During the long embargo and the war, manufactures had arisen, and one question now became, "Shall home manufactures be encouraged?" With the rapid settlement of the Mississippi valley and the demand for roads, canals, and river improvements by which trade might be carried on with the West, there arose a second political question: "Shall these internal improvements be made at government expense?"
Now the people of the different sections of the country were not of one mind on these questions. The Middle States and Kentucky and some parts of New England wanted manufactures encouraged. In the West and the Middle States people were in favor of internal improvements at the cost of the government. In the South Atlantic States, where tobacco and cotton and rice were raised and shipped (especially the cotton) to England, people cared nothing for manufactures, nothing for internal improvements.
%329. Presidential Candidates in 1824.%—This diversity of opinion on questions of vital importance had much to do with the breaking up of the Republican party into sectional factions after 1820. The ambition of leaders in these sections helped on the disruption, so that between 1821 and 1824 four men, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Henry Clay of Kentucky, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, were nominated for President by state legislatures or state nominating conventions, by mass meeting or by gatherings of men who had assembled for other purposes but seized the occasion to indorse or propose a candidate. A fifth, William H. Crawford, was nominated by the congressional caucus, which then acted for the last time in our history.
Before election day this list was reduced to four: Calhoun had become the candidate of all factions for the vice presidency.
[Illustration: John Quincy Adams]
%330. Adams elected by the House of Representatives.%—The Constitution provides that no man is chosen President by the electors who does not receive a majority of their votes. In 1824 Jackson received ninety-nine; Adams, eighty-four; Crawford, forty-one; and Clay, thirty-seven. There was, therefore, no election, and it became the duty of the House of Representatives to make a choice. But according to the Constitution only the three highest could come before the House. This left out Clay, who was Speaker and who had great influence. His friends would not vote for Jackson on any account, nor for Crawford, the caucus candidate. Adams they liked, because he believed in internal improvements at government expense and a protective tariff. Adams accordingly was elected President. Calhoun had been elected Vice President by the electoral college.
[Illustration: The United States July 4, 1826]
The election of John Quincy Adams was a matter of intense disappointment to the friends of Jackson. In the heat of party passion and the bitterness of their disappointment they declared that it was the result of a bargain between Adams and Clay. Clay, they said, was to induce his friends in the House of Representatives to vote for Adams, in return for which Adams was to make Clay Secretary of State. No such bargain was ever made. But when Adams did appoint Clay Secretary of State, Jackson and his followers were fully convinced of the contrary[1].
[Footnote 1: Parton's Life of Jackson, Chap. 10; Schurz's Life of
Clay, Vol. I., pp. 203-258]
As a consequence, the legislature of Tennessee at once renominated Jackson for the presidency, and he became the people's candidate and drew about him not only the men who voted for him in 1824, but those also who had voted for Crawford, who was paralyzed and no longer a candidate. They called themselves "Jackson men," or Democratic Republicans.