
Image

Governor Thomas McKean and Son, by Charles Willson Peale, 1787.
Credit: Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Elected Pennsylvania's second governor in 1799, Thomas McKean, a Pennsylvania judge and adamant Jeffersonian, threatened to use his state's militia to install Thomas Jefferson as president if the Federalists supporting John Adams refused to relinquish power after their defeat in the presidential election of 1800.