Electoral Chaos

1860 Electoral Map...an election that ultimately changed the nation, nps.gov

The last thing I want this blog to become is a place for political rants. I want to stick with history, thus, in this post, I'm not going beyond the 1800s.

I'll confess: I'm sick of it all: the news, the debates, the ads, the phone calls, the yard signs lining highway medians. I have election fatigue. Yet the nerd in me wants to see a little bit of electoral chaos after the polls close. I thought it would be fun to take a brief look at some of the contested presidential campaigns in years past.

Election of 1800

In the days before the Twelfth Amendment, presidential electors cast two votes. Whoever had the most votes was president; the runner-up became vice president. It led to President John Adams having his chief rival, Thomas Jefferson, as his vice president. John Adams ran for reelection in 1800, but came in third place to Jefferson and New Yorker and future duelist Aaron Burr. Jefferson and Burr tied with 73 electoral votes.

The House of Representatives met in February to do their constitutional duty and settle the election. On February 17, after thirty-six ballots, Thomas Jefferson became president and Aaron Burr ended up as vice president. Jefferson went on to serve two terms in the White House, while Burr fought a duel with the former treasury secretary and later faced a treason trial. The country reacted to the election by ratifying the Twelfth Amendment, leaving the presidential and vice presidential candidates on separate ballots.

Election of 1824

With only factions and no organized political parties, four men ran for president: Andrew Jackson, the hero from the War of 1812, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Jackson finished first in the popular vote, but could not attain a majority in the Electoral College. Adams was second, Crawford in third. The House of Representatives would decide the election, but Clay would not be on the ballot: only the top three moved on. Crawford had suffered a stroke, so it was a two man race.

To say that Clay didn't get along with either Jackson or Adams is an understatement. He used his influence as speaker, however, and swung the election to Adams. Clay saw the secretary of state as the lesser of the two evils. Adams subsequently appointed Clay as secretary of state. While there was likely at most an unspoken agreement over that arrangement, Jackson and his cronies were able to use accusations of a "corrupt bargain" to defeat Adams in 1828.

Election of 1860

This was probably the most chaotic election in history, simply because seven states reacted to the results by seceding from the Union. I put it on the list not so much because of the election itself, but because of the outcome. This election, like the 1824 contest, saw four candidates. In May, the Democratic Party split. Southern delegates bolted from the convention after a majority of Northerners and Midwesterners adopted a platform based on popular sovereignty (residents of a territory would decide slave or free status on their own). The remaining Democrats nominated Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The Southern Democrats held their own convention and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge on a platform that called for territories to be open to slavery. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, a little known former congressman. The Constitutional Union Party formed to avoid most of the controversial issues and took slave holding Senator John Bell as its candidate.

Lincoln won with a majority in the electoral college and 40% of the popular vote. He won 52% of the Northern vote and didn't even appear on the ballot in most Southern states. After his election, Lincoln assured the South that he would not interfere in slavery where it already existed. Seven states ignored the threat, seceded, and in February 1861, formed the Confederate States of America.

Election of 1876

Democrat Samuel Tilden faced off with Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. As the election returns trickled in, there were three states whose electoral votes were in dispute: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Tilden was one vote short of clinching the Electoral College vote; Hayes needed all three states. When ballots were counted, Hayes was declared the winner by one vote, but Democrats made accusations of fraud (Tilden did win the popular vote, after all). Congress set up the Florida Commission, made of five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme Court justices. It ended up that parties were split evenly and the fifth of the justices was to be Justice Joseph Bradley, believed to be independent-minded. The commission voted 8-7 to award Hayes with the 20 disputed electoral votes. To assuage the Democrat-dominated South, Hayes promised he would remove all federal troops from the South, thus bringing Reconstruction to an end.