HSP’s collection offers countless opportunities to bring the past into conversation with the present. As we all just experienced a divisive and exhausting election season, we can turn to examples from the past to remind ourselves of the hard, messy work demanded of us by our system of free elections.
The election of 1824 still may be considered the most contested and controversial in American history. Four candidates ran for President: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson. Jackson won more popular and electoral votes than the other candidates, but not by enough to win the election. Consequently, the election was turned over to the United States House of Representatives for a “contingent election,” held February 9, 1825. The Twelfth Amendment limited this process to the top three vote getters, thereby eliminating Clay from contention.
Clay was accused of throwing his support to Adams in exchange for a promise of the office of Secretary of State. When Adams was chosen by the House, Jackson expressed his outrage at this “corrupt bargain.” According to the February 12, 1825 edition of Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, in the House Adams won the votes of thirteen states, Jackson seven, and Crawford four. Witnesses in the galleries responded “by clapping their hands, &c. gave tokens of approbation, and a few scarcely audible hisses were heard….”
In the above political cartoon, the towering figure of Andrew Jackson is beset by hounds representing the media as attack dogs. In addition to the press, the cartoonist James Akin takes aim at one of Jackson’s political opponents, William Crawford, and the Hartford Convention of 1814-15 that was blamed for promoting sectional differences.
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