Once we get past Labor Day, it will be Tumbleweed Tuesday for the locals, while, nationally, the presidential race will kick into high gear. There are indications that the Trump team, flabbergasted by its reversal of fortune, is already fantasizing about yet another “stolen election” to explain his loss this November.
Ironically, the people who keep getting busted for election malfeasance are Republicans. For example: A former Colorado county election official was found guilty earlier this month of tampering with voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. A jury found Tina Peters, a Republican, guilty on seven counts in the election interference case.
She is just one of the Kool-Aid drinkers who falsely believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Well, she tried.
Presidential election shenanigans are nothing new — even in the United States. I urge people to get hold of a book I was happy to blurb that is being published next Tuesday. “America’s Deadliest Election,” by Dana Bash, CNN’s chief political correspondent, is about the 1872 contest, in which Ulysses Grant was reelected. With the might of federal troops against him, the opponent, Horace Greeley, never had a chance. (Perhaps just as well — Greeley died three weeks after Election Day.)
But this year, we “celebrate” the bicentennial of the most brazen ballot boondoggle of them all.
In the election of 1824, the majority of voters wanted General Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, which had allowed the War of 1812 to end on a high note for the home team.
The winner in the all-important Electoral College in 1824 was, indeed, Jackson, with 99 votes. He was followed by John Quincy Adams, the son of the second president and outgoing President James Monroe’s Secretary of State, with 84 votes.
Although Jackson seemed to have won a clear victory, also receiving 43 percent of the popular vote versus just 30 percent for Adams, he would not be seated as the country’s sixth president. Because nobody had earned a sufficient majority of votes in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives had to choose between the top two candidates.
Those lawmakers would, of course, follow the obvious will of the people, right? Well, no.
Henry Clay, the speaker of the House of Representatives, was in a decisive position. Clay, from Kentucky, detested Jackson, of Tennessee, so the speaker forged an Ohio Valley-New England coalition that secured the White House for John Quincy Adams. In return, Adams named Clay as his Secretary of State, a position that had been the stepping-stone to the presidency for the previous four chief executives.
Adams’s election also continued the run of all six presidents being aristocrats from either Virginia or Massachusetts. Clearly, the election had been stolen — but there was nothing to be done about it.
The antagonistic presidential race of 1828 began practically before Adams even took office. To Jacksonians, the Adams-Clay cabal symbolized a corrupt system where elite insiders pursued their own interests without heeding the will of the people. During the Adams administration the Jacksonians denounced their political enemies as using government favors to reward their friends and economic elites.
By contrast, Jackson presented himself as a champion of the common man, and by doing so he furthered the democratization of American politics.
By 1828, Adams, though considered a pretty good president, like Greeley 44 years later, did not stand a chance. The campaign was marked by large amounts of mudslinging, as both parties attacked the personal qualities of the opposing party’s candidate — which included accusing Jackson’s wife, Rachel, of being a bigamist.
Jackson dominated in the South and the West. Adams swept New England but won only three other small states. With the ongoing expansion of the right to vote to most white men, 9.5 percent of Americans cast a vote for president, compared with 3.4 percent in 1824.
When the dust settled that November, Jackson had earned, in round numbers, 643,000 votes, to 501,000 for Adams, and had thrashed the incumbent in the Electoral College, 178-83. Even Henry Clay couldn’t fix that. (By the way, Jackson would be the last president who had fought in the Revolutionary War.)
By 10 a.m. on Inauguration Day, March 4, 1829, the area in front of the Capitol was filled with people, and the stairs on the East Portico were blocked by a ship’s cable to prevent the attendees from advancing. A raucous crowd of roughly 21,000 came to see the swearing-in, even if most would not be able to hear the inaugural address. Jackson came on foot to the ceremony, but to avoid the multitude he used a basement door on the west front to enter the Capitol.
The swearing-in took place, and President Jackson gave his inaugural address. Then he left as he had entered, because the crowd had broken the ship’s cable and surged forward. Seizing the moment as an opportunity for more adulation, Jackson climbed atop a white horse and rode up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. While this happened, people were squeezing through the windows to get into the building.
The overwhelmed staff and servants hastily opened the White House to all for a post-inaugural bacchanal. The building was filled by the public even before Jackson arrived on horseback.
Soon afterward, a by-now-cautious Jackson left by a window. The crowd continued to descend into a drunken mob, only dispersed when bowls of spiked punch were placed on the front lawn to lure them out of the White House. The White House was left a mess, including several thousand dollars’ worth of broken china.
That night, an official inaugural ball for administration officials and Washington’s high society was held in Carusi’s Assembly Rooms. Twelve hundred guests were present, but President Jackson, though fatigued and still mourning the loss of his wife — a humiliated and exhausted Rachel had died a month after the election — slipped out early.
Jackson, who at almost 62 was the oldest man to date to become president, served for two terms. John Quincy Adams would be elected to the House of Representatives and have a distinguished career there, until 1848, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while addressing his colleagues.
Henry Clay unsuccessfully ran for president three times.
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