John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
Presidential Election of 1824 (November 1824 – February 1825)
One of only three presidential elections in which the Electoral College failed to produce a
winner (1800, 1824, 1876), the election of 1824 gave John Quincy Adams the
presidency, but the resulting controversy haunted Adams for the entirety of his term, and
was a factor in his defeat for reelection in 1828.
With James Monroe's near-unanimous victory in the presidential election of 1820, the
Federalists had collapsed as a national opposition party. With nearly every national
political figure a member of the same party (the Jeffersonian Republicans), there was no
consensus among the party's leadership as to who the successor to Monroe should be.
Five candidates emerged: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts,
Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia, Speaker of the House Henry
Clay of Kentucky, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and General
Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. Without a national base of support, Calhoun unofficially
withdrew himself from contention for the presidency, and his supporters campaigned for
him to become vice-president.
The results of the election were confusing and indecisive. Jackson had won 99 electoral
votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. Jackson had received over 150,000 popular
votes, and nearly 40,000 more than Adams. Yet, in 1824, the overall popular vote had no
standing. In some states, the state legislatures still chose the electors, many other states
had only begun to have their electors chosen by general election. With no candidate
having an outright majority of the electoral votes, the Constitution placed the election in
the hands of the House of Representatives. With each state delegation having one vote,
the House was to choose between the top three vote-getters. Clay's supporters generally
threw their votes to Adams, and Adams received the votes of 13 states, Jackson 7, and
Crawford 4. Adams thus became the sixth president of the United States.
Jackson and his supporters were furious at both Clay and Adams. When Clay was chosen
as Secretary of State by Adams, Jackson's partisans alleged a "corrupt bargain" had been
made. This slogan was used to mobilize Jackson supporters throughout Adams's term for
the election of 1828.
The 1824 election was only the second time the presidential election had been thrown
into the House of Representatives. With the emergence of a two-party system during the
Jackson presidency, such electoral logjams became rare. Only twice since 1824 – in 1876
and 2000 – has the presidential election failed to produce an immediate winner.
Sources:
James E. Lewis, Jr., John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union (Wilmington,
Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 2001)
Mary W. M. Hargreaves, The Presidency of John Quincy Adams (Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1985)