Elections: In Detail
1789
Washington and Adams
No one contested the election of George Washington, but he remained reluctant to run until the last minute, in part because he believed seeking the office would be dishonorable. Only when Alexander Hamilton and others convinced him that it would be dishonorable to refuse did he agree to run.
Most Federalists agreed that John Adams should be vice president. But Hamilton feared that if Adams was the unanimous choice, he would end in a tie with Washington and might even become president, an outcome that would be highly embarrassing for both Washington and the new electoral system. Hamilton therefore arranged that a number of votes be deflected, so that Adams was elected by less than half the number of Washington's expected unanimous vote. The final results were Washington, 69 electoral votes; Adams, 34; John Jay, 9; John Hancock, 4; and others, 22.
1792
Washington and Adams
As in 1789, persuading George Washington to run was the major difficulty in selecting a president in 1792. Washington complained of old age, sickness, and the increasing hostility of the Democrat-Republican press toward his administration. The press attacks were symptomatic of the increasing split within the government between Federalists, who were coalescing around Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and Democrat-Republicans, forming around Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. James Madison, among others, convinced Washington to continue as president by arguing that only he could hold the government together.
Speculation then shifted to the vice presidency. Hamilton and the Federalists supported the reelection of John Adams. Democrat-Republicans favored New York governor George Clinton, but Federalists feared him partly because of a widespread belief that his recent election to the governorship was fraudulent. In addition, the Federalists feared that Clinton would belittle the importance of the federal government by retaining his governorship while serving as vice president.
Adams won relatively easily with support from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, except New York. The results were Washington, 132 electoral votes (unanimous); Adams, 77; Clinton, 50; Jefferson, 4.
1796
Adams and Jefferson
Adams and T. Pinckney (F) vs. Jefferson and Burr (DR)
The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Democrat-Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.
The Democrat-Republicans called for more democratic practices and accused the Federalists of monarchism. The Federalists branded the Democrat-Republicans "Jacobins" after Robespierre's faction in France. (The Democrat-Republicans sympathized with revolutionary France, but not necessarily with the Jacobins.) The Democrat-Republicans opposed Jay’s Treaty, whereas the Federalists believed its terms represented the only way to avoid a potentially ruinous war with Britain. Democrat-Republicans favored a decentralized agrarian republic; Federalists called for the development of commerce and industry.
The Federalists nominated Vice President John Adams and tried to attract southern support by running Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina for the second post. Thomas Jefferson was the Democrat-Republican standard-bearer, with Aaron Burr as his running mate. Alexander Hamilton, always intriguing against Adams, tried to throw some votes to Jefferson in order to elect Pinckney president. The Federalists had the most public support, but the votes for Jefferson from Pinckney supporters made it a tighter race than expected. Adams won with 71 votes; Jefferson became vice president, with 68; Pinckney came in third with 59; Burr received only 30; and 48 votes went to various other candidates.
1800
Jefferson and Burr (DR)
Adams and C.C. Pinckney (F) vs. Jefferson and Burr (DR)
The significance of the 1800 election lay in the fact that it entailed the first peaceful transfer of power between parties under the U.S. Constitution: Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson succeeded Federalist John Adams. This peaceful transfer occurred despite defects in the Constitution that caused a breakdown of the electoral system.
During the campaign, Federalists attacked Jefferson as an un-Christian deist, tainted by his sympathy for the increasingly bloody French Revolution. Democrat-Republicans (1) criticized the Adams administration's foreign, defense, and internal security policies; (2) opposed the Federalist naval buildup and the creation of a standing army under Alexander Hamilton; (3) sounded a call for freedom of speech, Democrat-Republican editors having been targeted for prosecution under the Alien and Sedition Acts; and (4) denounced deficit spending by the federal government as a backhanded method of taxation without representation.
Jefferson and Burr tied with 73 votes each; Adams received 65 votes, his vice-presidential candidate, Charles C. Pinckney, 64, and John Jay, 1. This result threw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote, to be decided by the majority of its delegation. Burr for his part disclaimed any intention to run for the presidency, but he never withdrew, which would have ended the contest.
Although the Democrat-Republicans in the same election had won a decisive majority of 65 to 39 in the House, election of the president fell to the outgoing House, which had a Federalist majority. Federalists leaned towards Burr over Jefferson. Hamilton threw his support to Jefferson, though and he was elected.
1804
Jefferson and G. Clinton (DR)
C.C. Pinckney and King (F) vs. Jefferson and G. Clinton (DR)
The 1804 election was a landslide victory for the incumbent Thomas Jefferson and vice-presidential candidate George Clinton (Democrat-Republicans) over the Federalist candidates, Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King. The vote was 162-14. The election was the first held under the Twelfth Amendment.
Jefferson was helped by the popularity of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and his reduction of federal spending. The repeal of the excise tax on whiskey was especially popular in the West.
1808
Madison and G. Clinton (DR)
C.C. Pinckney and King (F) vs. Madison and G. Clinton (DR)
Democrat-Republican James Madison was elevated to the presidency in the election of 1808 relatively easily. In the early stages of the election campaign, Madison also faced challenges from within his own party by Monroe and Clinton.
The main issue of the election was the Embargo Act of 1807. The banning of exports had hurt merchants and other commercial interests, although ironically it encouraged domestic manufactures. These economic difficulties revived the Federalist opposition, especially in trade-dependent New England.
Madison was Jefferson’s Secretary of State, and a Virginian. This election sparked a trend that would continue until 1824, with the next President being the Secretary of State of the previous President, a Democrat-Republican, and until John Quincy Adams, a Virginian.
1812
Madison and Gerry (DR)
D. Clinton and Ingersoll (F) vs. Madison and Gerry (DR)
In the 1812 contest James Madison was reelected president by the narrowest margin of any election since the Democrat-Republican party had come to power in 1800. He received 128 electoral votes to 89 for his Federalist opponent DeWitt Clinton, the lieutenant governor of New York.
The War of 1812, which had begun five months earlier, was the dominant issue. Opposition to the war was concentrated in the northeastern Federalist states. Clinton's supporters also made an issue of Virginia's almost unbroken control of the White House, which they charged favored agricultural states over commercial ones. Federalists accused Madison, too, of slighting the defense of the New York frontier against the British in Canada.
In the Northeast Madison carried only Pennsylvania and Vermont, but Clinton received no votes south of Maryland. The election proved to be the last one of significance for the Federalist party, largely owing to anti-British American nationalism engendered by the war.
1816
Monroe and Tompkins (DR)
King (F) vs. Monroe and Tompkins (DR)
In this election Democrat-Republican James Monroe won the presidency with 183 electoral votes, carrying every state except Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Federalist Rufus King received the votes of the 34 Federalist electors. Daniel D. Tompkins of New York was elected vice president with 183 electoral votes, his opposition scattered among several candidates.
After the bitter partisanship of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, Monroe came to symbolize the "Era of Good Feelings." Monroe was not elected easily, however; he barely won the nomination in the Democrat-Republican congressional caucus over Secretary of War William Crawford of Georgia. Many Democrat-Republicans objected to the succession of Virginia presidents and believed Crawford a superior choice to the mediocre Monroe. The caucus vote was 65-54.
In the general election, opposition to Monroe was disorganized. The Hartford Convention of 1814 (growing out of opposition to the War of 1812) had discredited the Federalists outside their strongholds, and they put forth no candidate. To some extent, Democrat-Republicans had siphoned off Federalist support with nationalist programs like the Second Bank of the United States.
1820
Monroe and Tompkins (DR)
During James Monroe's first term, the country had suffered an economic depression. In addition, the extension of slavery into the territories became a political issue when Missouri sought admission as a slave state. Also causing controversy were Supreme Court decisions in the Dartmouth College case and McCulloch v. Maryland, which expanded the power of Congress and of private corporations at the expense of the states. But despite these problems, Monroe faced no organized opposition for reelection in 1820, and the opposition party, the Federalists, ceased to exist. Voters, as John Randolph put it, displayed "the unanimity of indifference, and not of approbation." Monroe won by an electoral vote of 231-1.
1824
Adams and Calhoun (DR)
Adams vs. Jackson vs. Crawford vs. Clay (all DR)
The Democrat-Republican party broke apart in the 1824 election. A large majority of the states now chose electors by popular vote rather than legislature vote. Groups in each state nominated candidates for the presidency, resulting in a multiplicity of favorite-son candidacies.
By the fall of 1824, four candidates remained in the running. William Crawford of Georgia, the secretary of the treasury, had been the early front-runner, but severe illness hampered his candidacy. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts had a brilliant record of government service, but his Federalist background, his cosmopolitanism, and his cold New England manner cost him support outside his own region. Henry Clay of Kentucky, the Speaker of the House of Representatives was the advocate of the “American System” (high tariffs to finance internal improvements). Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who owed his popularity to his 1815 victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans, was the other candidate.
With four candidates, none received a majority. Jackson received 99 electoral votes; Adams, 84 electoral votes; Crawford, 41 electoral votes; and Clay, 37 electoral votes. The choice of president therefore fell to the House, who was to choose among the top three candidates. This left out Clay, but he still had power. Clay threw his support to Adams. When Adams subsequently named Clay secretary of state, the Jacksonians charged that the two men had made a "corrupt bargain,” an allegation that haunted his presidency.
1828
Jackson and Calhoun (D)
Adams (NR) vs. Jackson (D)
Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 by a landslide, receiving a record 647,292 popular votes (56 percent) to 507,730 (44 percent) for the incumbent John Quincy Adams. John C. Calhoun won the vice presidency with 171 electoral votes to 83 for Richard Rush and 7 for William Smith.
The emergence of two parties promoted popular interest in the election. Jackson's party, the Democrats, developed the first sophisticated national network of party organizations. The National-Republicans, the party of Adams and Henry Clay, lacked the local organizations of the Democrats, but they did have a clear platform: high tariffs, federal funding of roads, canals, and other internal improvements, aid to domestic manufactures, and development of cultural institutions.
The 1828 election campaign was one of the dirtiest in America's history. Both parties spread false and exaggerated rumors about the opposition. Jackson men charged that Adams obtained the presidency in 1824 through a "corrupt bargain" with Clay. And they painted the incumbent president as a decadent aristocrat, who had procured prostitutes for the czar while serving as U.S. minister to Russia and spent taxpayer money on "gambling" equipment for the White House (actually a chess set and a billiard table).
The National-Republicans portrayed Jackson as a violent frontier ruffian, the son, some said, of a prostitute married to a mulatto. When Jackson and his wife, Rachel, married, the couple believed that her first husband had obtained a divorce. After learning the divorce had not yet been made final, the couple held a second, valid wedding. Now the Adams men claimed Jackson was a bigamist and an adulterer. More justifiably, administration partisans questioned Jackson's sometimes violent discipline of the army in the War of 1812 and the brutality of his invasion of Florida in the Seminole War.
1832
Jackson and Van Buren (D)
Clay (NR) vs. Jackson (D) vs. Wirt (Anti-Masonic)
Jackson easily carried the electoral college with 219 votes. Clay received 49, and William Wirt won the 7 votes of Vermont. Martin Van Buren won the vice presidency with 189 votes against 97 for other candidates.
The spoils system of political patronage, the high 1828 and 1832 tariffs, and federal funding of internal improvements were major issues, but the most important was Jackson's veto of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. National-Republicans attacked the veto, arguing that the Bank was needed to maintain a stable currency and economy. "King Andrew's" veto, they asserted, was an abuse of executive power. Democratic-Republicans labeled the Bank an aristocratic institution—a "monster." Suspicious of banking and of paper money, Jacksonians opposed the Bank for giving special privileges to private investors at government expense and charged that it fostered British control of the American economy.
For the first time in American politics, a third party, the Anti-Masons, challenged the two major parties. Many politicians of note participated, including Thaddeus Stevens, William H. Seward, and Thurlow Weed. The Anti-Masonic party formed in reaction to the murder of William Morgan, a former New York Freemason. Allegedly, some Masons murdered Morgan when he threatened to publish some of the order's secrets. The Anti-Masons protested Masonic secrecy and feared a conspiracy to control American political institutions, a fear fed by the fact that both the major party candidates, Jackson and Clay, were Masons.