A 'Corrupt Bargain:' The election of 1824

You think the past couple of presidential elections were contentious?

They were, of course, but heavily-fought, hotly-contested presidential elections are nothing new. Arguably one of the worst was the Election of 1824.

That one wasn’t settled until Feb. 9, 1825 — 200 years ago Sunday.

The End of An Era

The end of the War of 1812 brought on a strong sense of national unity and the collapse of the Federalist Party that Alexander Hamilton had founded in 1789.

This brought to an end the bitter partisan disputes between the Federalists and the much more dominant Democratic-Republican Party. How dominant were they? By 1824, the party had won six consecutive presidential elections.

President James Monroe took office in 1817 and took pains to downplay party affiliations while filling his cabinet. By the time Monroe’s term was to end in March 1825, the Democratic-Republicans had no party opposition at all.

But that didn’t mean there wasn’t political friction in the air. Various factions had developed within the party. No fewer than nine candidates declared their interest in running for president in 1824.

A few of them dropped out — Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, for example, decided instead to run for vice president. New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson and Monroe’s vice president, Daniel Tompkins, also bowed out.

That left four candidates — again, all of the same political party — nominated by state legislatures for the election. And this was in the days when most politicians didn’t openly run for an office like the presidency. Instead, they had colleagues nominate them and campaign in their favor. Campaigning for office seemed awfully self-serving at the time.

The Candidates

U.S. Senate

Andrew Jackson, Tennessee. Age: 57

A hero in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Jackson served as a U.S. senator for Tennessee but wished to retire to his home near Nashville. The Tennessee legislature “drafted” him to run for president.

White House Historical Association

John Quincy Adams, Massachusetts. Age: 57

Eldest son of the nation’s second president, Adams was a lawyer, a diplomat in the Netherlands, Portugal and Prussia and a U.S. Senator. He served as Secretary of State under President Monroe.

WikiMedia Commons

Henry Clay, Kentucky. Age: 47

Clay was elected to the Kentucky legislature in 1803, the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected Speaker of the House in 1811. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812.

WikiMedia Commons

William H. Crawford, Georgia. Age: 52

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1807, Crawford became President pro tempore in 1812. He served as minister to France, Secretary of War and then Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Madison and Monroe.

The Election of 1824

Today, Jackson would be declared the winner. But in 1824, the rules were that a candidate needed not just more electoral votes to win, they needed a majority of electoral votes.

In addition, some states allowed their electoral votes to be split — usually along congressional districts. Today, only two states do this: Maine and Nebraska. In 1824, five states split their votes.

Some states, in those days, didn’t even place presidential candidates on their ballots. Instead, their state legislatures voted for president.

Jackson won more popular votes than his three opponents, but then, as now, popular votes aren’t important. What determines a presidential election is the electoral vote.

The Election Is Thrown Into The House

In case none of the candidates pulled in a majority of electoral votes, the 12th amendment called for the House of Representatives to settle the election.

- Only the three candidates who had received the most electoral votes would be included.

- And each Congressman didn’t receive a vote — instead, each state received one vote and the various members of Congress had to agree on to whom to cast that vote.

This “contingent election” was held on Feb. 9, 1825. (Keep in mind that until 1937, presidents weren’t sworn into office until March 4.)

After a certain amount of wheeling and dealing, the House voted Adams into the Presidency. But once Adams took office, he appointed Clay to be his secretary of state.

Political observers felt this was essentially declaring Clay the heir to the White House. Jackson and his follower began accusing Adams and Clay of striking a “corrupt bargain”: As speaker of the House, they claimed, Clay threw his support to Adams in exchange for the high-level appointment.

Ten years younger than Adams or Jackson, Clay could, in theory, hold off a little longer before becoming president.

The Aftermath

Adams offered Jackson the post of Secretary of War, but Jackson declined: He felt the election had been stolen from him.

Meanwhile, John C. Calhoun had been elected vice president but was also upset by Clay’s appointment as secretary of state: He had wanted that post as well. The relationship between the new president and vice president was strained.

While he hadn’t been enthusiastic about running in the first place, Jackson dedicated himself to running again in 1828 and preventing Adams from being re-elected. Calhoun threw his support behind Jackson. The 1928 campaign was full of innovations like rallies, barbecues, parades and newspapers launched solely to run anti-Adams stories and editorials.

This, in turn, caused further splintering of the Democratic-Republican party. Clay led a faction that disliked Jackson’s autocratic style of leadership and, in 1833, founded the Whig party.

Jackson’s party eventually dropped the “Republican” from its name. Today’s Republican party would be formed by anti-slavery activists in 1854.