The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part XXXXII: Every Man a Contender

    Notwithstanding the fact that, as a result of the Missouri Compromise (1820) a civil conflict between the Northern and Southern sections of the American republic had narrowly been avoided, its aftermath was not necessarily characterized by feelings of renewed conviviality. On the contrary, the events of the Missouri Crisis, the McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) ruling, and the Panic of 1819 had all conspired to permanently shatter the sense of national reconciliation that followed the successful conclusion of the War of 1812, leaving in their wake a nation increasingly and bitterly divided along sectional, socio-economic, and ideological lines. The Panic arguably prepared the ground for what followed by seeming to validate the suspicions of those Democratic-Republicans who had always doubted the wisdom of the Madison Administration in chartering a second national bank in 1816 while at the same time forcing that same institution’s backers into a kind of defensive crouch. Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland served to widen this initial cleavage further by drawing attention to the seeming divergence between the stated principles of Jeffersonian republicanism and the policies pursued by successive Democratic-Republican administrations. And then along came the Missouri Crisis, the events of which focused the concerns of those advocates of state sovereignty who felt that their party was drifting inexorably and disagreeably towards advocating the complete centralization of political power in the hands of the federal government on that most sensitive of topics for the Southern political classes, slavery. Having been primed to distrust certain of their Republican co-partisans by the latter’s avowed support for central banking their seeming abandonment of strict constructionism, that same group’s willingness to drag slavery into the spotlight of the national political sphere arguably destroyed what little trust remained among the various wings of the nation’s dominant political party. From 1820 onwards, therefore, while the Democratic-Republicans would remain an integral political organization and the only party on the national stage with any real power or influence, they steadily began to fragment into mutually antagonistic ideological sects.

    The Election of 1824, of course, finally exploded any remaining illusion of unity by pitting four members of the Democratic-Republican Party against one another in a bitter contest that was as much about personality and sectional identity as it was about public policy. The outset of the race was relatively calm, to be sure. President Monroe, though still quite popular, declined to run for a third term. This decision shocked no one, for it was entirely in keeping with the precedent set in 1796 by a retiring George Washington. But while Vice-President Daniel Tompkins (1774-1825) might otherwise have been the natural choice of successor, shaky personal finances and poor health exacerbated by alcoholism quickly ruled him out as a viable candidate. In accordance with contemporary custom, the choice then fell to the Republican caucus in Congress. This was, and had long been, a simple matter of expediency, the congressional caucus of a party being the only nationwide gathering of its members who could be depended on to meet regularly. Not every member of the Democratic-Republican Party particularly favored the caucus as an instrument of nomination, however. The 1808 meeting had been a particularly fractious one, with a contest between several party luminaries resulting in Madison’s formal nomination amid bitter whispers from runners-up George Clinton (1739-1812) and James Monroe that the system itself was illegitimate. 1816 witnessed another contested caucus, this time between Secretary of State James Monroe and Secretary of War William Crawford. Monroe emerged victorious, of course, and went on to win the Election of 1816. But rather than gripe, as his predecessors had done, about the illegitimacy of the method, runner-up Crawford opted to bide his time, shore up his connections within the party, and wait for another chance to make his play for the nomination.

    The caucus meeting in 1820 was clearly not the moment. Soon after meeting, its members opted to adjourn, none of them being in a position to challenge the exceptionally popular Monroe. But when the next meeting occurred in 1824, the patient, calculating Georgian finally sprang into action. Having served in the Senate, as an ambassador, and in two cabinet posts in two different administrations, Crawford undeniably had the qualifications and the public profile to run for president. Monroe had stepped down without endorsing a preferred successor; Tompkins had effectively disqualified himself; the game, to all appearances, was Crawford’s to lose. But while he did accordingly secure his party’s nomination for president – and while, under slightly different circumstances, this would have all but guaranteed his election – Crawford’s path to the heights of power very soon became littered with obstacles. The 1824 caucus meeting, as it happened, was more sparsely attended than had previously been the case, Evidently, the criticisms of men like George Clinton and James Monroe that the practice was inherently undemocratic had coalesced with the sectional and ideological suspicions raised by the repeated controversies of 1819 to produce a climate within the Democratic-Republican Party of intense mutual distrust. In consequence, while those relatively few Republicans who attended the 1824 nominating caucus did indeed select Crawford as their party’s official nominee, various state legislatures at the same time opted to nominate candidates of their own.

    John Quincy Adams, in many ways, had always been Crawford’s principal rival for the Democratic-Republican nomination. As a legislator and a diplomat of long standing and experience, he was similarly qualified as was the ambitious Georgian. And as Monroe’s Secretary of State – an office from which Madison and Monroe had both run for and won the presidency – he was in perhaps the best possible position to declare himself the outgoing executive’s natural successor. It was quite understandable, then, given both his credentials and the fact that he was easily the most popular and well-known Republican statesman from the North, that the New England state legislatures would opt to nominate him for President. Much the same could have been said of the Kentuckian Henry Clay, a man of lengthy service in Congress – including three stints as Speaker of the House – who was as popular in the West as Adams was in the North. Not only that, but as the longtime leader of the Democratic-Republican caucus in the House, Clay had a record of policy achievements to point to and an independent powerbase from which to draw, both of which augured well for his performance in the event of his nomination. Bearing all of this in mind, it accordingly came as no surprise that his native Kentucky put Clay’s name forward as its preferred nominee and that Clay happily embraced the prospect of running for president.

    The candidate that hardly anyone took seriously, of course, was the one who ultimately proved to be the most formidable. Though Andrew Jackson had previously served in both houses of Congress and was, in a very real way, one of the founders of the state of Tennessee, his public profile was mainly centered upon his long and illustrious military service. During the early stages of the War of 1812, he had led American militia forces and their indigenous allies in the Mississippi Territory against a confederation of Creeks known as the Red Sticks, the result of which, the Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814), ceded over twenty million acres of land in what is now Alabama and Georgia to the United States of America. Shortly thereafter, having been granted a commission in the U.S. Army and made aware of British plans to invade Louisiana at New Orleans, Jackson proceeded to the city and organized an ad hoc but formidable defense – consisting, among other things, of unseasoned troops, local militia volunteers, Native Americans, slaves, and a group of pardoned privateers led by French smuggler Jean Lafitte (1780-1823) – whereupon he successfully fought off a numerically superior British force. Though the battle in question was strategically meaningless – the War of 1812 having ended, via treaty, some two weeks prior – the unexpected victory in the wake of a humiliating British attack on the city of Washington greatly lifted the nation’s spirits and made Jackson a household name. Then, several years later in the midst of a simmering conflict between communities in far southern Georgia and a confederation of native tribes and formerly enslaved peoples known as the Seminole, Jackson proceeded on an invasion of his own into British-controlled Florida. Though not specifically authorized to pursue his enemies into Florida itself – and having accordingly given rise to something of an international incident – Jackson nevertheless received the backing of President Monroe, whose Secretary of State was thereafter able to use the incident as a pretext to demand the sale of Florida by the British to the United States.

    Bearing all of these events in mind, Jackson could reasonably have been described – circa 1824 – as the single most well-known and publicly revered military officer of his generation. Not only that, but he was also arguably among the most popular public figures in the whole of the United States, having proven himself on numerous occasions to be the equal – if not, indeed, the superior – of the two great spiritual nemeses of the 19^th century United States: the British Empire and the continent’s native inhabitants. And while he was not, in terms of character or inclination, a statesman by nature, his public profile easily rivalled those of the era’s most successful politicians. When he determined, therefore, after a lengthy convalescence following a physical collapse in 1822, to once more enter the realm of politics, it was really only a matter of time before his presence began to warp some of the nation’s otherwise stable political assumptions. Initially, Jackson’s motivations were more vindictive than anything. An ardent critic of the 2^nd Bank of the United States, he viewed its public supporters as beneficiaries of corruption and sought to stymie their political careers if he could. William H. Crawford was first among his targets, both because, as the Secretary of the Treasury, he was foremost among the defenders of the utility of the 2^nd BUS, and also because he had been among Jackson’s most vocal critics in the Monroe cabinet during the former’s aforementioned escapades in Florida. In consequence – and again, mainly out of a sense of vitriol – Jackson sought to deny Crawford the support of the former’s home state by allowing the Tennessee General Assembly to nominate him for president and then grant him their electoral votes. Jackson’s fellow Tennesseans were evidently as eager as he was to punish Crawford and were willing to sacrifice their electoral votes in the process. But then, as word of the candidacy of the Hero of New Orleans spread, something strange began to happen. Legislatures in other states began to come out for Jackson as well.                     

    Without necessarily meaning to, Jackson had managed to leverage his military reputation and his public criticisms of the 2^nd BUS into an eminently viable pathway to the office of president. Though having previously served in both the House and the Senate, his prior political career was brief and unspectacular, easily overshadowed by subsequent military achievements. This fact – that he could convincingly be branded as an outsider with few connections to the contemporary American political class – along with his aforementioned public stance against corruption and central banking, combined to make Andrew Jackson the “man of the people” candidate which the ongoing race for president was otherwise lacking. As a testament to his resultant popularity, the legislature of Pennsylvania – then the most populous state in the union – notably chose to respond to the naming of Crawford as the Republican caucus’s choice for the nomination by branding the gathering “undemocratic” and naming Jackson as its preferred contender. Thus possessed of the support of states in both the North and the South, Jackson immediately became the single candidate to beat. No one could come anywhere close to being as nationally beloved, and no one could claim the backing of several regions of the country at once. The race was not over, of course. With many states splitting their electoral votes among the primary vote-getters via pre-drawn districts, there was still a chance that virtually any of the primary contenders could scrape up enough support to claim a win. With four men in the game, however, and each of them particularly popular in different regions of the country, the margin of victory was bound to be slim no matter who came out on top.

    Jackson, in the end, did receive the most votes. Both in terms of the Electoral College – which determines the winner of the race – and the real number of ballots cast – which does not – the Hero of New Orleans enjoyed more support than any of his contemporaries. And in a contest defined primarily by popularity – questions of policy taking a distinct backseat in 1824 to campaign biographies, popular songs, slanderous political cartoons, and editorials in the partisan newspapers – this was not particularly shocking. Jackson, as noted previously, was both a military hero and a self-appointed crusader for the common man, both of which personas appealed to the era’s increasingly aggressive egalitarian impulses. What did come as a surprise, however – to all but the savviest political operators – was that in spite of his first-place finish, Jackson still hadn’t actually won. He did, as aforementioned, win more electoral votes than his three opponents, amassing ninety-nine in total. John Quincy Adams came in a relatively close second with eighty-four votes, Crawford a somewhat more distant third with forty-one votes, and Clay in a disappointing fourth with only thirty-seven votes. Jackson, plainly, was more popular than any of his opponents. Indeed, the whole number of ballots cast in his name was nearly the equivalent of the those won by Adams and Crawford combined. But as of 1824, one hundred and thirty-one electoral votes were required to claim victory in the race for president. The result, therefore, was an impasse. As in 1800, the final choice would fall to the House.