Summary Of Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election Of 1800 By Furling

The book Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 is a book describing what led up, and what happened during the 1800 election. Furling went as far as to mention the American revolution and talked all the way to the year 1800. Although he didn’t talk about the 1800 election until the last couple chapters, Ferling filled the readers minds with what was going on in America before the election. Ferling gives a short biography about all the candidates in the election of 1800, like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Charles Pinckney, and Aaron Burr. Ferling gives us a view about the government pre-1800s throughout the book. For example is when he talks about the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Charles Pinckney who ran with the federalists,

Ferling explained that every elector in the group had two votes, they had two because the government knew one of the electors’ votes will go to someone from their state. This forces the electors’ to actually look for candidates they actually like to use that other vote with. Throughout the book, Ferling made sure to explain this new electoral system and why it was bad. He explained it as a disaster waiting to happen, and it almost did when Jefferson and Burr were tied when it came to votes, and this made the house of representatives vote. This tie could have delayed a new presidency because if no one was elected by March 1 of the next year, the country would’ve been out of a president until the following December. That problem added on to the other problems the election caused when the selection of a vice president was harder than it should be in 1788, and

Zerling as an author gave me more information on how America changed since declaring independence. America changed in ways like population, as the population doubled since 1776 to 1800. America went from 13 colonies to 16 states. Before reading this book, I really didn’t know anything about the people other than Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who ran for the 1800 election. Aaron Burr and Charles Pinckney were respectively were democratic-republicans and federalists. This book thoroughly explained Burr and Pinckney's’ lives to me. I learned that Charles Pinckney didn't feel the right to declare independence until the day the declaration of independence was ratified. This book also inform you that Pinckney believed in a society full American participation in the slave trade and he felt slaves should count as one seat in the house of