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As election fever mounted in 1827-1828, Jacksonians everywhere insisted that the Hero of New Orleans had been cheated of the presidency in the previous election. They argued that the people had made clear their preference in 1824, even if General Jackson had failed to win a majority in the Electoral College; congressmen had therefore been morally obliged to vote for him when the decision was referred to the House of Representatives in February 1825. Instead, they had voted-in some cases against the clearest indications of their constituents' views-for the aloof New Englander John Quincy Adams, thus betraying their democratic obligations. This argument was, of course, constitutional nonsense, but it played well in 1827-1828 among both committed Jacksonians and many of the new voters drawn into that dramatic presidential contest. It has also played well subsequently with historians, who have continued to claim that Jackson rose to political eminence in 1824 on a wave of popular enthusiasm that could not be denied for long.1
This interpretation fits closely with the view that this election saw a shift in the character of the American polity from aristocratic republic to mass democracy. Jackson's novelty, we are told, was that he came from outside the ranks of national politicians at a time when the right to vote had recently been expanded. In the void created by the decline of the old national parties since 1815, a contest for the presidency had begun among the well-known political stars-the second Adams, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun-who challenged the Republican establishment's man, secretary of the treasury William Harris Crawford of Georgia. When confusing elections in the states failed to produce a clear winner, the contest had to be settled in the House by typically shady bargaining among political insiders. Thus, we are told, Adams came to power without being legitimated by a popular mandate, the deals that brought about his election turned out to be "a cup of hemlock," and his administration inevitably failed in the face of ardent organized opposition. The House's snub to the new democracy in 1825 provided the ammunition for the innovative election campaign of 1828 that finally overthrew the old regime.2
This common view rests on two suppositions: that democracy was new to the operation of...