Adams V. Jackson: The Election Of 1824, By Edward G. Lengel

In this essay “Adams v. Jackson: The Election of 1824”, author Edward G. Lengel discusses the each of the presidential candidates including Adams, Jackson, Clay, and Crawford, as well as their similarities and differences going into the election of 1824. One of the main points of discussion is the idea that this election had candidates all from the same party, the Democratic-Republican Party. Even though, all the candidates technically held the same fundamental beliefs, there were many factions inside this “one party”. Lengel then goes on to explain how in this election in particular, candidates were particularly underhanded and used the media to make false claims against other candidates to degrade that candidate’s reputation for example the idea that Adams “didn’t wear underclothes”.
Here, only the top three candidates in the initial vote were available to vote for in the House, excluding Henry Clay from the process. Clay then used his position as Speaker of House to swing the votes to John Q. Adams’ side and got him elected as the sixth president of the United States. The aforementioned collusion between Clay and Adams was made evident when Adams named Clay Secretary of State. This brought a sense of corruptness to the country and in the election of 1828 Adams and Jackson opposed each other again and this time Adams went down easily. Although there at first was a sense of unity where the country was all “one party”, Lengel argues that the factions within this party were made very clear and the country turned out to be not nearly as unified as previously