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AP American History October 21, 1997 The year of 1828 was a tumultuous year
in American politics. It so happened that it was a presidential election year.
The election of 1828 was different from any other presidential election up to
that point. The election not only set a precedent, but was also one of the
bitterest in American history. Out of all the elections up to that point, it had
all the makings of a present-day campaign.
The two modern aspects evident in the
campaign were horrific mudslinging and the choice of presidential electors by a
popular vote. The two men running for the office of president that year were the
incumbent, John Adams, and the once-defeated Andrew Jackson. John Adams ran as a
National Republican, later to be known as the Whigs. Adams had the support of
the respectable Secretary of State, Henry Clay, but he did not have the support
of his own Vice-President, John C. Calhoun.
Calhoun was very powerful in the
politics of that time period. He threw his support in favor Jackson because he
could tell that Adams and the Republicans wanted Henry Clay to succeed Adams in
the election of 1832. William H. Crawford, presidential hopeful in 1824, also
gave his support to Jackson. However, the most important man to lend his backing
to Jackson was Martin Van Buren, because he could tell that Jackson was going
places. Jackson was running as a Democratic Republican.
Because the Democrats
are widely known to be the party of the common man, Jackson could use the theory
of us against them. The Democrats also gained the support of the newly formed
Workingman's Party. When Adams had beaten Jackson for president four years
before, the Jacksonians protested that there was a corrupt bargain between Clay
and Adams.
This came about because once the vote went to the House of
Representatives, Clay, a candidate, threw his support in favor of Adams. Once in
office, Adams made Clay Secretary of State. Throughout Adams' administration and
the campaign, the Jacksonians made the phrase corrupt bargain a rallying cry for
their supporters. Adams though made enemies of his allies by refusing to remove
competent civil servants from their jobs in favor of his political friends.
Adams' views were already known so he had to run on those. Jackson however was
for anything against Adams that made Adams look bad.
Everything else he was
safely shrewd in defining his position on the current issues of the time. He
would just put himself in the middle if he didn't have an opinion or he didn't
want to upset his supporters. So, in fact, he ran without a program. While he
campaigned in the South, his friends in Washington, led by Van Buren, were
winning the election for him. They concocted a tariff bill aimed at attracting
electoral votes in both the Northeast and Northwest by hiking the protective
rates on items favored in those areas. It was called the Tariff of Abominations,
especially in the South.
This raised dislike for the Adams Administration. That
year was also the first year in which presidential electors were chosen by
popular vote instead of congressional caucuses. This made the election even more
democratic, which is what the Democrats, as they had come to be known, wanted.
The Democrats, after all, were on raising the idea of democracy versus
aristocracy. This campaign was not only one of the most savage elections up to
that time, it is one of the nastiest in our country's history. Both candidates
used the newspapers to do a significant part of their mudslinging. One newspaper
editor that Jackson used was Amos Kendall of Kentucky.
Kendall was the editor of
the Argus of Western America. All of his editors though did an expert job of
making his political head-hunting look like a crusade to clean Washington of
corruption and privilege. One of Adams' editors was Charles Hammond of
Cincinnati. He was the editor of the Cincinnati Gazette. Hammond turned
Jackson's marriage into a contemptible type of propaganda. But the even more
effective propaganda was the Coffin Handbill, which made Jackson out to be a
murderer and a ruffian because he had executed six Tennessee militiamen for
mutinying during the Indian wars.
Adams and the Republicans tried to make
Jackson look like a murderer, a slave trader, a gambler, a brawler, a
cockfighter, a swearer, a thief, a traitor, and a adulterer. The claims of him
being an adulterer hurt him the most because he was madly in love with his wife,
Rachel. They even described her as being a strumpet and a whore. The Democrats
countered with accusations of Adams pimping for the Czar of Russia while he was
in Washington, recklessly spending money for a pool table, cues, and balls,
being a monarchist, and being an aristocrat.
The charge that one Democrats the
election though, was that of the corrupt bargain. The election of 1828 was not
one of America's kindest elections, but it was a pivotal one. No election up to
that point had held nominations by a popular vote or had such dirty campaigning.
No one can say for sure who, between Adams and Jackson, was more brutal in their
attacks.
Their campaigns should be looked upon as something to learn from,
something not to emulate. But instead it started a long line of dirty campaign
tactics and character slander. These facts are debatable, but one isn't, it was
one of the most important presidential elections ever.
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