The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic

George W. Bush and Al Gore were by no means the first presidential hopefuls to find themselves embroiled in a hotly contested electoral impasse. Two hundred years earlier, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams endured arguably the most controversial and consequential election in American history. Focusing on the wide range of possible outcomes of the 1800-1801 melee, this collection of essays situates the American "Revolution of 1800" in a broad context of geo-political and racial developments in the Atlantic world as a whole. In essays written expressly for this volume, leading historians of the period examine the electoral, social, and political outcome of Jefferson's election in discussions strikingly relevant in the aftermath of the 2000 election.

Contributors

Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los AngelesMichael Bellesiles, Emory UniversityJeanne Boydston, University of WisconsinSeth Cotlar, Willamette UniversityGregory Evans Dowd, University of Notre DameLaurent Dubois, Michigan State UniversityDouglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College, SyracuseJoanne Freeman, Yale UniversityJames E. Lewis Jr., independent scholar Robert M. S. McDonald, United States Military Academy, West PointJames Oakes, City University of New York Graduate CenterJeffrey Pasley, University of Missouri, ColumbiaJack N. Rakove, Stanford UniversityBethel Saler, Haverford CollegeJames Sidbury, University of TexasAlan Taylor, University of California, Davis

James Horn is Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and author of Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake.

Jan Ellen Lewis is Professor of History and Director of the Graduate History Program at Rutgers University, the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family Values in Jefferson's Virginia, and coeditor with Peter S. Onuf of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture (Virginia).

Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Virginia).