Two candidates, two elections, 200 years apart. What can Andrew Jackson’s unsuccessful bid for president in 1824 tell us about Donald Trump’s campaign in 2024?

The election of 1824 was as contested as they come. With five major candidates vying for the White House, this election was rife with allegations of corruption and factioning in the Democratic-Republican party. After John C. Calhoun dropped out to run for vice president, the presidency became a four-man race: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson. No single candidate garnered enough electoral votes to be elected president outright, although Jackson had won a solid plurality of the popular vote and 99 electoral votes, shy of the 131 needed to win. In line with the 12th amendment, the election was thrown to the House of Representatives, where only the top three candidates were considered, leaving Henry Clay as the odd man out.

Now it was down to three. Although William Crawford worked deals on the side to get partisan support and Andrew Jackson relied on his widespread popularity, John Quincy Adams was elected president on the very first ballot. Accusations abounded from Jackson and his supporters, accusing Adams and Clay of forming a corrupt bargain, although there is no evidence to suggest any such bargain occurred. Jackson accused Clay, “the Judas of the West,” of throwing his supporters behind Adams. Clay was the Speaker of the House and held a fair amount of sway even when he was out of the presidential race. What would Clay get in return? When Adams appointed Clay as his Secretary of State, Jackson’s fury only grew.

From the moment he lost the 1824 election, Jackson began campaigning for 1828, using the notion that the election had been stolen as his sword, and his status as a nontraditional politician as his shield. Nontraditional is perhaps too mild of a descriptor for Andrew Jackson — he was highly controversial for his repeated violations of the Constitution and laws, including executing British soldiers in Florida (which was not a US territory at the time), and he hated his brief stint as a senator, despising the politicking and time it took to make progress. Although a very wealthy slaveowner, he aligned himself with the newly-enfranchised working-class white men, using his victory at the Battle of New Orleans to style himself as a hero of the people. His supporters held rallies, barbecues, parades, concerts, and more to rustle support among rural voters who might not feel as seen by the traditional political elite, paving the way for him to win in a landslide in 1828. Old Hickory was thus able to paint himself simultaneously as the victim of a stolen election and as a strong, masculine leader in one of the first truly Populist campaigns in American history.

Sound familiar yet?

Two hundred years later, in the 2024 election, Donald Trump has begun drawing parallels between himself and Andrew Jackson. He’s referred to Jackson as the most heavily criticized and attacked president besides himself. He refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election. And he didn’t wait long to start campaigning for 2024.

Perhaps the most striking parallel between Trump and Jackson — and thus, one of Trump’s motivations for aligning himself with such a controversial figure — is how both styled themselves as victims of a fraudulent election and simultaneously as undefeatable pillars of strength. While no evidence supports Jackson’s allegations of a corrupt bargain, an overwhelming amount of evidence confirms that the 2020 election was legitimate and Trump lost. But by painting himself as a man of the people, despite being a wealthy businessman nowhere near the sphere of working-class people he tries to influence, Trump’s outrage becomes his base’s outrage. His victimization becomes their victimization. His strength becomes their strength.

After Jackson lost the 1824 election, he called on the people to act, saying he “relied wholly on them to guard themselves… [and] correct any outrage” to rectify what he believed to be an injustice against him. But despite the fervor of popular support he enjoyed, none of Jackson’s supporters ever rioted or stormed any political buildings in his name. Jackson would likely have not appreciated the comparison to Trump: after all, Trump lost the popular vote, then won the presidency anyway, which is exactly how John Quincy Adams earned Jackson’s ire.

Trump is far from a lifelong politician. Like Jackson, he has no patience for the nitty-gritty of lawmaking. Like Jackson, he entered politics as an unconventional character, a larger-than-life persona who’s staunchly anti-political correctness. And despite Jackson’s repeated and egregious violations of both the Constitution and laws, his crimes did not impede his election as president, a feat Trump with his 34 counts of falsifying business records hopes to repeat. Trump’s style of leadership is attractive to his voters in the same way Jackson’s image as a successful military general and hardline politician (and racist) was embraced by white, working-class men; the lure of masculinity, of portrayals of strength, of beliefs and attacks that are far from standard, draw on the values of his voters in ways that obscure some of his faults.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will win or lose the 2024 election, but he has already laid the groundwork to claim fraud should he lose. Unlike Jackson, whose 1828 win was overwhelming, Trump has lost the popular vote twice, and his man-of-the-people mask is increasingly at odds with his business and political interests. What we can learn from Jackson’s campaign is the ways in which victimization of a dominant group, be it a party, race, religion, or gender, can be weaponized into political support — and how to accept the results of an election, even when you disagree with the outcome.

For further reading:

“The Corrupt Bargain” from The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power, 1815-1848 by William Nester, 2013, p. 88-100, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ddr80h.11?seq=7