After learning of the Republican victory in New York City, Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) argued that unity behind their candidates, John Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746–1825) of South Carolina, was “the only thing that can possibly save us from the fangs of Jefferson.” He wrote those words to Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813), a Federalist who served as a representative and, later, a senator from Massachusetts. However, when the presidential election of 1800 ended in a tie, Hamilton supported his old rival Jefferson against fellow New Yorker Aaron Burr.