Published February 1, 2025
By Kent Hull
With the 1824 election approaching, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams probably thought he was President James Monroe’s likely successor. Both James Madison in 1808, and Monroe in 1816, had moved into the presidency from the State Department with little opposition. Adams did not, as powerful new candidates appeared, reflecting sharp political division in the country.
Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, the nation’s military hero, had ended the War of 1812 by defeating British troops at New Orleans in 1814. Henry Clay of Kentucky, geographically then considered “the West,” was Speaker of the House of Representatives and wanted to be President. Jackson and Clay enjoyed broader popularity throughout the country than Adams, supported primarily in Massachusetts.
The presidencies of Madison and Monroe, Virginia Republicans first aligned with President Thomas Jefferson, were sometimes called “the era of good feelings” because political differences appeared less antagonistic than they had been during the earlier administrations of John Adams and Jefferson. Madison chose John Quincy Adams, a Federalist from Massachusetts, as one negotiator to settle the War of 1812, and Monroe elevated Adams to be Secretary of State.
More significantly, American politics were changing, in part because the nation had expanded beyond the original thirteen states on the Atlantic seaboard. Great Britain’s defeat in the American Revolution and the War of 1812 voided most of its North American claims south of Canada. The Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 added territory stretching north from the Gulf of Mexico and west from the Mississippi River. Residents in those areas sought admission to statehood, as did Illinois in 1818, a process forcing debate over the status of slavery in the new states.
Beyond slavery, other fundamental questions about American government remained. The Bank of the United States, a quasi-public national institution, exerted greater power over the economy than Jackson and his supporters wanted. Some manufacturers supported a tariff on imported goods, protecting some domestic industries but increasing costs to consumers. Jackson saw the Bank and the tariff as favoring American elites and injuring the common people.
Henry Clay supported an “American Plan” of internal improvements in which the federal government would finance and build roads, canals and coastal harbor improvements. Jackson opposed Clay, arguing that resources would be allocated disproportionately among the states, and that the Constitution provided no clear authority for such policies. Underlying these controversies was the question of national power dominating states’ rights.
Americans voters do not elect their president by a direct majority vote. Instead, Article 2, section 1 of the Constitution created the Electoral College to cast the official vote, with each state given a number of electors equal to its total representation in Congress. If no candidate wins a majority in the Electoral College, the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution directs the House to elect the president from among the top three candidates, with each state allowed one vote in that process.
The new state of Illinois, having two senators and one House member in 1824, held three electoral votes. Although he did not win the popular vote, Jackson carried Illinois. The total vote was 4,671 votes cast in the state with Adams winning by 5.23%. Adams won the western and northern part of the state with Jackson winning the south and east. But because of the district-based system for choosing electors, Adams received one and Jackson two electoral votes. Traditionally, electors have cast their votes for the candidate winning their state, although the Constitution does not categorically command that result.
The Electoral College of 1824 had 261 members, with 131 votes needed to win the presidency. Jackson led with a plurality of 99 electoral votes, winning 41% of the popular vote. Adams had 74 electoral votes, winning 30 % of the popular vote. Other candidates followed, with Clay receiving only 7 electoral votes. Because no candidate had a majority, the election went into the House in 1825, where, with 24 states in the Union, a winner needed 13 votes.
Andrew Jackson, with pluralities in the Electoral College and the popular vote, expected election by the House. Yet Speaker Henry Clay, with little electoral or popular support that year, exerted great influence among House members. Clay wanted to be Secretary of State, the office from which he planned to follow Madison and Monroe into the presidency.
The House gave Adams the 13 needed votes, including that of Illinois, where Adams had won a plurality, but not majority, of the popular vote. Upon inauguration, Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State, and Andrew Jackson protested what he called “the corrupt bargain of 1825” between Adams and Clay.
Historians have found no explicit promise by Adams to appoint Clay in return for votes, but Jackson campaigned against the “corrupt bargain,” and defeated Adams in 1828. Thus John Quincy Adams was a one-term president. Jackson’s two presidential terms established the modern Democratic Party and the era of two-party politics. Henry Clay, never elected President, became a Whig known as “the great compromiser” in disputes over extension of slavery.
As President, John Quincy Adams embraced Clay’s American Plan, unsuccessfully urging establishment of a national university and an observatory. In 1828 he approved what his opponents called a “tariff of abominations”, which fell heavily on the South. His presidency was not a success.
The historian Allan Nevins, an Adams County native from Camp Point, wrote, in his edition of Adams’s Diary, that Adams combined “humors and prejudices with so much ability, liberality, and high rectitude of character.”
Kent Hull, a retired lawyer living in South Bend, IN, is a long-distance member of the Historical Society. He grew up in Plainville and graduated from Seymour High School in Payson, Illinois.
Sources:
Adams, John Quincy. The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845…, edited by
Allan Nevins, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951.
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949.
Larson, John Lauritz. “‘Bind the Republic Together’: The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 74, No. 2, (1987): 363-387.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom 1822-1832, Vol. II, New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1945.
