In 2018. Welcome to our latest lunchtime lecture. Im chief historian here at the u. S. Capitol historical society. Welcome. Im really pleased today to introduce you if you dont already know jeanne and david heidler. Theyve been speakers before and today were really honored that were one day into the official existence of their latest book on Andrew Jackson, the rise of Andrew Jackson. It was just released officially yesterday, so were at the threshold of greatness here with the book. And i hope yall consider buying it. Theyre going to be available afterwards to sign it for anyone whos interested. And i also want to point out their previous book ive said theyve been here before was washington circle. Were also selling discounted copies back there. Im told the hard cover were selling is 5 cents more than amazons soft cover, so that sounds like a winwin. Anyways, i hope youll have some Great Questions for jeanne and david. This is a hot topic. I assume some of you are familiar faces but some of you might have been drawn specifically because of Andrew Jackson whos been in the news lately. So lets hear about why, how hes a template for maybe modern politics, and well be taking a q a afterwards so think of some Great Questions. Ive already got a couple. And with that ill ask you to help me welcome jeanne and david. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you, chuck, for that gracious introduction and the boost on the book that just came out yesterday. Can everyone hear me all right . All right, good. Ill try to keep up the volume here so we dont have any problems with that. Its delightful to be back here again. Several years have passed and we see some familiar faces and have met some new friends. Today wed like to talk about the central aspect that drove the campaign for 1828 in the wake of winter 1824 which was the charge of the corrupt bargain. And to answer your question how corrupt was it. And thats where we get into this business of smear or truth. Part of this is the natural aftermath of an election which is always a time of mixed emotions and contrasting mood. You have the elation of the victors and the disappointment of the defeated. These balance each other after a fashion which leads to a better perspective on the event and the future and gives a sense of proportion. The first shock of defeat will subside and elation over victory becomes relief. In the best case the victor is never completely vindicated and the defeated is never completely demolished. A healthy political system preserves the adversarial role as a way to check, curb and discourage overweaning power. And at the same time the extremes of failure and success must be avoided because if they persist there lies the path to reconcilable difference and to the heedless exercise of power and to reckless woern of resistance. Fundamental is the belief good faith is operating as a given to the election and its aftermath. Imagine then the chaos likely to ensue if the defeated emerged from the election convinced that they have been cheated, that the process itself was manipulated in bad faith and that the result is illegitimate. That the beneficiaries of it are shallow hucksters at best and possibly evil at worst. Subverting the peoples will, that would be bad enough, but imagine if the losers did not really believe this but were willing to act as if they did. They were intent upon convincing as many people as possible that the things they know to be lies to be truth. The damage is such an effort even if unsuccessful could be inc inc incalcuable. A smear is a deliberate faberation at worst or at least a willful twisting of the truth to sully the reputation of the target. Strictly speaking the truth cannot be a smear. The purpose of it in politics is as a scheme to achieve an advantage over an opponent outside of traditional means or contrasting differences which were presented either in person or sort of pertinent issues being explored in writing. Candidates and entities resort to the smear because they wish to distract from something. They wish to change the subject. It can be from their own personal failings or foiables or their own personal matters where they behave questionably or pass political stances that were or have become unpopular. In short destruction is the operative function of a smear. For a candidate with nearly unassailable credibility it is an easy way to damage an opponent and this is where it becomes especially dangerous. Credibility comes from popularity. A sterling deed, an inspiring life story or even a sense of identification with people that creates a bond for even essentially ephemeral reasons, it is nonetheless in parts authority. The fallacy of arguing from authority is ommatched by the ease of doing so. It is to say that you should believe me because of who i am discounting the need for evidence or even dismissing contradictory evidence as irrelevant. Hello. At the heart of our story today is the constitutional role of the house of representatives in deciding a president ial election such as the one in 1824, an election where no candidate received a majority in the Electoral College. This had only happened once before. The election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson tied with his Vice President ial running mate aaron burrr. And its submit odd it hadnt happened more than one time before because the framers of the constitution actually envisioned it happening pretty frequently. They thought that because they believed that favorite sons from the various states would run in each of the elections. And as a result there would be no majority in the Electoral College. That would throw it into the house of representatives. They chose the house because it is considered the peoples house. The frequency of the elections, of course, make it more responsive to the will of the people. This was the mechanism envisioned. Now, if someone did receive a majority in the Electoral College originally that person would become the president. The person who came in second would become the Vice President. But that election of 1800 obviously illustrated that that wasnt practical. And so the change is brought on by the 12th amendment to the constitution resulting in that 12th amendment it provided for separate elections for president and Vice President. And in the event there was not a majority the top three candidates would then go before the house. The house would vote by states. Each state having one vote. The rationale for that was the same as for the Electoral College. It was to prevent the larger states from dominating the elections. A simple majority in the house would then provide the victor. The physical process of the voting and how it was achieved, how it was counted, thats kind of a story for another day. What is pertinent for us today are the 1824 Election Results. There were simply too many candidates. By the time they got to election in the fall there were four. Secretary of state John Quincy Adams of massachusetts. Secretary of the treasury william h. Crawford of georgia, speaker of the house henry clay of kentucky, and senator Andrew Jackson of tennessee. The abundance of candidates assured that no one was going to receive a majority in the Electoral College, and that was apparent by the late fall of 1824. Accordingly the 12th amendment kicked in. The top three in the Electoral College vote were jackson, adams and crawford. These would be the candidates before the house of representatives. We do have sort of a tag team thing here. Like in wrestling one of you can come up and try to keep one of us away from the podium. Jackson then insisted that jacksons plurality in the popular and electoral votes was a decisive factor in determining the outcome of the house election. In a letter to john overton on december 19, 1824 jackson referred to himself as having been supported by am majority of the people which wasnt the case. But jackson correctly assumed this wasnt the time for subtly. So with servitude and tenacity the message was hammered home jackson had won the election because of the popular vote. He had won the election because of the plurality in the Electoral College, and it was incumbent on the house to endorse these conclusions out of a basic fairness. It was the only way said the jacksonites to truly represent the will of the people. Jacksons managers tried to elevate the relevance of these numbers and its easy to see why. As expected jackson came in first in the Electoral College with 99 votes but far short of the 131 majority necessary for victory. But it was jacksons significantly in the popular vote that animated his supporters. 18 of 24 states in 1824 chose the electors by popular vote. He had more than 110,000 votes than william h. Crawford, the third place finisher. Lost in the comparison of these figures, however, is a reality that not one of these numbers really matters. Only the electoral counts of jacksons 99, adams 84 and craw frds 41 arepert independent to the constitutional prescriptions for referring to these men to the question before the house of representatives. The flawed logic in the appeal of the popular folk is made evident by scrutinizing the case of henry clay who had beaten crawford in the popular vote by more than in louisiana thanks to skulduggery on the part of the adams and jackson camps in the legislator louisiana chose. As a result crawford came in first by winning louisiana and as a result became one of the three candidates who was going to go before the house. This fairly clearly shows comparing the apple of popular votes to the orange of electoral ones was in short a pointless exercise. Because of the complicated nature of this question which im sure you will all agree is complicated at this point it would prove a highly effective way of manipulating public opinion. Consequently the pressure to influence house members with these spurious claims was intense and persist tpt. The house would not take up the question until february 9, 1825. Which gave not only the supporters of jackson but adams and crawford more than two months to cobble together the simple majority in the house necessary for victory. They also courted one another with promises, seeking pledges of support, operatives moving between the opt receives of the other two, bending the truth and lying when truth didnt seem to work. To Practical Applications of all this become evident as a result of what happened in january of 2825. Henry clay speaker of the house was strongly inclined to support John Quincy Adams as soon as he knew, clay knew he had lost the election. He knew this in the fall. He knew it before louisiana. He was not going to go before the house of representatives he was deducing. As he became aware of that he only wanted to make certain adamss was supportive of his clay program for National Improvement before throwing his support to it. To that end he had an extended interview with adams on the night of january 9, 1825. It is possibly one of the most pivotal events of american history. The details of the meeting are never theyve never been made clear. Adams usually recorded things voluminously and completely in his diary. He does not for this. What is clear is that the results of the meeting were to be devastating to the reputations of both of these men because clay was going to use his enormous influence after this as speaker of the house in the cause of john quinsy adams. Now there were certainly problems with this meeting. Its context was unfortunate for it took place in the midst of deals of all the parties concerned including the jacksonites. Let me read a couple of passages from our book to illustrate how some of this deal making was going on. Ohio congressman john sloan found himself sitting across a dinner table from sam houston, an important jackson operative who mused between bites that ohio would surely go for jackson in the house vote. Sloan was an experienced politician in his mid40s, a jefr sewngen who had preferred clay. And his response to houston was measured. He had not spoken to the others of his delegation he said guardedly. Sloan believed houston looked anxious as he spoke about what a splendid administration it would make with old hickory as president and mr. Clay as secretary of state. Later as houston bade sloan farewell he made doubly sure his offer had not been misunderstood. Well, i hope you from ohio will aid us in helping general Jackson Sloan recalled him saying with a winking repeat of the proposed deal, and then your man meaning mr. Clay can have anything he pleases. And then there was the case of daniel cooke of illinois. Old hickorys men heard the distressing news that the young illinois congressman daniel p. Cooke intended to vote for adams. At 30 years of age and in frail health he suddenly found himself at the center of an unsettling effort to influence his vote. Illinois was a relatively new state, and its small population granted only one representative. But since each state had only one vote in the house election dan cooke by himself was as important as all of new york or pennsylvania. Illinois had mostly gone for jackson and old hickorys men forcefully demanded that those general Election Results do more than guide cooke in the house vote. He should accept them as the verdict of the people or else. Pennsylvania jackson manned Samuel Ingram took this tact with cooke. A rumored alliance with adams and clay would be unpopular, he muttered darkly to cooke, and it would hurt cookes career to join it. Ingham watched the young man absorb this threat and saw someone weighing all his options to cut his losses. Ingham accordingly switched his mood and smiled benevolently. For daniel p. Cooke the offer of the whole world was insufficient to cast his vote. But arkansas, ingham knew when to drop it. Now, henry clay was courted by the jackson and crawford men as well, and the murkiness of these overtures encouraged kig understandings at the time and massive ones later. Clay enjoyed the attention and prolonged it, which was unwise. It would be unfortunately easy to conclude that clay in meeting with adams was arranging a quid pro quo for his support now, as the february 1825 vote approached expectations were high on all sides. And there was also a lot of discussion about how should the house consider the candidates. Clearly the intention of the constitution was to have it act independently of all general Election Results. What after all did the framers of the constitution intend . If the house were merely to ratify an Electoral College plurality, why have the house vote at all . It would be sufficient to select a winner if that was the case, but that was explicitly not the case for the constitution. Rather the top three finishers in the Electoral College came before the house equally entitled with none favored over the others by any previous election result. The constitution clearly meant for the house to start its considerations from scratch, and then the vote was held. John quincy adams won on the first ballot. Now, there are enormously complicated reasons why this happened, and we wont talk about them today, but we only need to be aware adams was surprised mostly to the jacksoni jacksonites. Adams at first was and monroes held their weekly reception and while everyone seemed drained by the experience they were also grateful that despite the angry talk, broad recriminations and a blinding apprehension the election in the end had been decided with a calm dignity. The president s dpaering was not festive, but it was uneventful which was pleasant for people weary of events. A Kindred Spirit prevaded the whole scene the National Intelligence reported. The friends of the different candidates mingled together and converged with the good humor and frankness contrasted with the virulence and malignity in some parts of the country had attended this discussion. President elect John Quincy Adams stood in the center of the room with a press of people with congratulations. He received them with a drawn smile and stiff bows. He felt another press of people behind him and turned just as Andrew Jackson turned to face him. The president s reception fell silent. Guests suddenly became conscience of the cramped space and instinctively backed away from the two men to create a small empty circle with them at its center. The last bit of stray laughter and murmuring voices went quiet in the corners of the room. Adams looked up at the gaunt face. Andrew jackson bowed low. He extend said his hand. Adams took it. The bow at the reception, that seemed promising as did the hand shake. But jackson was actually seething, and then the announcement came that John Quincy Adams had named henry clay as his secretary of state. This setoff the explosion. Jackson wrote to a friend was their witness such a bear faced corruption in any country before . So you see the judas of the west has closed the contract and will receive the 30 pieces of silver. His end will be the same. Now, a smear can only if the behavior being decried is exclusive to the target, but this was not the case. The example of sloan and cooke are just two of a number of instances. And then the activities of James Buchanan nearly did them all in. James buchanan was an insignificant pennsylvania congressman in 182425. He strongly supported jackson and wanted to do something, anything to get the hero elected. Therefore he took it upon himself to become a powerbroker by going to jackson and indicated that clayman might support old hickory if jackson agreed to make clay secretary of state. Jackson refused to commit and there it seemingly ended. At least until after the election. When jackson chose to use that interview with buchanan as proof that clay attempted to sell his support to jackson before turning to adams. Buchanan never supported this version of events, and finally he flatly in the press