very unexpectedly, by a single ballot,”44 he made no reference to the fact that Clay’s allies in the House tipped the balance his way. In his entry for the next day, he mentions a visit by the secretary of the navy, Samuel Southard, and casually relates that “I told him I should offer the Department of State to Mr. Clay.”45
There had been no prior discussion in the diary as to when or why he settled on Clay, their previous falling out, whether he had considered anyone else, or much of anything related to this choice for a crucial post. The absence of such rumination is especially noteworthy because Adams knew that the appointment of Clay would be contentious. His diary entry for February 11 does note concerns that “if Mr. Clay should be appointed Secretary of State, a determined opposition to the Administration would be organized from the outset.”46 Adams writes, “I am at least forewarned,”47 but expresses no pause about picking Clay nor explanation for the absence of such pause. Later, in that same entry, he reports telling President Monroe that he would pick Clay “due to his talents and services to the Western section of the Union.”48 That is the full extent of Adams’s explanation for the most significant pick of his administration, one that arguably doomed it.
On February 12, he officially offered Clay the secretary of state position, and the latter (according to Adams) “said he would take it into consideration, and answer me as soon as he should have time to consult his friends.”49 Clay’s alleged reticence could suggest the absence of a deal between the two, or else Adams choosing to cover their tracks. In his diary entry for February 27, Adams noted “stores of opinion against the appointment of Clay as secretary of state.”50 Before accepting Adams’s offer, Clay acknowledged to others the sensitivity of the situation. In a letter to Francis T. Brooke, Clay noted that friends warned him that his becoming secretary of state “would be treated as conclusive evidence of the imputations which have been made against me.”51 That no more stopped him from accepting the offer than it stopped Adams from making it.
It was nearly suicidal for Adams to appoint Clay, and absent an agreement between them, there was no compelling reason for him to do so. In large part for that reason, most historians have concluded that Clay indeed swayed the House to make Adams president in exchange for his appointment as secretary of state—the traditional stepping stone to the presidency, an office Clay would never stop coveting. Ironically, becoming secretary of state may have doomed Clay’s larger aspirations. Even during his final bid for the presidency in 1844, Clay’s so-called “corrupt bargain” with Adams continually surfaced.
Clay always explained his decision to back Adams as stemming from Jackson’s lack of even minimal qualifications for the office. For example, in his letter to Francis Preston Blair dated January 29, 1825, Clay asserted the folly of selecting as president “a Military chieftain, merely because he has won a great victory. . . . I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at N. Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy.”52 In fact, Clay considered Jackson’s military exploits disqualifying. Noting that the chief characteristic of the statesman is “a devotion to civil liberty,” Clay wrote another friend that “I, therefore, say to you unequivocally, that I can not, consistently with my own principles, support a military man.”53
The election of 1824 could be seen as a constitutional success story. Notwithstanding the electoral stalemate produced on Election Day, and the passions of the day, the process played out quickly and bloodlessly, producing a president in keeping with established procedures. However, there are several reasons to regard that process as severely flawed.
First, we ended up with a president who lacked popular support. Less than one-third of the voters nationwide chose Adams. Of course, the Electoral College creates an inherent risk of a candidate winning despite receiving fewer votes than another candidate. Rather than pick our president through a single election, we aggregate the results of winner-take-all elections in each state (with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which award one electoral vote to the winner of the state’s congressional districts, as well as two to the statewide winner). Under this system, one can win the presidency despite receiving fewer votes than one’s opponent simply by winning a few large states with many electoral votes while losing other states by greater margins. Or, as in 1824, a candidate who receives the greatest number of popular votes and electoral votes may fail to win a majority of the latter, sending the election to the House.
On five occasions in U.S. history—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016—the candidate who received the most votes was not elected The most extreme case was 1824. Samuel Tilden lost the nationwide popular vote by 3 percent in 1876; Benjamin Harrison by 1 percent in 1888; George W. Bush by half a percentage point in 2000; and Donald Trump by 2 percent in 2016. By contrast, Adams received 38,000 votes fewer than Jackson out of 360,000 cast, a 10 percent gap. In modern parlance, he lost by a landslide. Moreover, unlike the winners in those other four elections, Adams received fewer electoral votes and popular votes than his opponent. His elevation to the presidency seems anti-democratic by almost any definition.54
Second, although things did play out reasonably swiftly and free of violence, the chance for chaos and popular upheaval loomed. Jackson supporters did not make good on their threat to revolt, but the very fact that such threats were made is sobering.
Third, the election in 1824 was decided by what many regarded as a “corrupt bargain.” The widespread suspicion undercut confidence in U.S. democracy. In the run-up to the House vote, Adams himself expressed concern that, if it were perceived that he prevailed because of a deal with Clay, “the people would be so disgusted with this that there would be a systematic and determined opposition from the beginning, so that the Administration could not get along.”55 He proved prophetic. Adams received little cooperation from Jackson supporters in Congress and, in 1828, lost his rematch to Jackson decisively.
Assuming that Adams and Clay did strike a deal, was it in fact corrupt? On the one hand, for a politician to support a candidate for office in expectation (or even an explicit promise) of a position in his administration could be seen as time-honored horse trading. However, the notion that someone achieves the presidency because another candidate offers his support to the highest bidder seems obviously problematic. In the case of 1824, the easiest resolution of this dilemma is to emphasize the covert nature of the deal (if there was one) between Adams and Clay. Even if it was fine for the two to strike a bargain, the American people deserved to know about it. Ditto the Senate that had to determine whether to confirm Clay as secretary of state.
A full consideration of the propriety of the alleged actions of Clay and Adams is beyond the scope of this book. What matters for our purposes is the judgment rendered by the American people, and the fact that the arrangement the people judged harshly came about in large part because of the way we elect a president.
Conversely, Adams’s loss to Jackson in 1828 could be seen as a cleansing election, an antidote to the toxic backroom dealing that put Adams in office in the first place. So too, the corrupt bargain would have been partially thwarted had the Senate chosen not to confirm Clay as secretary of state. Thus, one could look at the election of 1824 and give the Constitution one or two cheers. While it failed to prevent the crisis, it contained corrective mechanisms that could and to some extent did limit the damage. But should we settle for a system that predictably produces crises?
THREE
THE ELECTION OF 1876
In America in 1876, national pride intersected with national insecurity. The year marked the 100th anniversary of U.S. Independence, an event greeted with mass celebration, including the ballyhooed Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, a grand display of the nation’s achievements. At the same time, the Civil War, little more than a decade old, remained a vivid reminder of the nation’s flaws and fragility. Moreover, if the centennial served
