Going into the 1824 election, all was supposed to be well.
The Era of Good Feelings was in full swing. The Democratic-Republicans dominated the political scene and the Federalists were about to become a footnote to history and a trivia question/AP U.S. History topic for future generations. In fact, when President James Monroe ran for reelection in 1820, no major candidate bothered to run against him.
Then it all went to pieces.
There may have only been one major party in D.C. at the time, but that didn’t mean it was unified. The Democratic-Republicans were split into a number of factions, each with different ideologies, beliefs and geographic interests.
Northeasterners and former Federalists who believed in a strong central government flocked to John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams and Monroe’s Secretary of State.
Southerners and states-rights advocates lined up behind William H. Crawford, Monroe’s Treasury Secretary.
Nationalists, protectionists and infrastructure enthusiasts backed Henry Clay, the powerful Speaker of the House.
And looming over them all was General Andrew Jackson, the hero of The Battle of New Orleans. While his politics and ideology were harder to pin down, he was the most popular and appealing candidate in the field — easily surpassing his rivals.
All four decided to run for President in 1824. There was another contender who originally threw his hat into the ring to make it five, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. The South Carolinian would eventually be closely identified with his state and the South as he advocated for states rights and expansion of slavery. However, at this point in his career, he was still a nationalist in the Clay mould. As such, he lacked support in the South compared to Crawford, and didn’t have a real power base that wasn’t already occupied by Clay. So, he made a political decision and pursued the Vice Presidency instead. In a weird development, he ended up being both Adams’ and Jackson’s running mate.
There had been changes since the 1800 contingent election, most notably the 12th Amendment in which electors would now cast separate ballots for President and Vice-President. Nevertheless, the presence of four strong nominees in the general election, each with their own independent power bases, ensured that no person would win the requisite majority in the Electoral College, making a contingent election inevitable.
Sure enough, that happened. Jackson won a plurality of electoral votes but not enough to win the Presidency. As such, that meant Jackson and the next two finishers, Adams and Crawford, would advance to the contingent election, which would be conducted in the House of Representatives. Essentially, it became a two-horse race between Jackson and Adams since Crawford was in ill health.
Interestingly, that left Clay on the outside, since he had finished fourth. However, as Speaker of the House, he wielded tremendous influence on his fellow Representatives, and he was not about to sit on the sidelines.
Speaker of the House — And the Country
For Clay, there was a clear “lesser of two evils” choice before him, and like Hamilton, he decided to use his influence to get that person elected. In fact, according to H.W. Brands’ Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants, as the general election returns were still coming in, Clay was already working on ways to stop Jackson, a man he had long thought was unfit to be President. “I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult, and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy,” Clay once said of Jackson.
Additionally, Clay may have felt politically threatened by Jackson. The Speaker’s power base was in the West, as was Jackson’s. Clay had lost quite a bit of support there to the former general, and both men could reasonably claim that the other had cost them (adding Clay’s 37 electoral votes to Jackson’s 99 would have been enough to win outright).
Clay also feared what Jackson might be capable of. Long worried about his despotic tendencies and the potential damage he could do to America’s institutions, Clay was ready to do almost anything to stop him from ascending to the Presidency. In fact, Jackson’s enemies (many of whom were Clay’s allies) would later refer to him as “King Andrew I” because of the heavy-handed way he vetoed the Bank of the United States’ charter and transferred federal deposits to banks run by his cronies.
“The principal difference between them is that in the election of Mr. Adams we shall not by the example inflict any wound upon the character of our institutions; but I should much fear hereafter, if not during the present generation, that the elevation of the general would give to the military spirit a stimulus and a confidence that might lead to the most pernicious results,” Clay told Francis Blair.
There wasn’t a lot of love lost between Clay and Adams, either, but they were best buddies compared to Clay and Jackson. Most importantly, they had quite a bit in common. Both favored high tariffs and funding national infrastructure and other internal improvements.
Clay had resolved to support Adams as early as December 1824, and the two started talking through intermediaries. At a public function in January 1825, Clay and Adams sat next to each other and Clay whispered to Adams that he wanted to chat. The two then sealed whatever deal they may or may not have made in private.
Adams and Clay would both later say they made no requests or promises, but it didn’t really matter. Rumors immediately popped up that the two had made a deal, including an article in Philadelphia’s Columbian Observer stating that Adams had agreed to make Clay Secretary of State (this was a big deal back then — Secretary of State was widely seen as the heir to the Presidency — the three previous Presidents had run the State Department and Adams was poised to make it four). Clay angrily denied it and almost challenged the source of the story, an obscure Pennsylvania Congressman named George Kremer, to a duel. Had it happened, he would have been the highest ranking federal official to engage in a duel since Burr. Ultimately, Clay opened an investigation into the matter in the House, but used his influence to bury it.
Despite all of that, Jackson still assumed, perhaps naively, that he would win in the House for no other reason than he had won the most electoral votes.
Instead, he got a rude awakening when the House finally met to vote on February 9, 1825. Kentucky, which had voted for Clay in the general election, had passed a nonbinding resolution to have its Congressional delegation choose Jackson. Clay ignored it and delivered his home state, Missouri and Ohio for Adams. The Massachusetts native not only kept all seven of his states in his column but also took Maryland, Illinois and, most gallingly of all for the Hero of New Orleans, Louisiana from Jackson. Shortly after Adams was declared the winner, he made Clay his Secretary of State — leading to shouts of a “corrupt bargain” from Jacksonians.
In fact, Jackson and his followers continued to nurse grievances over the election being stolen from them — Jackson went to his grave believing Henry Clay had screwed him out of the Presidency — and his 1828 campaign began almost from the moment his loss in 1824 was confirmed.
In the end, it didn’t matter whether Clay and Adams made a deal or not. Jackson and his followers either believed it to be true or didn’t care because they realized the “corrupt bargain” could be used as a rallying cry for their base. Jackson soon split from the Democratic-Republicans and formed the Democratic Party, positioning himself as the front-runner for 1828. That year, he handily defeated Adams and then four years later, got revenge on Clay, beating him in a landslide.
“The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver,” Jackson said about Clay after the 1825 contingent election. “His end will be the same.”
With Jackson, who once reputedly said his biggest regrets were he didn’t shoot Clay and he didn’t hang Calhoun, it’s possible he meant it literally and not figuratively.
Ultimately, Clay would never win the prize he desperately wanted, pursuing the Presidency four more times and coming up short each time in a combination of bad timing and changing national circumstances.
