| United States presidential election, 1828 | ||||
| 31 October - 3 December 1828 | ||||
 |  | |||
| Nominee | Andrew Jackson | John Quincy Adams | ||
| Party | Democratic | National Republican | ||
| Home state | Tennessee | Massachusetts | ||
| Running mate | John C. Calhoun, William Smith | Richard Rush | ||
| Electoral vote | 178 | 83 | ||
| States carried | 16 | 10 | ||
| Popular vote | 642,553 | 500,897 | ||
| Percentage | 56.0% | 43.6% | ||
| | ||||
 Presidential election results map. Yellow denotes states won by Jackson and Calhoun or Smith, Brown denotes those won by Adams/Rush. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. | ||||
| Successor | ||||
The United States presidential election of 1828 featured a rematch between incumbent President John Quincy Adams and chief rival Andrew Jackson, who was now a candidate under the banner of the Democratic Party.
Unlike the 1824 election, no other major candidates appeared in the race, allowing Jackson to consolidate a power base and easily win an electoral victory over Adams.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Background
Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular(a) and electoral votes in the Election of 1824 but still lost to John Quincy Adams when the election was deferred to the House of Representatives. Henry Clay (then Speaker of the House) received the chance to play king-maker. Although Clay did not have cordial relations with Adams, Clay despised Jackson, in part due to their fight for Western votes during the election. Clay met with Adams to confirm his support, and shortly thereafter Adams won the Presidency. A few days after the election, Adams named Clay his Secretary of State, a position which at that time often led to the presidency. Jackson and his followers immediately labeled Clay and Adams as striking a “corrupt bargain," and they continued to lambaste the President until the 1828 election.
(a) A full quarter of the states did not hold a popular vote. The Election of 1828 had the highest voter turnout to date.
[edit] General election
[edit] Campaign
The campaign was marked by an impressive amount of mudslinging. Jackson's marriage came in for attack: when he had married his wife Rachel, the couple had believed that she was divorced; however, the divorce was not yet finalized, so he had had to remarry her once the legal papers were complete. In the Adams campaign's hands, this became a scandal. One pamphlet asked: “Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and christian land?”
The notorious Coffin Handbills attacked Jackson for his courts martial and execution of deserters, for his massacres of Indian villages, and for his habit of dueling.
Adams did not escape attack. It was charged that Adams, while serving as Minister to Russia, had surrendered an American servant girl to the appetites of the Czar. Adams was also accused of using public funds to buy gambling devices for the presidential residence; it turned out that these were a chess set and a pool table.
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[edit] Results
The selection of electors began on October 31 with elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania and ended on November 13 with elections in North Carolina. The Electoral College met on December 3.
Adams won exactly the same states that his father had won in the election of 1800: the New England states, New Jersey, and Delaware. Jackson won everything else. Unfortunately for Adams, there was a lot more “everything else” in this election than there had been in 1800, and he lost in a landslide.
| Presidential Candidate | Party | Home State | Popular Vote(a) | Electoral Vote | Running Mate | Running Mate's Home State | RM's Electoral Vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | |||||||
| Andrew Jackson | Democratic | Tennessee | 642,553 | 56.0% | 178 | John Caldwell Calhoun | South Carolina | 171 |
| William Smith | South Carolina | 7 | ||||||
| John Quincy Adams | National Republican | Massachusetts | 500,897 | 43.6% | 83 | Richard Rush | Pennsylvania | 83 |
| Other | 4,568 | 0.4% | – | Other | – | |||
| Total | 1,148,018 | 100 % | 261 | 261 | ||||
| Needed to win | 131 | 131 | ||||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1828 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005).
Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).
(a) The popular vote figures exclude Delaware and South Carolina. In both of these states, the Electors were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by popular vote.
[edit] Aftermath
Rachel Jackson had been having chest pains throughout the campaign, aggravated by the personal attacks on her marriage. She became ill and died, humiliated, on December 22, 1828. Jackson accused the Adams campaign, and Henry Clay even more so, of causing her death, saying, “I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy.”
[edit] Electoral College selection
| Method of choosing Electors | State(s) |
|---|---|
| Each Elector appointed by state legislature | Delaware South Carolina |
| State is divided into electoral districts, with one Elector chosen per district by the voters of that district | Maryland Tennessee |
| Maine |
| New York |
| Each Elector chosen by voters statewide | (all other states) |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Books
-
- Bemis, Samuel Flagg (1956). John Quincy Adams and the Union, vol. 2.
- Butterfield, Roger (1947). The American Past: A History of the United States from Concord to Hiroshima, 1775 – 1945. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Holt, Michael F. (1992). Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln.
- McCormick, Richard P. (1966). The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era.
- Remini, Robert V. (1959). Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party.
- Remini, Robert V. (1981). Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822 – 1832.
- Swint, Kerwin C. (2006). Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time. Praeger Publishers.
- Watson, Harry L. (1990). Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America. ISBN 0-374-52196-4.
- Wilentz, Sean (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.
- Web sites
-
- A Brief Biography of Andrew Jackson 1767 – 1845: The Election of 1828. From Revolution to Reconstruction. Retrieved on November 15, 2004.
- Election of 1828. U-S-History.com. Retrieved on November 15, 2004.
- A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College. The Green Papers. Retrieved on March 20, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Historian James Parton describes election
- The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson and the Growth of Party Politics
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