Pinckney for vice-president, while the Republican vote was divided
between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

A favorite warning on the part of those who see their ideas threatened
with overthrow is that our country is "trembling on the verge of
revolution." How many times in the past twenty-five, ten and five years
have ranting men and women proclaimed from the housetops that we were
"on the verge of revolution?" According to these wild pessimists the
revolution is always at hand, but somehow or other it fails to arrive.
The probabilities are that it has been permanently side-tracked.

During the campaign of 1800, Hamilton sounded the trumpet of alarm, when
he declared in response to a toast:

"If Mr. Pinckney is not elected, a revolution will be the consequence,
and within four years I will lose my head or be the leader of a
triumphant army."

The Federalist clergy joined in denouncing Jefferson on the ground that
he was an atheist. The Federalists said what they chose, but when the
Republicans grew too careless they were fined and imprisoned under the
Sedition law.

The exciting canvas established one fact: there was no man in the United
States so devotedly loved and so fiercely hated as Thomas Jefferson. New
York had twelve electoral votes, and because of the Alien and Sedition
laws she withheld them from Adams and cast them upon the Republican side.

It may not be generally known that it was because of this fact that New
York gained its name of the "Empire State."