Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Cramoni. inspiring and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Kramon Institute.

I call this one.

Ballots for Bullets 1800. It was March 4, 1801. Thomas Jefferson was delivering his first inaugural

address as president of the United States. He had just defeated his old friend and

Federalist rival, the incumbent President John Adams, in the bitterly

contested election of 1800. Jefferson spoke in the Senate chamber of the Capitol

Building in the still thinly populated and primitive Washington DC. On his

right was his Vice President Aaron Burr, who had nearly become president himself.

On his left was the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, leading Federalist John Marshall, who would administer the oath of office

and continue as Chief Justice for 35 years.

The defeated John Adams was not in attendance.

He was in a carriage already on his way home to Quincy, Massachusetts.

His friendship with Jefferson, born in the American Revolution, shattered, not to be revived for many years.

Jefferson reflected on the great election America had just gone through.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions

has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely

and to speak and to write what they think. But this being now decided by the voice of

the nation announced according to the rules of the Constitution,

...