The Age of Andrew Jackson

Chapter Two: The Corrupt Bargain and the Rise of the Jacksonian Movement, 1825–1828

kristofer ray 22 Chapter Two The Corrupt Bargain and the Rise of the Jacksonian Movement, 1825–1828 Kristofer Ray Andrew Jackson was anxious in January 1825. He had surprised many in the previous fall’s presidential election by garnering a plurality of the popular vote. No candidate won an electoral majority , however, which meant that the election would be decided by the House of Representatives. Jackson and his supporters expected to win the House runoff, but by late January rumors were swirling that his victory was not assured. Former presidential candidate and House Speaker, Henry Clay, some observers believed, had struck a deal with John Quincy Adams. In return for political considerations, Clay supposedly promised to throw his political weight (and the electoral votes of states he had won) behind Adams . By the end of January, Jackson was preparing for such a possibility . As he pointed out to William Berkeley Lewis, “I wrote you in great haste the other day in which I gave you the rumors that were in circulation of intrigue, union, and corruption about the Pl. election—I am told it has this morning developed itself, & that Mr Clay has come out in the open in support of Mr Adams—This, for one, I am pleased with—It shews that want of principle in all concerned —and how easy certain men can abandon principle, unite with political enemies for self agrandisement.” It could be pleasing , Jackson believed, because such corruption would “give the people a full view of our political weathercocks here, and how The Corrupt Bargain and the Rise of the Jacksonian Movement, 1825–1828 23 little confidence ought to be reposed in the professions of some great political characters. One thing I know, intrigue cannot deprive me of . . . the high ground the people have placed me on.” With that high ground he could return to Tennessee with his honor intact, carrying with him his “independence & my poli[ti]cal principles, pure & uncontaminated by bargain & sale, or combinations of any kind.”1 Ultimately, the rumors seemed to prove accurate: Jackson lost the election to Adams in the House runoff, and not long there­ after Clay was named secretary of state. Whether or not a formal “bargain” took place, a political firestorm erupted. And although he was perhaps less sanguine than he had been when writing to Lewis, throughout the affair Jackson forcefully professed his integrity . “By me no plans were concerted to impair the pure principles of our Republican institutions,” he wrote to supporter Samuel Swartwout, “or to frustrate that fundamental one which maintains the supremacy of the people’s will; on the contrary, having never in any manner . . . interfered with the question, my conscience stands void of offence, and will go quietly with me, heedless of the insinuations of any, who thro management may seek an influence, not sanctioned by merit.”2 Jackson and his supporters concluded that more would be necessary than merely the assertion of political honor, however. As Jackson made clear to Swartwout, the institutions binding the republic had been damaged by this “corrupt bargain” and would have to be restored lest the will of the people be undermined by aristocratic machinations. It is upon this notion that he and his supporters would build a remarkable organization—one that laid the groundwork for Jackson’s victory in 1828. In short, the corrupt bargain of 1825 became a launching point for the Jacksonian political movement. On this point virtually all modern historians agree. There are, moreover, related points that command a broad scholarly consensus: that the corrupt bargain gave an unfocused political theater a clarity that laid the foundation for what would become the second American party system and that Henry Clay’s actions were not necessarily impure or corrupt, kristofer ray 24 but that, given popular democratic realities by 1825, his political miscalculation was stunning. Although its immediate causes stem from the 1824 election, the corrupt bargain grew more broadly out of the increasingly chaotic political and economic milieu of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Indeed, in the decades after the Revolution, Americans had to come to terms with rapid political and economic development.3 By the 1820s the country remained agrarian, but large-scale trans-Appalachian migration ensured that agricultural energies were becoming more diffuse while eastern business interests were beginning to coalesce. These developments led to an increase in internal market structures, which were particularly (though not exclusively) noticeable...