from doing so. In a letter dated January 23, 1825, he stated that “my friends have probably the power of controlling the ultimate result” and, as for the prospect of him securing a cabinet position, “I believe that, if I choose to go into it, I can enter in any situation that I may please.”23 Clay’s dealmaking was a source of constant speculation. Congressman James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a Jackson supporter and future U.S. president, allegedly suggested to Jackson that he promise to appoint Clay secretary of state in return for his support. Jackson angrily nixed the idea.
Rumors also circulated about a Crawford-Jackson bargain. The idea seemed improbable, given the longstanding animosity between the two that had led Jackson to say, in December 1821, that “I would support the Devil first.”24 But a sighting of their wives together ignited conjecture that Jackson and Crawford were in cahoots.
Speculation about Adams and Clay seemed better justified. On January 8, 1825, Clay wrote a friend that he supported Adams, albeit “with great regret.”25 However, he would not tell anyone how to vote and would certainly seek no personal benefit in exchange for his support; his friends in the House should “throw me out of their consideration” and “be guided solely by the public good.”26 The next day, Clay met with Adams, who described their encounter as follows:
Mr. Clay came at six, and spent the evening with me in long conversation explanatory of the past and prospective of the future. He said that the time was drawing near when the choice must be made in the House of Representatives of a President . . . [and] that he had been much urged and solicited with regard to the part in the transaction that he should take. . . . The time has now come at which he might be explicit in his communication with me. . . . In the question to come before the House between General Jackson, Mr. Crawford, and myself, he had no hesitation in saying that his preference would be for me.27
Adams suggested that Clay had in fact done some bargaining, but not of the improper sort: “He wished me, as far as I might think proper, to satisfy him with regard to some principles of great public importance, but without any personal considerations for himself.”28
From the beginning, there was widespread suspicion to the contrary. When a majority of the Ohio and Kentucky delegations (states Clay had carried in November) announced their support for Adams on January 24, an anonymous member of Congress charged that Adams bought Clay’s support with the promise to make him secretary of state. Clay demanded that his unnamed colleague come forward. Pennsylvania congressman George Kremner did so, and promised to prove his claim. But when a committee was appointed to investigate the charges, Kremner refused to appear before it.
In a letter to his friend Francis T. Brooke on January 27, Clay reiterated both his bottom-line position and the basis for it: “I have interrogated my conscience as to what I ought to do, and that faithful guide tells me that I ought to vote for Mr. Adams.” Far from acknowledging any benefit to himself, Clay cast himself as a martyr. He would catch hell for his choice, but “what is a public man worth if he will not expose himself, on fit occasions, for the good of his country?”29 According to Adams’s diary, Clay visited Adams on January 29 and “sat with me for a couple of hours, discussing all the prospects and probabilities of the Presidential election.”30 Adams offered no elaboration, but that same day, Clay reiterated his choice of Adams in a letter to Francis Preston Blair. His assessment of Adams might qualify as damning with faint praise if there were even a whiff of praise: “I should never have selected [him] if at liberty to draw from the whole mass of our citizens for a President. But there is no danger in his elevation.”31
In Adams’s diary entry for the next day, he observed that “the intriguing for votes is excessive, and the means adopted to obtain them desperate.”32 The nation’s capital, if not the nation itself, was understandably obsessed with what Adams circumspectly referred to as “the topic which absorbs all others.”33 He observed that “the flood of visitors is unceasing” and “the excitement of electioneering is kindling into fury.”34 Fury was the right word. Adams claimed to have received an anonymous letter “threatening organized opposition and civil war if Jackson is not chosen.”35
While Adams always denied that Clay asked for personal benefit in exchange for his support, he did acknowledge such efforts by others on Clay’s behalf. In a diary entry on December 17, 1824, he noted the claim by Clay’s friend and confidant, Kentucky congressman Robert Letcher, that “Clay would willingly support me if he could thereby serve himself, and the substance of his meaning was, that if Clay’s friends could know that he would have a prominent share in the Administration, that might induce them to vote for me.”36 Adams claimed to give no such assurance, despite ongoing entreaties.
On the morning of January 21, 1825, for example, one congressman “spoke of himself as being entirely devoted to Mr. Clay, and of his hope that [Clay] would be a member of the next Administration,” according to Adams’s diary. Adams cagily replied that “he would not expect me to enter upon details with regard to the formation of an Administration, but that if I should be elected by the suffrages of the West I should naturally look to the West for much of the support that I should need.”37
Clay likewise continually disavowed any hanky-panky between himself and Adams. In a typical letter, this one, dated February 4 and addressed to his friend Francis T. Brooke, Clay wrote that “if Mr. Adams is elected, I know not who will be in his cabinet; I know not whether I shall be offered a place in it or not.”38 Their finesse in addressing the situation did nothing to quell concern that a deal between Adams and Clay would determine the election. In his diary entry for February 5, Adams acknowledged the view among some that “if I should be elected, it would only be by Clay’s corrupt coalition with me.”39
On February 9, the House finally voted, and needed only one ballot. Thirteen states voted for Adams, seven for Jackson, and four for Crawford, making Adams the nation’s sixth president. All four of the states Clay had won in the Electoral College (Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Missouri) went for Adams. In New York, Adams allegedly benefited from divine intervention as well as Clay’s. With the delegation split, the deciding ballot was cast by the wealthy philanthropist Stephen Van Rensselaer, generally considered a Crawford supporter. Van Rensselaer claimed that, as he was about to cast his ballot, he bent over in prayer. On the floor he spotted a ballot for Adams, and took that as a sign from above.
The next day, Adams expressed his intention to appoint Clay his secretary of state. The charge of a “corrupt bargain” between the two surfaced immediately, dogged both men for the rest of their careers, and contributed to Adams’s defeat at Jackson’s hands in their rematch four years later. (In 1826, Clay fought a duel over such charges by John Randolph, a senator from Virginia. Though shots were fired, none struck.) Jackson himself unambiguously attributed his defeat in 1824 to an unsavory deal: “The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. . . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?”40
Was the charge fair? Perhaps not. Adams’s diary showed Clay to be among the few men he esteemed. Long before the election reached the House, he observed that Clay’s “talents were eminent; his claims from public service considerable.”41 Curiously, as far back as November 30, 1822, two years before the election, Adams made reference to rumors of a deal with Clay whereby the latter would end up secretary of state. Adams dismissed the notion: “There was no understanding or concert between Mr. Clay and me on the subject, and never had been.”42 That would be a claim Adams would repeat many times before and after the House vote in February 1825.
His exhaustive diary, however, says nothing about Clay’s role in his victory and precious little about Clay’s selection as secretary of state. In his entry for February 9, 1825, Adams recorded his victory in the House in uncharacteristically gushing fashion: “May the blessing of God rest
