In 2024, more than half the world’s population will go to the polls. This should be a triumphant year for democracy but instead, across the world, citizens fret that our politicians and institutions no longer deliver the democratic ideal. In Britain, we are dominated by men who rejoice in other times. Keir Starmer harks back to the glow of Cool Britannia; Jeremy Corbyn to twentieth century industrial socialism, Jacob Rees-Mogg to the Victorians, and Boris Johnson, finding even these too nouveau, is more comfortable amongst the Ancient Greeks. In those countries whose claim to democracy is flimsier, their elections are even more burlesque. In Pakistan, whoever gets to use the symbol of cricket bat wins. In Russia, Vladimir Putin proves he really is a modern Tsar, by executing his opponents. In Iran, the Mullahs translate the will of God to the ballot box. In the United States, the home of modern democracy, Donald Trump promises his voters that he will make America great again, again.
This is hardly the first time that U.S. presidential candidates have made sugary promises to voters. Two hundred years ago, there was another election. It occurred halfway between the American Revolution and the US Civil War. The presidential election of 1824 had the widest electorate and media participation of any up to that point. In many ways, it was the first modern election. Five candidates, all from the Republican party and all political celebrities in their own right, stood for the presidency of the United States: William H. Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. They were the first generation of politicians to come of age after the American Revolution. 1824 was the first year in which no Founding Father competed for the presidency. There was a sense that this generation of politicians was callow and untested compared to the leaders that had come before. The post-revolutionary pygmies looked back to 1776, ruefully reflecting that “There were giants on earth in those days”1. A sense of moral self-doubt had settled over the United States, much as it has in the last two decades. In 1819, there had been a financial crisis, followed by a nationwide depression that left tens of thousands unemployed or bankrupt. In 1820, in conversation with his competitor John Quincy Adams, Calhoun described “a general mass of disaffection to the Government…a vague but wide-spread discontent…a general impression that there was something radically wrong in the administration of the Government”2. In the same year, a politician gave a speech in Congress in which he alleged that “there are some jugglers behind the screen who are playing a deeper game”3. To the modern ear, this all seems familiar. Our best days are behind us. Our institutions are decayed. Sinister forces are to blame.
The candidates all tried to associate themselves with more noble times. John Quincy Adams emphasised how he spent the early years of his life surrounded by American heroes: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. Andrew Jackson’s whole family died in the War of Independence, and he fought with the revolutionary militias while still a child. Throughout his life, he bore a scar where a British officer struck him. John C. Calhoun’s supporters portrayed him as the political heir to the founding generation, declaring that, during the War of 1812, Calhoun “by his genius, eloquence, firmness and patriotism, made himself the Jefferson and the Lee of the second war of our independence”4. William H. Crawford bragged of his friendships with Jefferson, Madison and Lafayette. Henry Clay made fiery speeches in support of Latin American independence, wielding borrowed revolutionary rhetoric and calling for the USA to export its values to the world, as so many American politicians have done since.
In the end, no candidate received a majority, neither in the Electoral College nor the popular vote, although Jackson received the greatest share of both. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where, in exchange for his appointment as Secretary of State, Clay used his influence to secure the presidency for John Quincy Adams. To the Jacksonians, Adams had stolen the election in front of their eyes. They claimed that he had struck a “corrupt bargain” with Clay, proving right everything Jackson had said was wrong with Washington5. The deep state had triumphed. The swamp was still undrained. This rhetoric of moral decline and corruption carried Jackson to the presidency four years later in 1828.
In many ways, the election of 1824 seems familiar. The candidates fought for the affection of a confused electorate, one that was fearful of the future and nostalgic for a lost age of heroes. The candidates of 1824 had not fought a revolution. They had not declared independence, written a constitution, or established a country. Instead, they offered to fix that confusion by binding it to a more solid, more valid past over which they alone stood guard.
- ‘The Dinner at Strother’s’, National Intelligencer, 6 July 1821 ↩︎
- Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. Vol. 5 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1875), p. 128 ↩︎
- ‘Mr. Holmes’ Speech on the Missouri Question’, Louisville Public Advertiser, 22 March 1820 ↩︎
- Wythe, Roanoke & Thomson, Presidential Election (Richmond: 1823), p. 29 ↩︎
- Stenberg, R. R. (1934). ‘Jackson, Buchanan, and the “Corrupt Bargain” Calumny’. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 58 (1): 61–85 ↩︎