For weeks the capital was enveloped in an atmosphere of intrigue. Clay was courted by all factions. The possibility of securing his support was a standing temptation to wire-pullers. Even Adams wrote in his diary, "Incedo super ignes" (I walk over fires). When Clay announced positively, on January 24, that he and his friends would support Adams, a storm of passionate denunciation broke upon him. An anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, charging that friends of Adams had offered Clay the Secretaryship of State in return for his support, and that friends of Clay had reported the offer to friends of Jackson, with the intimation that Clay would support the general on similar terms. When the friends of Jackson spurned these overtures, Clay sold out to Adams. With quite unnecessary heat Clay branded the author of this letter as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." His first instinct was to challenge the author whoever he might be; but when Representative George Kremer, an odd character who was chiefly conspicuous by reason of the leopard-skin coat which he wore avowed himself the writer of the offensive letter, Clay wisely concluded not to make himself ridiculous by an affair of honor with this Gil Blas. He demanded a congressional investigation instead.
While this investigation of the alleged bargain between Adams and Clay was pending, the House proceeded to the election of a President. On the first ballot, Adams received the votes of thirteen States, while Jackson was the choice of seven States, and Crawford of four. New England, New York, Louisiana, Maryland, and the States of the Northwest, except Indiana, supported Adams. Combined with these were now Missouri and Kentucky, which had voted for Clay. Jackson received the votes of the Southwest, together with those of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and South Carolina. Crawford was supported by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Two days later the President-elect announced that he had invited Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State. After some hesitation, Clay accepted the post.
The cry of corruption is a recurrent note in the history of democracies. The American democracy is no exception. With most of the charges of corruption, the historian has little concern; but the bargain and corruption cry of 1825 has a historical significance. The falsity of the charge against Clay has been proved as nearly as a negative can be. Adams may not have been above the uncongenial task of soliciting votes, but he kept safely within the moral domain which his conscience marked out. The motive which governed his appointment of Clay as Secretary of State is stated frankly in a letter to Monroe, two days after the election by the House. He considered the appointment "due to his talents and services to the western section of the Union, whence he comes, and to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations." Upon one individual these considerations made no impression: Andrew Jackson left the capital with wrath in his soul. He felt that he had been defrauded by a corrupt bargain. From this time on his hand was against Clay,—that "Judas of the West," as he afterward called him,—who had conspired to "impair the pure principles of our republican institutions" and to "prostrate that fundamental maxim which maintains the supremacy of the people's will."
Years after the events of 1824-25, the belief of Jackson that the will of the people had been defeated found classic expression in Thomas H. Benton's Thirty Years' View of Congress. What Benton termed "the Demos Krateo principle" was thoroughly in accord with the spirit of the new democracy, but it rested upon an entire misunderstanding of the Constitution. A direct popular election of the President was never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. It is impossible to find in either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution any justification for the view that the House of Representatives is bound to elect the candidate having the highest popular vote.
What the will of the people really was in the presidential election of 1824 is by no means clear. Even in those States where presidential electors were chosen by popular vote, Jackson received less than half of the popular vote; and in many of these States the actual vote fell far below the potential. In Massachusetts, where 66,000 votes had been cast for governor the year before, only 37,000 voters took the trouble to vote for President. In Pennsylvania, which boasted of a population of over a million, less than 48,000 voted in 1824. Moreover, the six States which chose the presidential electors through their legislatures, contained one fourth of the population of the country. One fact, however, stands out with unmistakable clearness,—and it did not escape politicians like Van Buren, of New York, who had their fingers on the pulse of the people,—this martial hero from out of the West had an unprecedented vote-getting capacity. It were well to observe the Western horizon more intently.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best description of the political characteristics of American society in this period is given by Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (2 vols., trans., 1862). F. J. Turner has pointed out the importance of the West in the development of the nation in several studies, notably: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (American Historical Association, Report, 1893); "The Problem of the West" (Atlantic Monthly, vol. 78); "Contributions of the West to American Democracy" (Atlantic Monthly, vol. 91). The political development of the South is set forth with great thoroughness by U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights (American Historical Association, Report, 1901); W. A. Schaper, Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina (ibid., 1900); and C. H. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861 (1910). Important aspects of the tariff are discussed in Edward Stanwood's American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., 1903), and in C. W. Wright's Wool-Growing and the Tariff (1910).