Unhappy because your vote in California counted for less than a Nebraska resident’s vote? Think the Electoral College is unfair because a candidate who garners fewer votes still wins the Presidency – twice so far in this century? Imagine how you would feel had you voted for Andrew Jackson.
The Democratic-Republican Party was the winner in six previous presidential elections. The party splintered into four factions when it could not agree on a candidate for the 1824 election. The faction led by war hero Andrew Jackson ultimately became the Democratic Party, or “Democrat” Party if you’re a devotee of right-wing talking heads. Speaker-of-the-House Henry Clay and Secretary-of-State John Quincy Adams, son of the second president, led what evolved into the Whig Party. Secretary-of-the-Treasury William Crawford was the fourth candidate.
Adams won the New England states and most of New York; Jackson carried the Carolinas, Pennsylvania and most of the West. Jackson won the popular vote, and 99 electoral votes to Adams’s 84. As no candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the Twelfth Amendment, passed in 1804, sent the election to the House of Representatives. Clay put his support behind Adams. John Quincy Adams became our sixth president and appointed Clay Secretary of State. Jackson called it a “corrupt bargain” – nineteenth-century term for “rigged election” – and resigned from the Senate.
Andrew Jackson had the last laugh. He defeated John Quincy Adams in the 1828 rematch and later got his portrait on the twenty-dollar bill.
