Posted on 10/15/2003 4:23:36 PM PDT by ancientart
Posted on Wed, Oct. 15, 2003
Because none of the four 1824 presidential candidates had won a majority of the electoral votes, the contest was ultimately decided by the House of Representatives. After some deliberation, the House voted into office John Quincy Adams, the distinguished son of former president John Adams.
Andrew Jackson's supporters were outraged. They'd been robbed! Jackson had won a plurality of the popular vote: he deserved the presidency.
Jackson's supporters screamed that their man had lost out only because of a "corrupt bargain" made between House Speaker Henry Clay and Adams. Clay only supported Adams, they argued, because Adams had promised to make Clay Secretary of State.
There was no evidence at all that Clay and Adams made any such deal. Further, even if they had, such an arrangement was neither illegal nor immoral.
No matter. To the supporters of Jackson, John Quincy Adams was an illegitimate president, and they felt justified in using against him the vilest lies and slanders imaginable. They began waging a vicious campaign against him from the very day he took office. They accused Adams of using his office to make a personal fortune. They denounced his plan for internal improvements as a scheme to help the rich at the expense of the poor. He was turning the White House into a gambling den! He wanted to make himself king! He was a pimp for the Tsar!
Not a germ of truth in any of this. Adams was one of the most honest, incorruptible presidents in American history. But because of the constant slanders, Adams found himself incapable of accomplishing much at all as president. His opponents in Congress made sure that Adams appointees faced delay after delay before they were confirmed. Meanwhile, Congress kept itself busy launching investigations into alleged executive wrongdoing.
Particularly unjust was the constant congressional harping on presidential patronage. While earlier presidents routinely fired federal employees to make room for their political supporters, Adams would have none of this. A competent official was sure of retaining his position in the Adams administration no matter what his political affiliation. Yet Congress was so sure that the "corrupt bargain" was standard Adams practice, they felt justified in launching no less than six investigations into presidential patronage.
Well, the strategy worked. Adams was made to look like an incompetent monarchist, and Jackson won the 1828 rematch in a landslide.
But there was a price to be paid, both for the country and for Jackson himself. By 1828, political rhetoric had turned into all out war as Jackson's supporters fired salvo after salvo at Adams, and Adams supporters responded in kind. As it turned out, Jackson's wife Rachel had not been officially divorced from her previous husband when Jackson married her. Bigamy! Adultery! Scandal!
Well, Old Hickory was used to being shot at. But, for Rachel, it was a different story. Her health weakened by the pressure of the campaign, she died a month before her husband took office.
Further collateral damage: the long, vicious campaign against Adams brought an end to the Era of Good Feelings and gave rise to the bitter sectionalism that almost destroyed the country during the Civil War.
The great statesmen of the 1830s and 1840s saw the great conflict coming and did their best to avert it - to no avail. In his first inaugural address, with the Civil War already begun, Abraham Lincoln made one last plea for peace. "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies."
Lincoln's recipe for taming out-of-control political passions? "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty."
It might have worked. It might work still.
Al Gore invented the plurality sore loser presidential election.
Lies, Lies, Lies!!!
Just you weight! Al Gore and his speech righter "Al Frankly my dear I don't give a damn" will straiten' this all out. They WILL have a "Libration network to call their own!" AND, it will commisserate on a hi! intelleczual plane just like there Dimwit compadres!
PSST--- Don't tell Al^2 that Kemosabe really means, "White Devil!"
What's so amazing about Congressional reaction is that JQ Adams removed very, very few office olders. I'd have to look it up, but I think only 20 or so lost their jobs, and always because they weren't very effective. Adams actually hurt himself politically because his supporters expected him to dismiss previous office holders to make way for them. Earlier presidents had made more changes than Adams, but the political spoils system didn't really get started until Jackson took office. The main pre-Jackson conflict was Jefferson's attempt to keep last-minute John Adams appointees out, a conflict that led, among other things, to Marbury vs. Madison.
When Jackson got into office, he dismissed hundreds of federal office olders to make way for his cronies, often appointing woefully uneducated and underqualified people to these posts.
This would be far more impressive if there were competing parties at this time, but there was only the Jeffersonian party in place.
Just read a good JQA biography, please. Despite the breakup of the Federalists, there were still plenty of factions, and it was no mean feat for JQA to resist the pressure to dismiss federal office holders to make way for his own people.
Obviously some officials were removed for no apparent reason.
Yes? Can you name even one? JQA's biographers (even those more sympathetic to Jackson than to Adams) view the Congressional hearings as political showmanship.
All in all, pretty shoddy history.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, I suppose, but when I ran the article by the professor here who teaches our early national history course, he agreed with it entirely. I am not sure what you're really objecting to anyway. Are you an ardent Jacksonian? Is there something about JQA you don't like? Or do you object to the overall idea that nasty partisanship of the 1824-1828 period had a very bad and lasting effect on the American political process?
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