There were four candidates in the Election of 1824: Crawford, Adams, Clay and Jackson. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote , but there was no majority in the Electoral College so the vote went to the House of Representatives where John Quincy Adams came out the winner. Adams was not a very successful president and that was proven when he passed the Tariff of 1828 that raised taxes on imported British woolen goods. This upset many people, mainly the people of the south, and Jackson used it to his advantage while running for president in 1828.
With the help of Martin Van Buren and John c. Calhoun Jackson ran a smart campaign. Van Buren's strategy was to unite the northern farmers and artisans with southern slave owners and smallholding farmers. Calhoun who was running to be Jackson's vice-president brought his allies from South Carolina to join the campaign. This group of Jacksonians started calling themselves Democratic Republicans, eventually becoming Democrats. Jackson was able to remain popular in the south by opposing the tariffs. Jackson won the election and made Martin Van Buren Sectretary of State. Once in office Jackson used the spoils system where he replaced all members of his office with loyal supporters, so he had his own people holding government jobs.
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It is interesting to see the different coalitions being made during these times. In the case of the "corrupt bargain" Clay and Adams were willing to make compromises so they would both obtain the posts they coveted.
the spoils system was soon outlawed after Jackson used it to replace government officials with this friends. our country would be a mess if this system was still allowed today.
The election of 1824 really shows the beggining of the corupt world of politics. Clay and Adams made a pretty shady deal in order to hold high positions in the United States government.
And the prize goes to..... Jackson And his supporters! Why you ask, well, it's because they basically was the man who created the Democratic party! we all can thank the men now(clapclapclapclap...). but he did basicaly send the natives to their doom and near exenction as a peoples.(Boooooooooo) but with out that we would have never gotten the land that we thought was ours.(hurray!)
While this was the start of corrupt politics, Jackson's use of the spoils system was sort of a good thing. If you think that getting rid of the people that had been there a while a good thing. On the other hand its a bad thing because he replaced them with people that had no experience.
By contrasting the Adams presidency and the Jackson presidency one can see how sucking up to the people became a major part of American politics. Adams unknowingly didn't try to please the people and he came off as being very cold and uninteresting to the public. On the other hand Jackson had many campaigns to raise awareness and interest for himself and his platform. Jackson's spoils system certainly didn't hurt either as it created a more positive response in the government towards him which in turn also helped public positive response towards him.
The "corrupt bargain" in this election is interesting. Clay went to Jackson to offer him a bargain. Clay tells Jackson that he will help him win if he appoints Clay as his Secretary of State. Jackson does not agree with this bargain so Clay then makes the same offer to Adams who agrees. Clay is therefore appointed Secretary of State when Adams wins the election by 1 electoral vote. This is extremely unfair but Clay got what he wanted.
This presidential election was also the only one in which the candidate receiving the most electoral votes did not become president. The corrupt bargain, was a very visible corruption in our American government.
Like Casey says, our country would be a mess if the spoils system was still used today. But in an under-lying way, the spoils system is used in a indirect way with the fact that people get positions in government, working for a city, working at a school, being in a charge of a certain committee, etc. because they know someone.
Connections and networking is what the United States business and political world is based on. Yes, skill is a factor and personality and the way you handle yourself, first impressions, etc. are all important, but networking and "knowing someone" gets many people ahead today.
The spoils system is a bad basically a bad thing, and only a good thing for the fact that an individual knows that person more than on a first impression, so they are a better judge to an individual's character.
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