Continuity or Change? Presidential Elections | BRIdge from the Past: Art Across U.S. History

0:06 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge From the Past. This is Mary Patterson, and this week I’m coming to you from my parents basement. I’m not making this up because just out of view here is a picture of me when I was in middle school. All I can say if you’re in middle school and watching this now, is that it gets better, so hang in there.

0:27 But that’s not actually what we’re talking about today. This week I’m joined once again by my colleague Josh Schmid to look at a political cartoon from the presidential election of 1824. Hi Josh. Hey Mary. Josh is with us to help think about continuity and change in presidential elections. In modern times, elections are pretty interesting

0:49 and newsworthy events, but was this the case nearly 200 years ago? Let’s dive in and see. Okay, so here is our image. The title is "A foot-race," and it is from 1824.

1:13 As always, whenever we’re confronted with the historic visual, you really just want to take a minute and look, make some observations, and try to turn those observations into questions. Right off the bat. I’m noticing that there are a lot of people in this image. It’s very crowded, it’s very busy. There’s a lot of speech bubbles that are a little difficult to make out.

1:35 So one of my questions might be, who are these people and what are they saying, or how much of what they’re saying do I need to know? Josh, what strikes you about this image? Yeah, so the first thing that really seems to stand out in the foreground is it seems like it’s a racetrack

1:55 with three men on the left are running, and it seems like everyone in the crowd is talking about the race and focusing on it in some way or another. Yeah, and I think the title gives a good clue for that too. This is a race, as he’s titled it,

2:16 and you can make out the three guys in the front, and everybody else is really excited about what’s going on, what’s the outcome going to be. So just some more basic information about this image is that, again, this is from 1824, and that was a presidential election year. At the very top, in the center of the image is the presidential chair.

2:37 And it’s kind of difficult to make out, but we’re assuming the briefing for this chair. And the artist was named David Claypoole Johnston, and in addition to being a cartoonist, he was also an artist and an actor. So very much involved in the creative side of things. So there’s a little bit more information, but I still don’t really have enough

3:00 context to figure out what’s going on here. So, Josh, help us out. Give us situate this image in the time period from which it comes. Yeah. So you initially mentioned how much of this is a continuity to our modern day, and I would say it certainly is, the election of 1824 was just as crazy as any modern election could be.

3:26 So first off, just for a little background, after the War of 1812, the Federalist Party was severely weakened, leading to increased national unity. So in the election of 20 1824, there were four candidates who ran, but they all had generally similar ideologies.

3:49 They all would consider themselves to be Jeffersonian Republicans. As far as their ideas went. These four men were John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Harris Crawford, and Henry Clay. So despite the general national unity, though, sectional differences still existed within the party which become

4:14 apparent when you look at the breakdown of voting in the election. Andrew Jackson, who we all have heard of, of course received the most electoral votes in this election and he generally drew his support from the south and the west because he was from Tennessee.

4:35 John Quincy Adams received the second largest amount of electoral votes and he drew his support as a man from Massachusetts. From New England, William Crawford. William Harris Crawford drew the third largest amount of elector votes and that was generally from the south in the Mid Atlantic.

4:57 And Henry Clay poor Henry Clay came in fourth place and he won his home state of Kentucky and then, like two other Northwestern states. What became very interesting about this election, though, is that no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes.

5:18 And according to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution, if no one candidate has a majority of electoral votes the House of Representatives votes to select the President from the top three candidates. So under this system, Henry Clay, because he was in fourth place, was eliminated.

5:40 However, he was the speaker of the House at the time so he was going to have immense power in the selection of who would be the next President. Ultimately, John Quincy Adams is selected to be President and Adams then proceeds to select Henry Clay to be his Secretary

6:03 of State, which at the time was a very coveted position because it was generally seen to be a stepping stone to the presidency. Jackson, of course, is incensed at this because he won the popular vote and I’m sorry, he received the largest number of popular votes and the largest number of electoral

6:28 votes and of course, he doesn’t win the presidency. Then, on top of that, he sees what happens between Clay and Adams to be a corrupt bargain. He argues that Clay and Adams basically work together behind closed doors.

6:48 I will give you the presidency if you give me the Secretary of State position. Very interesting. So wheeling and dealing in 1824. So let me make sure that I’m recapping this. So in 1824, we’re electing only the 6th President for the United States. So we’re still a relatively young country, but we’re out of the founding period.

7:12 We are coming out of this so called era of good feelings where you said all four of these candidates in this election came from the same, I guess, party is what we would call it, but they probably wouldn’t have called it that. But they’re all sort of running against each other, which is immediately kind of interesting, especially if you think about modern elections and how we have this two party system and there’s no winner in the Electoral College.

7:35 Jackson, general, now Senator Andrew Jackson gets the popular vote. So that’s also pretty interesting because that’s something that has come up in other elections. So, as you said, the House of Representatives gets to decide this. And Henry Clay is this wonderful term of king-maker and this corrupt bargain of, you give me the Secretary of State and I’ll make you president.

7:57 So John Quincy Adams becomes president. Henry Clay gets his coveted Secretary of State, and Andrew Jackson is pretty upset, and he’s just going to start planning to try again. And he will ultimately do that and come back and win in 1828. So all of this information is starting to help me figure out what’s going on in this image.

8:21 So again, there’s that presidential chair up at the top, and that’s what they’re racing for. And then here are candidates. So from left to right, I guess it’s Adams, William Crawford, Andrew Jackson in the military uniform, and then Henry Clay, who sort of dropped out, exhausted. And he comes in fourth with the electoral votes, as you said.

8:42 So it kind of makes sense the way that he’s positioned them in this race. And then the people in the crowd are very interesting, too. So what’s going on with this guy? Yeah, so on the left there, one man is shouting, hurrah for our Jackson.

9:03 So obviously he’s cheering for Andrew Jackson. Then, though, that man who is circled is shouting, Hurrah for our son Jack. So obviously a bit of a play on words there. And this man is actually John Adams,

9:24 the father of John Quincy Adams, former president, obviously. And so he’s cheering his son on and hoping that he will win this foot race. So that’s also interesting is that you have a father son who both occupied the presidency pretty early on in American history.

9:47 And then there’s this interesting scene in the middle. I’m wondering what’s going on here. Yeah, this one is actually one of the more amusing interactions of the drawing. You have a rather politically incorrect depiction here of an Irish man.

10:09 And I say politically incorrect because the Irish man, of course, is talking about alcohol. And so he says, Blast my eyes if I don’t venture a small horn of rotgut on that bald filly in the middle, which translates basically to I’m going to wager a bit of alcohol on the man in the middle,

10:39 which I believe is John Quincy Adams in that picture. And another man replies, damn my wig if I don’t bet you. And that’s that bald man. So he apparently doesn’t have a wig. Perhaps he lost it in a different bet. We’re not really sure.

11:00 But the interesting thing about that interaction is the fact that they’re betting on it like they would bet on a horse race. And I think that this kind of depicts the politics of the time. There’s increased Democratization, and with that, the stereotype is, of course, that politics becomes dirtier.

11:24 And so initially you have George Washington, our first president, who says, I don’t want to be president. And he doesn’t even campaign, doesn’t get down into the dirt in that sense. And now, of course, you have this election being depicted as a race.

11:46 They’re basically animals who are competing for this. And of course, with that, you get these people who are going to be betting alcohol on who wins the race. So it’s an interesting showing of what politics at the time looked like. It is very interesting.

12:06 Well, first of all, I love the phrase rotgut. I think that alcohol should always be referred to as rotgunt. That’s fantastic. But also, again, this is the huge change from Washington, who wouldn’t campaign. But then even I think in the second election, you have a little bit more of well, because Washington was sort of so unique in his role in creating the country.

12:27 He was a shoe in, basically, he’s unanimously elected. But from here on out, there’s just more sort of, as you said, it’s like getting dirtier. And how do you win this office? It’s sort of seen as this prize. There’s this money bag hanging next to the presidential chair. So it’s pretty interesting. And then I think there’s one more. And then, of course,

12:50 we have Henry Clay over here, and it looks like someone is consoling him, which makes sense given that he ultimately gets in the position as speaker of the House to pretty much decide the election. Yeah, so you see Clay there. He’s obviously very fatigued, and so he’s had to stop running the race.

13:11 And however, there is the man next to him who says, don’t distress yourself. There will be scrubbing, buy and buy, and then you’ll have a chance. So basically, don’t worry, you’re still going to have a lot of power in deciding this, which of course, he does as speaker of the House.

13:35 I think this is really fascinating. So I think the perception is that politics can be very dirty, it can be very nasty. But has it always been that way? Or is it more so today than back then? I mean, I think these are really interesting questions. Is this cartoon, does it illustrate a change in how we

13:57 think of presidential elections, or does it illustrate a continuity? Many historians say that this election, the 1824 presidential election, is one of the most contentious and controversial in US history. So I don’t know. What do you guys think? You should let us know. Is this a continuity? Is this a change?

14:18 What are your thoughts. We’ll leave you with these questions to ponder. Josh, thank you so much for helping us decode a foot race from 1824. We hope that you learned something. If you did, be sure to like the video and check out our other offerings on our YouTube channel. And until then, stay curious. We’ll see you later.