The Federalist: The 1816 Presidential Election in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire

Sunday, November 30, 2014

The 1816 Presidential Election in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire

Rufus King
Founding Father of the United States
Major, Continental Army
Confederation Congressman
Constitutional Convention
Minister to Great Britain
U.S. Senator from New York
1816 Candidate for President
Federalist Party

(Here is another in our continuing series on the Federalist Party. They helped created this great nation, gave us liberty and our Constitution. But would they even recognize the centralized, authoritarian and Big Brother country that calls itself the United States?)

By Gary;

The Internet has taken me to Nerd Heaven on more than one occasion. On the net you can find some of the most obscure, strange and interesting things imaginable.

In this case I ran across a blog created by a student at the University of Oxford dealing with American election results going back to 1789. A fellow election nerd. Bless him.

If all you read was school text books you might think that Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were worshiped by voters everywhere. But that type of history has always been fantasy.

Huge portions of American society opposed the Jeffersonian style anti-bank, anti-commerce, anti-internal improvements, anti-military policies that appealed to unthinking mob rule. Though out of power from 1800 on the Federalists continued to aggressively oppose the Jeffersonians.

Slowly portions of the public woke up to the gross incompetence of Jeffersonian rule.

Gross Incompetence

There is nothing like the gross incompetence of an administration to breath life into the opposition party.

The Jeffersonian Democrat-Republicans systematically starved the American military allowing everyone from the British to the Barbary pirates to walk all over us. The propaganda "to the shores of Tripoli" still exists to cover up the fact that Jefferson's military policies were a total failure that ended up in the U.S. paying ransom to Islamist pirates to temporarily end the war.

Rather than build a strong American military and economy, Jefferson pretended to "punish" England with Embargo Act of 1807. The real aim was to politically punish the states that supported the Federalist Party. By spring 1808 New England ports were nearly shut down, and the regional economy headed into a depression, with growing unemployment.

Election of 1816

The incompetence of the Democrat-Republicans up to and during the War of 1812 caused a revival of the Federalist Party. The people were so angry that only four months after Madison's declaration of war against Britain the Federalist fusion ticket for President won 48% of the vote nearly beating Founding Father James Madison.

But by 1816 the war was over. The war had been a bumbled mess with no meaningful change in Britain's policies. But because of Andrew Jackson's last minute victory at New Orleans the Democrat-Republicans got the credit for some great "victory" in a national wave of patriotism.

So James Monroe rode the wave of victory in war in the election of 1816. He also adopted the Federalist policies of a national bank and protective tariffs.

The Federalists floundered with no foreign enemy, their issues taken and the Hartford Convention pulling them down. The Federalists ceased to be a major force in national politics.

Still Opposition to the Democrat-Republicans

With everything going against them and for their opponents, many voters were still opposing the Jeffersonians.

Politics never changes. It would be a cold day in Hell before Hamiltonians would cast their vote for a follower of Jefferson and vice versa.

The Federalists could still command nearly 41% of the vote in Pennsylvania against Democrat-Republican James Monroe.

So we return to the Internet Blog I ran across. Below are two maps showing the strength of Federalism among voters.

Republican in shades of tan Federalist in shades of blue-purple

1816 U.S. Presidential Election: Pennsylvania Results

James Monroe [Republican]

25,653 (59.33%)

Rufus King [Federalist]

17,588 (40.67%)

Philadelphia