Elections on the 24s, Part One
The first two Presidential elections that were in years ending in -24 were very weird. Will history repeat itself?
Some of you (and this is not a big group) might have read my dormant (yet still existent) blog called One Through Forty-Two or Forty-Three. Its original goal was to exist as a place where I read and reviewed a biography of every American president through Bill Clinton, with the order determined at random. It ended up with John Tyler (10) first and I finished with Ronald Reagan (40) last.
After I finished the biographies, I moved on to books about Presidential election campaigns, although I never got through all of them, in part because a lot of them were not very interesting. I was personally found of the book on what is considered the first contested Presidential election: 1796, but it is an acquired taste.
Two past elections that have stood out to me happened 201 and 101 years ago. These were the elections of 1824 and 1924. Each were unique in much different ways and they had situations that we can only pray that we will never see in our lifetimes. And we hope, that whatever happens in the election of 2024, that it is not like either 1824 or 1924.
I recently finished a book on the by Donald J. Ratcliffe. The author has spent most of his professional career studying the ins and outs of this event. And perhaps it created a strain on him as he says Election of 1824, The One-Party Presidential Contest: Adams, Jackson and the 1824 Five-horse Racein the introduction that he had to pause during the writing of this book to spend some time healing in a mental hospital in the United Kingdom. Ratcliffe has been affiliated with the University of Durham as well as Oxford. From what I can tell, he is doing well now.
For those not scoring at home, this election had four candidates receiving electoral votes for President: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay. There were six people who received votes for Vice-President, although John Calhoun (the fifth horse as it were) was the big winner here as he effectively ran on the ticket of both Adams and Jackson.
This year was the first year that states chose its electors by popular vote. Except not all states did. And one state that did not made a big difference in how we perceive this election. That state is New York, which was the largest prize in the election with 36 votes.
1824 was a mess because America’s party system was in the process of changing from what is referred to as the First Party System (Federalists vs. Republicans, there’s a musical about this, it’s popular) to the Second Party System (Democrats vs Whigs), but that change had not been completed by 1824 and wouldn’t be until 1836. There are a variety of names given to the party affiliations of the candidates, but “Democrat-Republican” is the moniker most frequently applied.
There was no consensus at the time on how to nominate candidates for President. The prevailing method early on was for members of Congress to caucus by party and choose a candidate. No one really liked this method as it had no transparency and no popular input. Nevertheless, there was a caucus for 1824 and its choice was Crawford, who was then serving as Secretary of the Treasury. Albert Gallatin was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee, but declined it and Nathaniel Macon took the job.
Crawford was the establishment candidate with a long portfolio (including serving in two Cabinet posts: War and Treasury) in government. Unfortunately for Crawford, he has suffered a stroke sometime either in late 1823 or early 1824 and his rehabilitation from it was slow and his speech was greatly affected. His illness, combined with his very “insider” reputation, made him less attractive to an American population heading westward. Crawford also hailed from Georgia and was a slaveowner, making him unacceptable to many Northerners.
The West (in 1824 terms) preferred a military hero, Andrew Jackson, who had limited government experience, but far more name recognition than anyone else running. Jackson was nominated by Tennessee’s legislature.
John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, was the favored candidate for the North. Son of the Second President, John Adams, John Quincy had the resume with his service in James Monroe’s cabinet, Congress, and a variety of diplomatic posts.
The fourth candidate was Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Clay campaigned on his “American System” a plan where revenues from tariffs would be used for a series of internal improvements throughout the growing United States. Roads, canals, bridges, and tunnels would all be built to bring the country together. Clay’s idea was met with some skepticism, especially in the South and much of New England.
New York’s governor, De Witt Clinton, one of the few prominent Federalists left in office, was able to keep New York from adopting a popular vote for President in 1824. The New York State Legislature would choose who its electors would be pledged to.
The popular vote favored Jackson, although in the 19 (out of 24) states that allowed popular votes, Jackson picked up just 151,000 votes. Adams earned 113,000. Crawford and Clay trailed badly with 47,000 votes for Clay and 41,000 for Crawford. However, we all know that these totals do not decide the winner. That would be the electoral vote.
Of the 24 states, Jackson won all the votes in eight states (the largest being a haul of 28 votes in Pennsylvania) as well as at least one vote in four other states, for 99 total votes. Adams won all the electors in six states (the largest being Massachusetts) as well parts of five other states, including 26 of New York’s 36 votes and finished with 84 vote
Crawford won all the votes in just two states, but one of them was Virginia, which had 24 votes. The other was his home states of Georgia with 9. He also picked off 14 votes in other states and finished with 47. Clay won three states outright (the biggest being Ohio with 16 votes), but finished in fourth with 41 votes.
The magic number to get to in 1824 was 131 electoral votes as there were 261 total votes from the 24 states. Obviously, no one made that mark. You can see the official totals as they were written down in 1825.
When the Constitution was first ratified, there was a provision for the House of Representatives to choose the President if no one had a majority. And the House had to choose among the top FIVE vote getters. But, after the 12th Amendment was ratified after the traumatic election of 1800 where it took several days for the House to pick Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr (who had actually tied and both had a majority so the House was just deciding who was first and who was second. The Constitution did not allow for any other kind of tiebreaker), the number of candidates who would move on to a House election would be limited to three. (The election of the President by the House is officially called a “contingent election.”) Calhoun ran as vice-president on both the tickets of Jackson and Adams and won 182 votes and had his job set up for him.1 Calhoun would serve as Jackson's first VP after the 1828 election, but resigned the position early as he and Jackson did not see eye to eye. 2
The rules for the contingent election are such:
The House chooses from the top three candidates who got votes. The House can’t pick someone not on the list.
Each state gets one vote in the contingent election. So the 34 House members from New York got the same vote as the lone representative from Illinois.
The outgoing Congress got to do the choosing at this time, although that would not be the case today as the first day of Congress is much earlier in the year now than it was in 1824. In 1824, the new Congress convened on March 4, the same day of the inauguration of the president. The Constitution has since changed the first day of Congress to January 3 and as we have learned, the electoral votes are counted on January 6.
Jackson and his supporters argued that Jackson got the most popular votes, the most electoral votes, and had votes from the most different states. Jackson won votes in three of the four regions of the country then (Mid-Atlantic, South, and West, but he was shut out in New England.) Adams’ support was almost entirely from New England and New York. Crawford dominated the South and peeled away enough electoral votes from Clay in New York to move into the third position, removing Clay from consideration.
This however led to a situation where the most powerful member of the House of Representatives, Clay, was in a position to broker who would win the presidential election. Clay detested Jackson and feared choosing military heroes as President. (George Washington was the exception to this). Clay used his influence on states where he did well and had them vote for Adams. It took just one ballot to decide the matter. Adams won 13 states, Jackson won 7, and Crawford won 4. Adams won all of New England (six states) plus New York, Maryland, Missouri3, Ohio. Maryland, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The Kentucky Legislature wanted its House delegation to vote for Jackson, but Clay persuaded them to vote for Adams.
Soon after Adams was certified as the winner, Clay accepted Adams’ nomination to become Secretary of State. While this move made a lot of sense in that Adams and Clay had similar foreign policy goals, it looked very bad. Jackson supporters quickly decried this as a “corrupt bargain.” Adams was accused of effectively bribing Clay to throw the contingent election to him. There is no evidence that this happened and it was just an expected political outcome. Clay preferred Adams to Jackson.
Jackson supporters also believed that their candidate deserved the White Hosue because Jackson won the most popular votes. In his book, Ratcliffe argues that if New York allowed popular voting that Adams would have won by a sufficient margin over Jackson to give Adams the edge in the overall popular vote.
The moral of the story from 1824 is that if the general election is a multi-candidate race where no one is likely to get a majority of electoral votes, you are headed for a disaster. Choosing a president through a contingent election in the House with its very odd rules is inherently messy. If you are wondering about the present House of Representatives, the Republicans control 27 state delegations to the Democrats 22 with North Carolina being the only state with an even split.
As Bruce Springsteen wrote in his song “Atlantic City” “There’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.” But, in 1824, there really were no winners. There were no losers. There were just a lot of candidates and a lot of hurt feelings. In the end, John Quincy Adams fared as well as President as the Chicken Man did in Philly.
Are you confused by all this? Well, here is a political cartoon of the day to further increase your confusion.
In our next episode, we go back to the Election of 1924, which was very messy in a much different way and you don’t want a repeat of that either.
If there is no majority in the Electoral College for Vice President, the Senate chooses that person and the vote is only between the top two and each Senator votes on their own. That’s only happened once, in 1837, when Virginia electors refused to vote for Martin Van Buren’s Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, mostly because Johnson was in a common law marriage with an enslaved person. Johnson was one vote short of a majority. but would win the contingent election 33-16 with 3 abstentions.
Calhoun cast a tiebreaking vote to prevent Jackson’s nominee for Minister to the United Kingdom, Martin Van Buren, from being confirmed. Calhoun was also a total asshole and one of the most notorious racists to ever serve in the United States Senate. Also, there are all sorts of things in the South named for him.
1824 was Missouri’s first official vote for President. Missouri did send 3 electoral votes in 1820, but Congress wasn’t sure if Missouri’s statehood was official and opted to announce two totals, one with Missouri, and one without. Since James Monroe ran unopposed, it was not a big deal.
A friend of mine gave me "The First Presidential Contest" by Jeffery Pasley. May you be so lucky to have such thoughtful friends.