the Adams administration is going to be passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, while his 2014 counterpart does. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/5 "2014-01-31T15:08:24Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > If you are gonna regret it then why do it? Becaus the D-Rs are nutjobs. Because I know [Hamilton’s vision for America](http://www.amazon.com/Hamiltons-Republic-Democratic-Nationalist-Tradition/dp/0684831600) is better than Jefferson’s. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/6 "2014-01-31T15:41:38Z")
What leads you to the conclusion that Jefferson “didn’t understand trade”? Is it his praise of _The Wealth of Nations_, his relationship with economists such as J.B. Say, or his effort in translating multiple works of the laissez-faire Destutt de Tracy such as his _Treatise on Political Economy_? Perhaps what you meant is he didn’t support mercantilism? Well, yes, he was ahead of his time when it came to the embrace of capitalist thought. He understood trade better than the economically illiterate historians who parrot this nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/7 "2014-01-31T15:54:56Z")
Adams also praised de Tracy’s treatise. So if Jefferson didn’t understand trade, how have historians somehow not attributed economic bumpkinism to Adams as well? Simply because they are largely frauds who enjoy a good yarn over the truth. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/8 "2014-01-31T15:56:57Z")
A tight race so far. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/9 "2014-01-31T16:06:47Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > What leads you to the conclusion that Jefferson “didn’t understand trade”? I dunno about trade, but [his views on banks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Banks) were pure crankery. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/10 "2014-01-31T16:56:30Z")
What specifically? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/11 "2014-01-31T17:26:40Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > What specifically? Specifically that he was against the whole “system of banking.” > [@](#): > > The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. … And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. – Thomas Jefferson – Letter to John Taylor, May 26, 1816 [196][197] That, sir, is pure crankery, with schizo sauce and a side of dumbth. And a distinctly and traditionally American form of it. Essentially, it is an aspect of the pseudoeconomic fallacy known as [producerism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Producerism) – the idea that only people who make things you can hold in your hands are producers of “real” wealth and all others are parasitic on them. This kind of nonsense is actually very old in American populist thought. British conservative Paul Johnson commented in his _A History of the American People:_ > [@](#): > > The Founders, particularly the Virginians, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al., equated property, as a moral force, with land. Their views were articulated by John Taylor (1753-1824), like them a Virginia landowner who served in the Senate and published in 1814 a monumental work of 700 pages, An Inquiry in the Principles and Policy of the United States. Taylor distinguished between ‘natural’ property. such as land, and ‘artificial property’ created by legal privilege, of which banking wealth was the outstanding example. He saw the right to issue paper money as indirect taxation on the people: ‘Taxation, direct or indirect, produced by a paper system in any form, will rob a nation of property without giving it liberty; and by creating and enriching a separate interest, will rob it of liberty without giving it property.’ Paper-money banking benefited an artificially created and parasitical financial aristocracy at the expense of the hard-working farmer, and this ‘property-transferring policy invariably impoverishes all laboring and productive classes.’ He compared this new financial power with the old feudal and ecclesiastical power, with the bankers using ‘force, faith and credit’ as the two others did religion and feudality. What particularly infuriated Taylor was the horrible slyness with which financiers had invested ‘fictitious’ property, such as bank-paper and stock, with all the prestige and virtues of ‘honest’ property. > > Taylor’s theory was an early version of what was to become known as the ‘physical fallacy,’ a belief that only those who worked with their hands and brains to raise food or make goods were creating ‘real’ wealth and that all other forms of economic activity were essentially parasitical. It was commonly held in the early 19th century, and Marx and all his followers fell victim to it. Indeed plenty of people hold it in one form or another today, and whenever its adherents acquire power, or seize it, and put their beliefs into practice, by oppressing the ‘parasitical middleman,’ poverty invariably follows. Taylor’s formulation of this theory fell on particularly rich soil because American farmers in general, and the Southerners and backwoodsmen in particular, already had a paranoid suspicion of the ‘money power’ dating from colonial times, as we have seen. So Taylor’s arguments, suitably vulgarized, became the common coin of the Jeffersonians, later of the Jacksonians and finally of silver-standard Democrats and populists of the late 19th century, who claimed that the American farmer was being ‘crucified on a cross of gold.’ The persistence of this fallacy in American politics refutes the common assumption that America is resistant to ideology, for if ever there were an ideology it is this farrago. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/12 "2014-01-31T19:06:08Z")
Adams. If the Democratic Republicans had won out over the Federalists we’d have a very different looking country. As a specific example, without John Adams as president we wouldn’t have John Marshall as Chief Justice, and without Marshall we’d have a _very_ different legal system and relationship between the federal government and the states. Without Marshall we’d have no _Marbury v. Madison, Fletcher v. Peck, McCulloch v. Maryland, Cohens v. Virginia, Gibbons v. Ogden, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee,_ and so on. Imagine no judicial review over state or federal legislation, no assertion of U.S Supreme Court authority over criminal and civil matters in state courts, etcetera… ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/13 "2014-01-31T19:09:43Z")
Far from certain that we wouldn’t have gotten at least judicial review–I believe Thomas Jefferson himself was appalled by it, but it wasn’t like it was a novel concept. I voted for Jefferson, incidentally, holding my nose at plenty of things. If John Adams had a [weekly podcast](http://www.jeffersonhour.com/), it’s possible I might’ve gone the other way. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/14 "2014-01-31T19:36:51Z")
I’m talking about the Embargo of course. From the very first Congress the Republicans had been trying for punative tariffs on British manufactured items despite the fact that Great Britain was in large part the only source for these goods and the dominant naval power. While the Federalists were in charge they were able to squash these misguided impulses. What I’m arguing here is that moving Jefferson’s term up by four years putting it just after Jay’s Treaty (which pulled the rug out from under the tariff idea) and leaving the Federalists as a viable opposition might have avoided both the Embargo and even the War of 1812. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/15 "2014-01-31T23:38:22Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Specifically that he was against the whole “system of banking.” > > That, sir, is pure crankery, with schizo sauce and a side of dumbth. And a distinctly and traditionally American form of it. Essentially, it is an aspect of the pseudoeconomic fallacy known as [producerism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Producerism) – the idea that only people who make things you can hold in your hands are producers of “real” wealth and all others are parasitic on them. > > This kind of nonsense is actually very old in American populist thought. British conservative Paul Johnson commented in his _A History of the American People:_ You continue to post this quote with no citation of Jefferson to back up your claims. Johnson doesn’t back it up in his screed either. I’ve mentioned the economists Jefferson was influenced by. I’ve also pointed out that Adams was on the same page as Jefferson, especially about banking. You show ignorance of the nature of money and banking during this period. It was marked by banks creating scrip out of nowhere until the inevitable bust set in. Jefferson and Adams saw the danger of these inflationary schemes and saw even clearer who they benefited. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/16 "2014-01-31T23:54:08Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > I’m talking about the Embargo of course. From the very first Congress the Republicans had been trying for punative tariffs on British manufactured items despite the fact that Great Britain was in large part the only source for these goods and the dominant naval power. While the Federalists were in charge they were able to squash these misguided impulses. What I’m arguing here is that moving Jefferson’s term up by four years putting it just after Jay’s Treaty (which pulled the rug out from under the tariff idea) and leaving the Federalists as a viable opposition might have avoided both the Embargo and even the War of 1812. That’s an interesting theory,but it’s a bit of a stretch to claim the embargo is proof Jefferson didn’t u understand trade. He didn’t enforce the embargo to help the economy, he enforced the embargo as an act of economic warfare. Jefferson viewed it as an alternative to war. You could say Jefferson didn’t understand how to handle the crisis, but to say he didn’t understand trade is repeating a common misconception that he was economically backward. In fact he was at the forefront of advancing capitalist thought in the US. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/17 "2014-02-01T01:10:00Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > You continue to post this quote with no citation of Jefferson to back up your claims. What are you talking about? I **posted** a quote **of Jefferson’s** expressing hostility to the very existence of banks. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/18 "2014-02-01T01:14:02Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > In fact he was at the forefront of advancing capitalist thought in the US. Certainly not; he was an agrarian. [His archrival Hamilton was the industrialist.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton#Manufacturing_and_industry) See his [_Report on Manufactures_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactures) and his [Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Establishing_Useful_Manufactures). **He** was at the forefront. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/19 "2014-02-01T02:25:57Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > You continue to post this quote with no citation of Jefferson to back up your claims. It’s a real quote…it’s a letter from him to John Taylor, from May 28, 1816, expressing his agreement with Taylor’s book: [http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl245.php](http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl245.php) > [@](#): > > The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their subsistence, unincumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life. You have successfully and completely pulverized Mr. Adams’ system of orders, and his opening the mantle of republicanism to every government of laws, whether consistent or not with natural right. > > . . . > > On this view of the import of the term republic, instead of saying, as has been said, “that it may mean anything or nothing,” we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109/20 "2014-02-01T02:37:41Z")
Let me add, here’s Taylor’s book, which Jefferson was responding to: > **[Online Library of Liberty](https://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1308&layout=html)** > > Spanning the centuries from Hammurabi to Hume, and collecting material on topics from art and economics to law and political theory, the OLL provides you with a rich variety of texts to explore and consider. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sdmb-retrospective-us-presidential-elections-1796/680109.md?page=2)