The election of 1824 saw Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford interlocked in a terse competition for the presidency, resulting in a presidential term for Adams and a bitter defeat for Jackson. However, the 1824 election has been rife with controversy, contempt, and accusations that Adams and Clay engaged in a ‘corrupt bargain’ that handed Adams’ the presidency when it should’ve gone to Jackson. It’s difficult to know if this bargain ever really happened, but the story goes that Henry Clay, who was the speaker of the house at the time, promised his support to Adams’ run for the presidency and, after Adams’ victory, Clay would be appointed as the secretary of state. This ‘bargain’ was only possible because none of the candidates received a majority of the votes in the electoral college, sending the election into the house of representatives.
Despite Adams winning the presidency, Andrew Jackson did win the popular and electoral votes. To him, this political loss seemed more like a conspiracy. This resulted in a hatred for Clay, whom he referred to as “the Judas of the West” in a letter advisor and friend William Berkeley Lewis sent on February 14th, 1825. The letter is accessible through the Library of Congress’s digital collections, specifically within the Andrew Jackson Papers’ selection. In this letter, Jackson is sharing the news to Lewis about Clay’s upcoming appointment as Secretary of State. He ends the letter claiming that “[n]o imputation will be left as [the senate’s] door”. Jackson went on to win the election of 1828.
Scholar’s have brought into question on how completely Jackson won the popular vote, such as Donald Ratcliffe, in his paper “Popular Preferences in the Presidential Election of 1824”, published in the Journal of the Early Republic, as well as the existence of the corrupt bargain, however the effects of the undemocratic perception of the election of 1824, legitimate or not, had a serious impact on future elections. According to the article, “Corrupt Bargain” from UVA’s Miller Center, by Margaret Hogan, the number of voters in the presidential election doubled from 1824 to 1828 and Andrew Jackson won the presidency in a landslide election.
Jackson’s loss during the 1824 election mobilized voters and drastically increased voter turnout, which could have parallels to the upcoming 2024 election 200 years later. Former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to now president Joe Biden, however his loss was colored by accusations of fraud and conspiracy, resulting in many claims that the election was stolen. Although these accusations were widely proven to be wrong, as seen in this AP article fact checking the former president’s claims, that doesn’t mean that they won’t have any impact on the 2024 election. Trump’s story, true or not, certainly calls back to Jackson’s alleged election snub. It’s important to acknowledge that we are living in different times and different circumstances than Jackson did, with expanded communication through social media and a very defined two-party system. History cannot dictate what happens next, but it can provide context, so I wouldn’t be surprised if as we see November 5th approach, we also see Trump supporters and the Republican party become louder and more mobilized.
This is a very interesting argument! I also wonder if the election of 2016 might also be a comparison? I think Clinton losing the electoral college but winning the popular vote mobilized Democrats in the 2020 election.