The peaceful transfer of power is rarer than Americans might think  

On Nov. 13, President Biden welcomed Donald Trump to the White House, marking the resumption of a longstanding practice. There was no White House meeting after Biden defeated Trump in 2020. 

Before an assembly of reporters and photographers, Biden congratulated the president-elect and promised a “smooth transition.” He added, “We will do everything we can to accommodate you.”  

Fox News quotes political scientist Wayne Lesperance: "President Biden's decision to welcome President-elect Trump to the White House is a tribute to normalcy in the presidential transition process.” He called it “a remarkable gesture in that it legitimizes Trump's return to power by the nation's leading Democrat and, hopefully, will be met with a commitment to orderly transitions in the future." 

A week earlier, the day after the election, Biden spoke to the American people, assuring them there would be “a peaceful and orderly transition.” He continued, “We accept the choice the country has made.” 

“I will do my duty as president. I will honor my oath. On January 20,” he repeated, “we will have a peaceful transfer of power here in America.”  

On neither occasion did Biden refer to what had unfolded after the 2020 election. He didn’t have to.

It was, many believe, an unprecedented event. As an article in National Geographic observes, prior to Trump, “No presidential candidate ha(d) ever refused to concede defeat once all the votes were counted and legal challenges resolved.”

But a look at our history shows that what Biden did was not just another chapter in the story of the peaceful transfer of power. History shows that transfers of power at the federal and state levels have not always been smooth, peaceful and models of correct democratic behavior.  

The start of the peaceful transition of power in this country can be traced back to 1801 when, for the first time, “the leader of one political party handed the reins of government to his opponent.” In the election of 1800, John Adams, the second Federalist president of the United States, lost to the Democratic-Republican candidate, Thomas Jefferson.

As Sarah Pruitt explains, “During Adams’s presidency, Democratic-Republicans and Federalists clashed over everything from taxes to religion, but especially over the main policy dilemma facing the nation: how to deal with the ongoing French Revolution.” What Pruitt calls “bitter differences were front and center during the 1800 presidential campaign. ... Federalist newspapers and propaganda materials,” she observes, “branded French sympathizers as dangerous radicals, while Democratic-Republicans accused the Federalists of wanting to reestablish a monarchy.” 

Sound familiar? 

After Adams lost, the bitterness continued, and the threat of violence was real. Troy Smith reminds us that “rumors swirled of Federalist plots to prevent Jefferson from taking office, and the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia prepared their militias to resist such efforts. ... (But) President Adams committed to following the election’s outcome, undercut Federalists’ schemes and rejected multiple opportunities to interfere with constitutional processes.” 

However, he did not transfer power with anything like the grace being displayed by Biden. He “left Washington, D.C. under cover of darkness” and did not stay to attend Jefferson’s inauguration. But neither did he contest the election result nor try to prevent Jefferson from taking power. 

Pruitt credits him with “setting an important precedent. His departure from office marked the first peaceful transfer of power between political opponents in the United States, now viewed as a hallmark of the nation’s democracy.” 

What Adams did was all the more remarkable since there is nothing in the Constitution and founding documents that require it or lays out what a departing president owes to their successor. The only relevant provisions are “Article II (that) provides that the president ‘shall hold his office for the term of four years.’ The Twentieth Amendment says that the president’s and vice president’s terms ‘shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin.'"

From Adams in 1801 to Trump in 2020, as the story goes, the transfer of power was always peaceful, if not always gracious. Adams and Trump were not the only presidents who refused to attend their successor’s inauguration. Others who dd so include John Quincy Adams, who did not attend Andrew Jackson’s first inaugural in 1829, and Andrew Johnson,  who was not present at the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant as his successor in 1869.

Beyond that, the peaceful transfer of power dictates that no matter how close the outcome or bitter the campaign, no matter how apocalyptic the forecasts made by the losing side or how much personal enmity the candidates felt for each other, the loser put on their big-kid pants and turn over the keys to the White House. 

As The Washington Post tells it, “For well over a century, defeated candidates have swallowed raw feelings, publicly acknowledging their loses and congratulated the winners, a visible first step in the process of national healing.”  

But that account neglects the messiness that has accompanied transfers of power in many places and at many times since the founding of America’s constitutional republic. We can tell the comforting story about the peaceful transfer of power only by narrowing what counts as a “transition” and ignoring the violence that has been a way that some presidents have been removed from office.  

Recall that of the 45 people who have served in that office, four had their terms cut short and their power transitioned to a successor by an assassin’s bullet. In a couple of cases, the person who became president might as well have been from a rival power, as they took the nation in a direction radically different from the person they replaced. 

That is exemplified in the first “non-peaceful transfer of power,” which happened in April 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and replaced by Vice President Andrew Johnson. And Lincoln himself was installed as president in a “peaceful way” only if you ignore that his election led to secession by southern states and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. 

At the state level, there are many examples of governors who, like Trump, tried to hold onto power by claiming that the election in which they were defeated was fraudulent or in some other way unfair. 

This more complicated history is a reminder that what Trump did in 2020 is not the only reason Americans should not take the peaceful transfer for granted. Unfortunately, his refusal to give up power without a fight or without violence has many antecedents. 

“By undermining domestic tranquility, refusing to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ (as Article II requires), and calling into doubt our continued existence as a republic,” as law professor John Greabe argues, “a president's refusal to recognize and honor the election results would constitute an egregious violation of the Constitution's implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”  

That fact also makes Biden's commitment to the peaceful transfer of power and his graciousness to the president-elect all the more remarkable and important.  

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Amherst College.