continuing to exercise power without a popular mandate since the deadlock in the Electoral College, the Federalist Pretender John Marshall and his precessor's "midnight judges" called upon sixty thousand regulars from the Massachusetts militia to restore order in Washington City.

The Republican Governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia respond immediately by Please click the icon to follow us on Facebook.dispatching their own militias to the half-built Capital with orders to force their man, Thomas Jefferson into the Presidency.

The scenario of three armies fighting it out banana-republic style shocked the living framers of the Constitution yet those Founding Fathers had singularly failed to anticipate the circumstances of the election of 1800. In fact they had failed to anticipate the rise of multi-party democracy naively assuming that executive positions would be filled by Washingtonesque political notables who could be trusted to interpret Constitutional processes in the national interest. Problem was that due to drafting errors and perhaps the critical absence of Benjamin Franklin from Philadelphia those processes were frightfully unclear. Worse, they initiated a chain of events that now forced America onto the road to dissolution.

With votes between the Republican Candidates Jefferson and Colonel Aaron Burr tied in a dead heat, the job of counting out the electoral college resided with the President of the Senate. However this position was currently filled by none other than Jefferson himself who attempted to count out his rival whilst he attempted to horse-trade with the opposition Federalist Party that still dominated the Congress.

Because the House was required to choose a President "immediately" Congress turned to the next in succession, the Secretary of State John Marshall. Problem was that his term of office was due to expire 4th of March 1801, and in anticipation of an imminent departure from the Cabinet on 31st of January 1801 he had accepted a new appointment as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And to protect his Federalist legacy the departing President John Adams filled the Court with "Midnight Judges" who were also members of the Federalist Party.

The last complication was that Jefferson and Marshall were cousins, and they detested each other. Despite this, Marshall did the right thing and offered to set-up a Second Constitutional Convention, this time in Washington, and chaired by Jefferson.

But as the details of this political compromise were being hammered out Washington descended into chaos and the infant republic faced imminent dissolution. The outcome was a finely balanced decision that mght never have arisen through the normal course of events. In the future, the position of Vice President would be filled by the opposition party's main candidate.

And so after a short interregnum, the Adams-Jefferson Presidency would be followed by the Jefferson-Adams Presidency, forcing the bad-tempered loser of the 1800 election to unpack his bags and serve again in a role he had utterly detested for eight years. Adams precondition was a modification of Senate procedure to enable the President of the Senate to speak on national issues, a liberty that had been taken away from him in 1793 due to his annoying habit of speaking out of turn.

The wheel of revolution continued to turn, and in a larger sense, the events of 1800 had once again demonstrated the vibrance of republican democracy: "government of the people, for the people, by the people".