Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson Ran for President Again in

Andrew Jackson and his supporters felt that the 1824 Presidential election had been stolen from him, which made the 1828 ballot contentious from the start.

Equally the presidential election of 1828 approached, the nation'south emotions were running high. Andrew Jackson, the former Governor of Tennessee, was to challenge incumbent President John Quincy Adams. This was a partial rematch of the controversial four-way competition of 1824. Jackson won the virtually popular and electoral votes, but because no candidate won a majority, the ballot went to the Business firm of Representatives, who chose second-place finisher John Quincy Adams.^[i] Jackson and his supporters were furious. Calling information technology the "Corrupt Bargain," Jackson'southward supporters accused quaternary-place candidate Henry Clay of selling his supporters to Adams for the job of Secretary of State. This set the stage for the virtually savage campaign ever seen at that point in American history.

The electoral map of 1824. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

1824'south divided election was a result of the splintering of the Democratic-Republican political party, which had been, for the better role of a decade, the only major party in America. The election results only deepened the party'southward divides. As soon as Andrew Jackson was defeated, he began planning for his 1828 run, contacting and marshaling political allies fifty-fifty on his journey home from D.C. later the House's vote.^[2] Tennessee'due south legislature re-nominated Jackson for president almost immediately after the election results were appear; it was clear that the next election would exist a rematch between Jackson and Adams.

By 1828, the Autonomous-Republican Party had collapsed into two factions. John Quincy Adams was the candidate of the National Republicans (no relation to the modern party) while Jackson ran on the Democratic ticket (absolutely related to the mod political party). The National Republicans were in favor of centralized government and protective tariffs. In the Ohio nominating convention, the party went so far as to say that "the manus of regime never touches us, simply to promote the general good."^[three] The Jacksonians, on the other hand, were a bubbling populist movement. They declared that centralizing authorities was the first step to monarchy, and that tariffs were the cause of the nation'southward economic woes. Jackson himself kept his policy positions intentionally vague, except for his program to purify the Departments.^[iv]

The split between the candidates could not accept been clearer. Jackson was the former Governor of Tennessee, a former general in the War of 1812, and a man of the people. Adams was the Massachusetts-built-in son of a erstwhile president, who switched parties multiple times in the past. To Adams' supporters, Jackson was a dangerous man, unqualified and possibly unhinged.^[5] To Jackson'due south supporters, Adams was a corrupt elitist who stole the previous ballot. Both sides viewed the other candidate as a threat to the commonwealth.

This ballot is often referred to every bit the birth of modern campaigning, and the total war that that implies. The campaigns of both sides' supporters were overwhelmingly focused on the character of their opponent, rather than the policies at hand. The nominating conventions were long screeds confronting Jackson, Adams, and Henry Dirt by name. Both sides aggressively courted individual politicians and newspaper owners with promised favors, and each denounced the other for doing so. Jackson supporters in the Senate began to focus on passing plans that were acquiescent to cardinal swing states, similar New York and Pennsylvania, in the hopes of garnering their votes.^[6] Jackson himself focused on poaching politicians from Adams' side; Jackson's running mate was Adams' sitting vice president, John C. Calhoun.^[7] Jackson also had the support of the popular New York Senator Martin Van Buren.^[viii]

Brand-new newspapers began to pop upwards all over the country; the number of newspapers in the land nearly doubled between 1824 and 1828, with partisan daily papers providing slanted facts for either side.^[9] No holds were barred. Jackson was defendant of existence a war criminal, an adulterer, and a murderer; Adams was painted every bit dreaming of a crown, and an aristocratic threat to republic itself.

The Democrats' main line of attack was on the thought that Adams and Clay had conspired to steal the previous ballot from Jackson. They compared Adams' supporters to the Federalists, the Loyalists, and monarchists.^[10] They accused the "federalists" of intentionally dividing the country by talking about votes for free blackness Americans, and criticizing the white slave-holding elite of the Southward.^[11] They likewise attacked Adams for the acts of his begetter's assistants, in item the Sedition Deed of 1798, which criminalized "fake" speech against the government.^[12] In his commencement address to Congress, Adams said that politicians should not be "palsied past the will of our constituents"; this was a quote that came back to haunt him, specially as he had already been criticized as cloistered and elitist.

One of the "Coffin Pamphlets." Each coffin has a biography of ane of the militiamen Jackson ordered put to expiry. (Source: Library of Congress)

For their part, Adams' supporters worried Jackson could exist an American Caesar, a militarizing force leading to authoritarian dominion. They attacked his bloody deeds in the state of war, most famously with the "Coffin Pamphlets," which condemned Jackson for executing six militiamen in the War of 1812. They included biographies of the men he executed, pictures of six coffins at the top, and for some reason a sixteen-stanza poem condemning his actions.^[13] Other editions of the pamphlets likewise condemned Jackson for killing "men, women, and Children" in his raids on Native American settlements. Jackson'south status as a state of war hero had launched his political career, so this was an assail on the foundation of his reputation. The pamphlets were so ubiquitous and overwrought that a satirical pamphlet was published accusing Jackson of cannibalism in the same manner, and predicting that if he was ever displeased with Congress, he would "march to the Capitol...take it upon his shoulders...and hurl Capitol, Congressmen, and all, into the Potomac river[.]"^[14]

The entrada was as well characterized by baseless attacks on the candidates' personal lives. Democrats accused Adams of being a spendthrift, spending money on gambling equipment in the White House (this turned out to be a billiards table). For their part, Adams' supporters attacked Jackson for his marriage. He had gotten married to a divorcee, Rachel Donelson, when they were both nether the impression that her previous marriage had been annulled; this was in fact not legally the case. The 2 of them got remarried equally soon as they found out about the discrepancy. The Adams camp seizing on this, smearing Jackson equally an adulteress' "paramour." Some Adams supporters went fifty-fifty further, claiming Jackson'due south female parent was a prostitute.^[fifteen]

When November rolled around, Jackson won the election decisively, winning about every electoral vote outside New England.^[16] Jackson's supporters were ecstatic. No longer would their leaders be statesmen from Massachusetts and Virginia; the war hero from Tennessee was in the White House.

Crowds flooded the White Business firm on Jackson'south Inauguration 24-hour interval, March iv, 1829. The drawing is "President's Levee, or All Creation Going to the White House" by Andrew Cruikshank. (Prototype source: Library of Congress)

Things between the candidates remained icy. Jackson refused to meet with Adams subsequently the election; in turn, Adams refused to attend Jackson's inauguration. Rachel Jackson had as well died two months before inauguration day; her married man privately blamed Adams and his partisans' muckraking for her illness.

People flooded D.C. for the inauguration - despite poor weather, anywhere between ten and twenty thousand people showed upwardly, an enormous crowd for the time. In true populist fashion, Jackson refused to take a armed forces parade for his inauguration, opting instead to walk from his hotel to the Capitol. The organizers scrambled to invent some kind of lodge for the statesmen, citizens, and Revolutionary veterans who were to follow him. Extraordinarily for the time, "persons of every rank in life (and of almost every nation and complexion)" walked next.^[17]

Following his speech, the people flooded up the stairs of the Capitol to shake Jackson's hand and congratulate him. One witness recounted:

"The living mass was bulletproof...he mounted his horse which had been provided for his return (for he had walked to the Capitol) then such a cortege as followed him! Country men, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women and children, blackness and white. Carriages, wagons and carts all pursuing him to the President's House."^[18]

That evening, Jackson had a political party in the White House open to the public. Jackson was almost crushed confronting a wall past admirers, and had to be escorted out in a football-style wedge to get through the crowd. He ended up spending the night in a hotel in downtown DC, unable to sleep in his own bed because of the celebration of his victory.^[19]

In later elections, John Quincy Adams' faction became the National Republicans (no relation), and subsequently the Whigs; Jackson's followers became the Democratic Party. The erstwhile was a prominent force in national politics through the 1850s, while the latter has been one of the two major American parties ever since.

More Information

• Jackson would later take further revenge for the "Corrupt Bargain" of 1824. In the ballot of 1832, he faced Henry Clay, the other human who helped deny him the presidency - and beat him handily besides.
• Joel Silbey'due south The American Party Battle is an extremely valuable resource for understanding the positions and rhetoric of the political parties of the day (the Democrats vs. the National Republicans, and later on the Whigs).
• For more on the more destructive aspects of Andrew Jackson'south legacy, bank check out Steve Inskeep'southward volume Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Bully American Land Grab.

Footnotes

1. ^ The American electoral system strikes once more! This dominion, FYI, is notwithstanding in place.
2. ^ Steve Inskeep, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Smashing American Land Grab, (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 167.
3. ^ "Proceedings and Address of the Convention of Delegates...to Nominate...John Quincy Adams," (Columbus, OH, 1827), p. seven.
4. ^ Robert 5. Remini, "Election of 1828," in The Coming To Power, p. 73.
5. ^ '[Jackson'southward] whole life has evinced an arbitrary temper, non congenial to our institutions, and justifying fears of disastrous consequences, should the sword be entrusted to his hands"; "already and then degenerated every bit to look, without horror, upon the possibility, of giving ourselves a master, and submitting our necks to the yoke?" The American Political party Battle: Election Entrada Pamphlets 1828-1876: Book I 1828-1854, ed. Joel H. Silbey, (Cambridge: Harvard University Printing, 1999), nine.
6. ^ Robert V. Remini, "Election of 1828," in The Coming To Power, p. 78-79
7. ^ Calhoun actually ran with Jackson in 1824, and was elected even though Jackson lost to Adams, because when there is no clear winner in the Balloter College, the House picks the President, merely the Senate picks the Vice President. Special cheers to the American electoral organisation!
8. ^ Martin Van Buren became Jackson'south vice president in 1832 and was elected president himself in 1836. In that election, Van Buren's opponents intentionally tried to emulate the strategy that kept Jackson out of the White House in 1824: they ran four candidates, each of them popular in different regions of the state, in the hope that no candidate would gain a majority and the decision would rest with the Firm of Representatives. The strategy failed; Van Buren simply won a majority of electoral votes. No ane has tried this since.
9. ^ Inskeep, Jacksonland, p. 173.
10. ^ "Proceedings and Accost of the New Hampshire Republican Country Convention of Delegates Friendly to the Election of Andrew Jackson....Assembled at Concord, June 11 and 12, 1828," (Concord, 1828), from The American Party Battle, ed. Joel H. Silbey, (Cambirdge: Harvard University Printing, 2009), p. 56.
11. ^ "Proceedings and Address of the New Hampshire Republican State Convention" from The American Party Battle, p. 77.
12. ^ "Proceedings and Address of the New Hampshire Republican Land Convention" from The American Political party Battle, p. __.
13. ^ The final two stanzas are as follows: "Sure he will spare! Certain Jackson yet/Will all reprieve but one - / O hark! those shrieks! that cry of death!/The dreadful act is washed. // All vi militia men were shot!/And O! it seems to me/A dreadful deed - a bloody human activity/Of needless cruelty." This is a baffling choice to me, since I sincerely doubt anyone unconvinced past the rhetoric in the pamphlet would be swayed by a verse form, especially ane of this quality.
14. ^ "Supplemental account of some of the bloody deeds of General Jackson, being a supplement to the 'Coffin mitt neb'...", pub. 1828.
15. ^ Robert V. Remini, "Election of 1828," in The Coming To Power, p. 81.
16. ^ If you lot want to become into the specifics, Jackson won the electoral vote 178-83, and the popular vote 56%-43%. Locally, Virginia gave its 24 electoral votes to Jackson, and Maryland separate its vote, giving half dozen to Adams and 5 to Jackson.
17. ^ Richmond Inquirer, "The Inauguration. Washington, March five," March 10, 1829, p. ii.
18. ^ Rex Yard. Oppenheimer, Washington D.C.:The Concience of America, p. 43.
19. ^ Inskeep, Jacksonland, 181-2.

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Source: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2017/01/13/election-1828-its-always-been-ugly

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