The Most Divided Election in American History—The Story of America Series [Ep. 16]

Catch the NFL offseason with NFL Plus Premium and stream all your favorite offseason coverage and exclusive content from the NFL scouting combine, the NFL draft, free agency and more. Relive the biggest plays from the season with fully condensed game replays. Plus stay connected with 24-7 football news and coverage on NFL Network. Sign up today at plus.nfl.com.

Terms and conditions apply. You wouldn't settle for watching a blurry TV, would you? So why settle for just okay TV sound? Upgrade your streaming and sound all in one with Roku Streambar. This powerful 2-in-1 upgrade for any TV lets you stream your favorite entertainment in brilliant 4K HDR picture and hear every detail with auto speech clarity. Whether you're hosting a party or just cleaning the house, turn it up and rock out with iHeart Radio and room-filling sound. Learn more about Roku Streambar today at roku.com.

Happy streaming! For more stories, head to Walmart.com today and score the 4K TV you've been waiting for. George Washington retired from public life, a resounding question hung over the heads of most Americans. What's next?

Let's get into the story. In the past 20 years or so, we've seen close contested elections on the presidential level. A big call to make. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column. In Georgia, the presidential race is also too close to call. This race is just as close as ever. The latest CNN opinion research tracking poll has the presidential candidates tied.

Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States. So we don't have a history of impeccable, imperishable elections. And this goes back to very early on. And the Constitution, the framers of the Constitution didn't think about presidential elections as being competitions between political parties.

That's important to keep in mind. The political parties arose of their own will, as it were. Of course, the first two elections were not contested. George Washington was the only candidate. But when he stepped down, that was the first actual contested election.

And it was close. And its closeness revealed the fact that parties were coming into being, despite all the admonitions and fears of Washington and others. John Adams ran in 1796. Adams, of course, had a lot of problems. He really came into the office with the burden of being compared to George Washington, the world's most tough act to follow. Adams was a little guy, a little kind of pudgy, with a short temper, prone to a certain kind of pettiness and jealousy and envy and negative emotions, which he was very frank about expressing. George Washington, on the other hand, was a big man, broad-shouldered, carried himself like the great soldier that he was, looked the way a father of a country ought to look. And a man who watched his tongue was very careful what he said and was very inclined to heal factions rather than try to exacerbate them.

So Adams had a tough act to follow. He was a very different kind of man. And yet there were things about him, many things about him to admire.

He might even be my favorite founder because he's so human. But he did inherit a lot of problems, not just the fact of being George Washington's successor. There was a problem with the French. The French are attacking American shipping and commerce. There's a lot of pressure to declare war on France, which would have been a foolish thing to do. The American Navy, the American Armed Forces, the American government was still finding its footing in the world.

So Adams was smart. This was no time to fight a war with a major power, including in this case a power that had been our friend up until the day before yesterday. So he managed to tamp down the war fever, but to do so at considerable political expense. There was a real loss of political capital. These difficulties were not just overseas. They had domestic impact. Followers of Jefferson tended to be pro-French, as Jefferson did.

The Federalists, who had never been pro-French to begin with, saw this as a perfect opportunity to harm their political opponents at home. So foreign policy in this case and domestic policy have a kind of reciprocal effect, bouncing back and forth and affecting one another. This is always true in American life.

The sort of notion that foreign affairs and domestic affairs are antiseptically separated from one another is an illusion. They never have been, much the same way that today we find the seepage between the two. It was true at the beginning. And here's something else that was true at the beginning. Lots and lots of fake news. Fake news was a high art form. At that time, journalism was really conducted as a form of political warfare, openly. One party had its paper, the other party has its paper. And if you think of Fox News versus MSNBC and cable television, you'd have a pretty good analogy for the way journalism was back in the 1790s. And a lot of the charges being thrown around were not just charges of corruption, not just charges of bad, venal policies, but trees.

And, you know, remember, this is a country that's not even two decades old. Jefferson was particularly good at these political taxes and spreading rumors. The opposition spread some rumors about him, too, some of which may have in the end turned out to be true about his having children through his slave mistress and so on. This was all out there in the political campaign, all that kind of dirt.

Don't think that it was somehow more elevated in the past. But it was just as vicious, just as ad hominem, just as personal. This hyper-partisan climate allowed the Federalists, who were in power in Adams' administration, the Federalists could push through the Congress legislation to silence their critics.

How about that? Censor them. They did this through a series of legislative acts called the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien and Sedition Acts appeared to be and have generally been regarded as an attack on the right of free speech, which, again, was something that was just getting its wings as an American institution.

And it's in danger. Jefferson and Madison, both of whom particularly Jefferson, were great believers in free speech. Jefferson said many wonderful things on the subject that are still quoted today.

Jefferson wasn't going to sit still for this. Jefferson and Madison responded with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which were attacks on the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional. But going on to make the equally unconstitutional assertion that the states had every right to ignore federal law, to nullify it or interpose themselves between the federal government and the citizenry. Both sides were going too far. Both sides were violating the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

So you have a hyper-partisan environment producing a hyper-political rhetoric. All of this didn't just stop and build and build until the election of 1800. Looked to be a watershed for the nation. Federalists really convinced themselves that if Jefferson became president, there would be something like the French Revolution. There would be a radical overturning of all existing political institutions. On the other side, the Republicans feared a federalist victory would be a move in the direction of a kind of monarchism. And on top of it all, George Washington dies. The whole thing, the whole experiment seemed to be on the line. But that was an illusion.

Something very important happened when Jefferson was finally inaugurated in 1801. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. Plus stay connected with 24-7 football news and coverage on NFL Network. Sign up today at Plus.NFL.com.

Terms and conditions apply. Plus offers premium picture and sound quality, so you'll feel like you're right in the action. Find the perfect TCL Roku TV for you today at Go.TCL.com slash TCL Roku TV. Are you looking to step up to a 4K Smart TV? One that gives you unparalleled clarity and picture resolution?

Then we've got good news for you. Because the Vizio 65 inch V-Series 4K Smart TV is now just $348. With all your favorite apps built in, you can stream straight out of the box.

You can even sing along to all your favorite music and radio on the iHeartRadio app. Looking for a smaller or bigger screen? Vizio offers unbeatable prices on all V-Series 4K Smart TVs.

Head to Walmart.com today and score the 4K TV you've been waiting for. And we return to Our American Stories and our series about us. The Story of America series with Professor Bill McClay. When we last left off, Dr. McClay was telling us about the election of 1800, one of the most divided elections in our nation's history.

Let's return to the story. Despite the factions, despite the partisan hit jobs and other attacks, there was for the first time in history an orderly peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another. That, as students of history, of students of political science will tell you, is the most difficult test for any regime to pass. Can it offer the prospect of a peaceful and definitive and orderly transfer of power from one person to the next?

You know, you think of the history of the Soviet Union, for example. Every time that a party chairman would die and they never just sort of peacefully left office, there's a scramble. Because there's no lawful pattern of succession laid out by the Constitution. There was a Constitution that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

It had no real significance. But the Constitution of the United States did. And this proved it. This orderly transfer of power had been the first major test of the Constitution's sturdiness.

And it passed the test. And I bring this out just because we talk loosely these days about how the country's falling apart. It doesn't have a future. We're going to have massive secession.

You know, any number of highly speculative assertions flowing from the very real perception. We are very divided at this moment. We have been very divided before. And that's a fact of life. There's no way of curing dividedness. There are ways of channeling it.

That's what the Constitution does. Jefferson's inaugural was an impressive event. What was most impressive about it was his speech. Jefferson was not much of a public speaker. He hated doing it.

He tended not to like things he wasn't good at. And even though he was good at most things, public speaking was one of the ones he wasn't so good at. But listen to some of this language and think about using a speech like this at a moment like this when, roughly speaking, half the country is angry and fearful. The rising nation spread over wine and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye. When I contemplate these transcendent objects and see the honor, the happiness and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking.

He's speaking in terms, he's reflecting, he's echoing the modesty of George Washington. This is a big job. I tremble to think that this job is now entrusted to me.

I don't know whether I can do it. And he went on from that humble beginning to address himself to the partisan divide, the bitterness of the lecture that had just passed, and made this strong claim. 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 a voice of the nation announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law and unite in common efforts for the common good. All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable, that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression. Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection, without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we count this a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore, that this should be more felt than feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety.

We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans, we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. Those are words that were the balm that the nation needed. Someone to say, and someone who had been a figure of fear and loathing for those who opposed them to say, we really won, we're all republicans, we're all federalists.

And anybody who says otherwise, we're not going to shut them up, we let them stand undisturbed of monuments of how safe it is to let error of opinion be tolerated. No more an Alien and Sedition Acts. And then Jefferson goes on to make a beautiful defense of the American republic and of the ideals by which and for which and upon which it was created. Let us then with courage and confidence pursue our own federal and republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government, kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe, possessing a chosen country with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth, from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practiced in various forms, but all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring and overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter. What more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

And could Jefferson write the story of us here on Our American Stories? For more, relive the biggest plays from the season with fully condensed game replays. Plus, stay connected with 24-7 football news and coverage on NFL Network. Sign up today at Plus.NFL.com.

Terms and conditions apply. Watch and a snap, and curated selections of TV for when you only sorta know what to watch. Not to mention all the free TV you can stream, including over 300 free live channels on the Roku channel. Find the perfect Roku player for you today at Roku.com. Happy streaming!

You can even sing along to all your favorite music and radio on the iHeartRadio app. Looking for a smaller or bigger screen? Visio offers unbeatable prices on all V-Series 4K Smart TVs. Head to Walmart.com today and score the 4K TV you've been waiting for.