One of the greatest travesties of the last century was the sinking of the Titanic. It might be one of the most preventable tragedies. When the ship sank in the Atlantic, it only carried enough lifeboats for a third of the passengers leaving them to survive in the freezing Atlantic with nothing more than a lifejacket and dramatically presented in the award winning film “Titanic.” How does this relate to elections? Well, let’s talk about an election that sank the entire era of political goodwill and a major party in the process, the election of 1824.
Let’s start with the basics: the parties and the candidates. The election of 1824 was quite unique. There was only one major party, “Democratic-Republicans” as we call them today. As a result, the previous election in 1820 was uncontested and Monroe won every electoral vote. This period before the 1824 election is known as the “Era-of-Good Feelings” because of this non-competitive atmosphere. In 1824 there were four candidates of note. William Crawford, the very articulate former Treasury Secretary, preferred by Thomas Jefferson and probably front runner if not for suffering a stroke the summer before. There was Henry Clay, the savvy long-time Speaker of the House, who knew D.C. like the back of his hand. Next, John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, the son of president and founding father John Adams, not as charismatic as others but a skilled diplomat and mastermind of the Monroe doctrine. Lastly, there was the ”Hero of New Orleans,” former general, controversial figure, and, at that time, Senator Andrew Jackson.
The good part is the election itself. No one candidate won on election night in 1824. The Electoral College vote was so split no one candidate received an outright majority. The closest anyone got was Jackson with 99 electoral votes and who won the popular vote. Many Americans would have no idea what should happen in that case or even if there was a way to handle it. In the case of a tie in the Electoral College the decision goes to the House of Representatives and as with everything in the U.S. government, that process is not what it seems. Instead of each member getting a vote, there is one vote for each state. Another thing that might not be obvious is that the House was not to vote on all four candidates but only the top three leaving Clay out. This led to a great irony: the Speaker at that time was the same Clay. Guess what Adams does? He cut a deal with Jackson for Adams to receive the most votes. In what is now known as the “corrupt bargain,” Clay traded the votes for the prestigious Secretary of State position in Adams’ cabinet causing Jackson and his supporters to scream in fury over the apparent cheating. The bargain might have made Adams president but it allowed Jackson to sweep into power in 1828 and win a second term as well.
Is the commonly recounted story a lie? Yes, Adams won, but maybe it wasn’t a corrupt bargain at all. Maybe it was just a democracy at work. The Miller Center at UVA (Hogan, 2024) suggests that instead, Clay supported Adams because of “Jackson’s qualifications [president]…[and] commitment to the “American System.” Similarly, I want to come clean about the Titanic. It’s true there weren’t enough lifeboats. However, even if the Titanic had enough lifeboats it probably wouldn’t have mattered in the end. The last lifeboat was released at 2:05am, 15 minutes before the sinking (Diekmann, 2024).
Maybe we sometimes want to convince ourselves that there is a juicy conspiracy where there is just an election and processes of the government making a decision. This tells us that we shouldn’t get too carried away or convinced by conspiracies like with couches and pets in Ohio. They might be more interesting or make us feel justified in our preferences. However, most things have a more reasonable (and maybe boring) explanation. Let’s try to assume and hope that most people are trying to do the best they can and have faith that democracy will still function this time as it did then.
References:
This source is from Margaret A. Hogan, no date found, last retrieved 9/13/2024.
https://millercenter.org/contested-presidential-elections/corrupt-bargain
This source is from William Nester, no date found, last retrieved 9/13/2024.
https://www-jstor-org.grinnell.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt1ddr80h.11.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%
This source is from Caitlynn Dieckmann, no date found, last retrieved 9/13/2024.
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