Note: The coloring found in the states with a split electoral vote does not bear any geographic significance.
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Was the John Quincy Adams administration. Van Buren fashioned a disciplined, nationwide network that relentlessly promoted the central myth of the Jacksonian cause: that Old Hickory, the simple honest man of the frontier, was chosen by the people but swindled of his and their destiny by the corrupt aristocracy of the wealthy and well connected. Van Buren oversaw the systematic placement of pro-Jackson editors atop newspapers across the country, most notably Duff Green, who as editor of the Washington-based Telegraph tirelessly questioned Adams’s honesty and patriotism.
In this campaign of character assassination, the Jack-sonians were ably assisted by Adams himself. Urbane, educated, and cosmopolitan, Adams was likely the finest mind on the North American continent. Unfortunately, his stubborn high-mindedness, aloof manner, and contentious nature were off-putting to many, who viewed him as snobbish and egotistical. His father’s role as founder of the Federalist Party and an alleged monarchist likewise did not promote the image of Adams as “a man of the people.” Even more serious, in his patrician disdain for factionalism of all kinds, Adams refused to reward friends and punish enemies. Seeking always to assemble the ablest men in the public’s service, he did not discharge even those who openly joined his opposition or called for his defeat.
Adams’s ambitious vision of strong federal leadership also hindered his cause. His calls for federal control of public lands to ensure more rational settlement and for federal protection of Native American lands to uphold treaty rights were anathema to Jackson’s supporters in the West. His various proposals for a national university, an education system, scientific and artistic institutions, comprehensive public works, and infrastructure programs all generated fear among the southern elites, who increasingly viewed strong states’ rights as a necessity in the maintenance of slavery. His support for the Bank OF THE United States alienated a broad array of its debtors and competitors. Most damaging was his support for a strong tariff to aid the development of American manufacturing and development. The southern planters, who faced stiff retaliation on their agricultural exports by the European nations, denounced the 1828 tariff as the “Tariff of Abominations.”
Led by Van Buren, the Jacksonians promoted their hero as everything they said Adams was not: self-made, gruff, plainspoken, passionate, agrarian, democratic, manly, anti-intellectual, a strict states’-rights constructionist, and, most of all, opposed to economic privilege. Jackson’s image of inarticulate morality proved quite useful in his party’s strategy. To be as many things to as many men as possible, Jackson avoided detailing his views on the complicated economic and legal issues of the day, instead campaigning on his personal biography and charisma.
Running on values and biography had its risks, however. Adams and his supporters did not appreciate being called “corrupt,” “aristocratic,” and “undemocratic,” or being constantly portrayed as closet monarchists and stooges of the rich. They fought back hard, labeling Jackson as “vicious,” “barbaric,” and “bloodthirsty.” They accused him of conducting atrocities against Indians and army deserters, and they described him as having ungovernable passions manifested by fits of fury and “intemperate behavior.” (This last charge had the virtue of being true.) Most disgraceful of all were the aspersions spread by the Adams forces on the character of Jackson’s wife, Rachel, for the unknowing bigamy of her first years of marriage to Jackson; so distressing were the slanders that Rachel died of a heart attack shortly after the election. In return, Jackson’s followers accused Adams of misappropriating federal funds, spending public monies lavishly on extreme personal luxury, and of acting as a pimp.
The Jacksonians also made attractive campaign promises, perhaps the most significant of which was “rotation in office,” more commonly known as the spoils system. Arguing the democratically flattering view that any decent man of basic education could perform most of the jobs in government, the Jacksonians promised to sweep out the hated appointees of Adams and, incidentally, replace them with Jackson loyalists. As Jackson adherent William Macy famously said, “To the victor belong the spoils!” How, in fact, this was different from the arrangement Adams allegedly made with Clay was tactfully left unexplained.
In the end, Jackson defeated Adams by a healthy margin, 56 percent to 44 percent in the popular vote and 178 to 83 in the electoral count. Van Buren went so far as to resign from the Senate and run for governor of New York to ensure that its electors would be in Jackson’s camp.
Despite the outrageous mudslinging and the debates about the tariff, the rights of the states, and the power of the Bank of the United States, in the end there was really only one issue in 1828: the election of 1824. Jackson had not won in 1824, but in the scramble to build an enduring majority that followed, his party had built both a myth and a machine that would carry the day in 1828, and in five of the seven presidential elections thereafter.
Further reading: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1988); Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill & Wang, 1990); Florence Weston, The Presidential Election of 1828 (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1974).
—Dorothy Cummings
World History
