Draft:John Quincy Adams

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John Quincy Adams
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John Quincy Adams(July 11, 1767-February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States, serving from 1825 until 1829.[1] He is also one of two Presidents to be the son of another President (the other being George W. Bush), with his father being John Adams, the second President of the United States.[2]

1824 Presidential Election and the "corrupt bargain"[edit]

1824 Presidential Election results

Adams became President after the 1824 Presidential Election, where four major candidates were all running for the position. Him, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay all ran for President as members of the Democratic-Republican Party.[3]

Jackson won the popular vote (153,544 votes to Adams's 108,740) and even got more electoral votes than Adams (99 to 84), however, the Constitution demands a majority of Electoral Votes be gotten for the person to become President, and Jackson fell short. As such, the election had to go to the House of Representatives,[3] where each state gets one vote and the three candidates with the most Electoral Votes are allowed to qualify.[4]

This is where Henry Clay came in, Clay was the Speaker of the House at the time and as such held a large amount of political influence over who they would pick to be President.[5] Clay was also well aware this election was almost certainly going to go to the House due to the large amount of candidates.[6] Given Clay was running for President, it was obvious what exactly he was hoping would occur: Nobody gets the majority, he gets in the top three, and he uses his power in the House to become President. However, David Stephen Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler noted in his biography on Clay:

The 7 votes Clay should have received from New York with the 5 from Louisiana would have pushed Crawford to a relatively distant fourth, and Clay could have worked his magic in the House, the plan he had long envisioned as the only way to become president in the 1824 election.[7]:176

Clay lobbied the House to vote for Adams, although exactly why is up for debate. Jackson claimed that Clay offered to lobby for him on the condition he was made Secretary of State, as Adams later did. Clay denied these charges, and instead said that he merely did not feel Jackson was qualified enough for the position of President, albeit primarily because Adams more closely aligned with his ideology as opposed to anything objective. Jackson and his supporters, who felt that Clay had overturned the will of the electorate and instead handed the White House to one of his political buddies, began to call this deal the "corrupt bargain" and campaigned heavily on it in 1828.[8]

References[edit]