By the year 1824, the West had become a section to be reckoned with by those who were calculating their chances in the presidential race. Since the war six Western States had been admitted into the Union. The population west of the Alleghanies had increased by nearly a million and a half within a decade. The relative importance of this new section appears in the census returns. In 1790, less than six per cent of the total population lived west of the Alleghanies; in 1820, nearly thirty-two per cent were domiciled in this vast region. In the National Legislature the West had acquired notable weight. By the apportionment of 1822, it had forty-seven out of two hundred and thirteen members of the House; in the Senate, eighteen out of forty-eight. But these figures do not tell the whole tale. As Professor Turner has well said, rightly to estimate the weight of Western population we must add the people of western New York and of the interior counties of Pennsylvania, and of the trans-Alleghany counties of Virginia, as well as the people of the back-country of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Carolina, and Georgia. “All of these regions were to be influenced by the ideals of democratic rule which were springing up in the Mississippi Valley.”

Economic conditions bred a democratic society in the West. What Gallatin said of Pennsylvania was true of the greater West: “An equal distribution of property made every individual independent and produced a true and real equality.” The basal characteristic of the West was individual ownership of land; and the reaction of the sense of proprietorship upon individual character was the most significant fact in the history of its population. Intense individualism and rugged self-reliance were the salient characteristics of the Westerner. So far as he reflected upon his social relations, he believed in complete social equality. In numberless instances the pioneer had migrated to escape the social inequalities and depressing conventions of older communities; and he was not minded to encourage the reproduction of these conditions in his new home. “America, then, exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon,” wrote De Tocqueville in his notable study of American democracy. “Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance.”

Life on the frontier, where a man wrestled with the primitive forces of Nature and conquered by dint of his indomitable will, made the Westerner perhaps overconfident in his ability to deal with all obstacles in the way of human achievement and withal somewhat impatient under the restraints imposed by the more complicated social order in the older communities to the East. The sweep of the prairies and the wide horizon lines of the Middle West may have exercised a subtle influence upon temperament. At all events, the Westerner was buoyant and optimistic, taking large views of national destiny and of the possibilities of human achievement in a democracy.

There was danger, indeed, that in cutting loose from the irritating restraints of the older communities, the people of the West would sacrifice much of the grace and many of the intellectual and spiritual refinements of an older civilization. “In this part of the American continent,” observes De Tocqueville, “population has escaped the influence not only of great names and great wealth, but even of the natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue.” It seemed to two young New Englanders who traversed the vast region from the Western Reserve to New Orleans in 1813, in the interests of missionary societies, that the people were wrapped in spiritual darkness, “being ignorant, often vicious, and utterly destitute of Bibles and religious literature.” The General Bible Society of the United States was founded in 1816 to dispel this irreligious gloom. Within five years this organization and its numerous auxiliaries had distributed one hundred and forty thousand Bibles and Testaments through the new States.

Yet the irreligion of the West was painted darker than it really was. Methodism had struck root where other denominations could not thrive. Its methods and organization, indeed, were peculiarly adapted to a people which could not support a settled pastor. “A sect, therefore, which marked out the region into circuits, put a rider on each and bade him cover it once a month, preaching here to-day and there to-morrow, but returning at regular intervals to each community, provided the largest amount of religious teaching and preaching at the least expense.” The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. The circuit rider, with his intense conviction of sin and his equally strong conviction of salvation through repentance, wrought great crowds in camp meetings into ecstasies of religious excitement. Odd religious sects and strange “isms” were to be found in the back-country. At New Harmony on the Wabash River were the Rappites, a sect of German peasants who came first to Pennsylvania under their leader George Rapp, and who afterward returned thither. At Zoar in Ohio was the Separatist community led by Joseph Baumeler. Shaker societies were formed at many places; and Mormonism was just beginning its strange history through the revelations of Joseph Smith in western New York.

The intellectual horizon of the Western world was necessarily limited. Absorbed in the stern struggle for existence, the people had no leisure and no heart to enjoy the finer aspects of life. Education was a luxury which only the prosperous might possess. The purpose to make elementary education a public charge developed tardily. Outside of New England, indeed, a public school system did not exist. Throughout the older portions of the West the traveler might find academies and so-called colleges, but none supported at public expense. The State of Indiana, it is true, entered the Union with a constitution which made it the duty of the legislature to provide, as soon as circumstances permitted, “for a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation from township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all.” But years passed before circumstances permitted the realization of this ideal. Meantime, the prosperous planters of the Southwest employed tutors for their children, and the well-to-do farmers of the Northwest paid tuition for their boys at academies. But young Abraham Lincoln had to teach himself Euclid and to cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, by the flickering embers of a log-cabin fire.

The new Commonwealths entered the Union as self-confessed democracies. In all the States formed after the War of 1812, with one exception, property qualifications such as prevailed in the older States were swept away and the right to vote was accorded to every adult white male. In Mississippi alone there was the additional qualification that a voter should be enrolled in the militia or have paid a state or county tax. Everywhere, too, the principle was accepted that representation should be based upon population and not upon property. The men who framed these new constitutions believed that they were establishing the rule of the people. It was, indeed, unthinkable that, believing themselves equal in all other respects, they should not accept the principle of political equality and popular sovereignty.

There is evidence in these new constitutions, however, that the people placed less reliance in their legislative bodies than did the people of the Revolutionary era. Instead of general grants of legislative power, there are specific prohibitions and positive injunctions. Important limitations are imposed upon the form and mode of legislation. It is clear, too, that fear of an over-strong executive had given way to a belief in the necessity of having a stronger countervailing influence, capable of checking the legislative. Everywhere the governor was made elective directly by the people and given the veto power. The conviction was often expressed in constitutional conventions that the governor was peculiarly the representative of the people, a popular tribune who would protect them against the indiscretions of their legislative representatives. The extension of the elective principle to all important offices was accompanied also by a general conviction that life tenure of office is undemocratic. “Rotation in office,” said Andrew Jackson, voicing a popular feeling, “is a cardinal principle of democracy.”

The spirit of Western democracy leavened also the older States. The people of Maine, breaking away from Massachusetts and her ancient ideals, boldly declared for manhood suffrage in their new constitution. Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 to replace the old charter, and dissolved the old union of Church and State by declaring that no preference should be given by law to any Christian sect or mode of worship. At the same time Connecticut extended the suffrage to all who served in the militia or paid a state tax. New York in the constitution of 1821 and Massachusetts by a constitutional amendment in the same year abandoned the old property qualifications for voting.

In both Massachusetts and New York, conservative men like Chancellor Kent and Daniel Webster frankly avowed their apprehensions of universal suffrage. “The tendency of universal suffrage,” said Kent in the New York convention, “is to jeopardize the rights of property, and the principles of liberty.” He held society to be an association for the protection of property as well as of life, “and the individual who contributes only one cent to the common stock ought not to have the same power and influence in directing the property concerns of the partnership as he who contributes his thousands.”

The democratic movement affected not only the formal organization of State Governments, but also the machinery and methods of political parties. In the Northern States there was increasing dissatisfaction with the practice of nominating candidates for office by legislative caucus. The rank and file of the parties were no longer willing to submit blindly to the dictation of leaders. In deference to party voters in districts which were not represented by men of their political faith, the leaders of the respective parties now found it expedient to summon special delegates to their party conclaves, in order to give a more truly representative character to the organization of party. The legislative caucus, in short, gave way to the mixed caucus.

But the old vice remained. The selection of candidates for office was still made by those who had no mandate to act for the party except in a legislative capacity. If the voters of the party were in truth the source of authority within the party, then a means had to be devised of ascertaining their will. The democratic principle, in short, had to be applied to party. In response to this feeling, mass meetings and irregular conventions were held; but these methods of securing an expression of party opinion were only transitional. Indeed, so long as the means of communication were defective, popular gatherings were necessarily poorly attended. The next step in the democratization of party organization could only be taken when the barriers of space were overcome by the application of the steam engine to transportation. The nominating delegate convention waited on the development of transportation.

Much the same popular hostility was directed against the congressional caucus. Candidates for the presidential nomination were not blind to this movement, and for the most part they sought other means of promoting their chances. Monroe had hardly entered upon his second term when state legislative caucuses began to nominate favorite sons. In 1821, the legislature of South Carolina put forward the name of William Lowndes, and upon his death named John C. Calhoun as its candidate for the Presidency. In 1822, the legislature of Tennessee presented the name of Andrew Jackson, “the soldier, the statesman, the honest man,” to the consideration of the people of the United States. In the same year Republican members of the legislature of Kentucky recommended Henry Clay “as a suitable person to succeed James Monroe as President.” A “joint meeting of the Republican members of the Massachusetts legislature and of Republican delegates from the various towns of the Commonwealth not represented in the legislature” nominated John Quincy Adams for the Presidency in January, 1823. And finally, illustrative of the varied methods in use and of the strange vicissitudes of politics at this time, a public gathering or mass meeting at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in March, 1824, nominated Adams for President and Jackson for Vice-President.

A series of resolutions passed by the legislature of Tennessee in 1823 called attention in no uncertain language to the shortcomings of the congressional caucus and called for its overthrow. A canvass of the members of Congress showed that one hundred and eighty-one out of two hundred and sixty-one believed a caucus inexpedient at this time. Nevertheless, the minority, acting in Crawford’s interest, took their courage in both hands and held a caucus on February 14, 1824. Sixty-four out of sixty-eight votes were cast for William H. Crawford, who thus became by all precedents the “regular” candidate of the Republican party. This nomination and the indorsement of Jackson by the Republicans of Pennsylvania spoiled Calhoun’s chances. In the spring of 1824, he allied himself with the Jackson faction by accepting the nomination for Vice-President at the hands of a state nominating convention at Harrisburg, which had put Jackson at the head of the ticket.

Such issues as were discoverable in the presidential contest of 1824 were formulated in the debates in Congress during the early part of the year. As the country recovered from financial depression, the question of internal improvements again forged to the front. In 1822, a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road had been vetoed by the President. In an elaborate essay Monroe set forth his views on the constitutional aspects of a policy of internal improvements. Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume jurisdiction over them. For the moment the drift toward a larger participation of the National Government in internal improvements was stayed. Two years later, however, Congress authorized the President to institute surveys for such roads and canals as he believed to be needed for commerce and military defense. The vote on this bill shows that the source of opposition to internal improvements was chiefly in the Northeast, in Virginia, and in the Carolinas. The West and Southwest, with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, were a unit in support of the general survey.

No one pleaded more eloquently for a larger conception of the functions of the National Government than Clay. No one voiced the aspirations of his section more faithfully. He called the attention of his hearers to provisions made for coast surveys and lighthouses on the Atlantic seaboard and deplored the neglect of the great interior of the country. “A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted,” he exclaimed. “Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen States, of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen States as they existed at the formation of the present Constitution, forever to remain the rule of its interpretation?” Of the other presidential candidates, Jackson voted in the Senate for the general survey bill; and Adams left no doubt in the public mind that he did not reflect the narrow views of his section on this issue. Crawford felt the constitutional scruples which were everywhere being voiced in the South, and followed the old expedient of advocating a constitutional amendment to sanction national internal improvements.

The Tariff Act of 1824 also entered somewhat into the presidential campaign. The failure of the protectionists to secure a higher tariff in 1820 had been followed by other efforts to secure congressional action; but none succeeded until Clay was again elected Speaker of the House and thrust the matter into the foreground of discussion. Clay dwelt eloquently upon the loss of the foreign market for agricultural products and upon the consequent widespread distress. To his mind the remedy was the establishment of an American market by fostering manufactures. That such a policy would involve a clash of sectional interests, he did not deny; but he believed that “reconciliation by mutual concessions” could be effected and a genuine “American system” be brought into existence.

The tariff bill presented in 1824 was avowedly a protective measure. Among lesser changes, increased duties were proposed on iron, lead, wool, hemp, cotton bagging, and cotton and woolen goods. At once the clash of sectional interests began. New England shippers protested against the duty on hemp, which they needed for cordage; and Southern planters made common cause with them on this item, because the cheap bagging which they used for baling their cotton was made of coarse hemp. For the same reason the maritime sections of New England opposed the duty on iron. For precisely opposite reasons, Kentucky clamored for the protection of her hemp-growers, and Pennsylvania, for the protection of her iron-workers. It was well understood that the cotton industry was established and needed no protection; nevertheless, the minimum duty on cotton fabrics was raised. The increased duty on woolens, however, was offset by an increased duty on raw wool, so that the woolen manufacturers profited little by the change of rate. A proposal to apply to woolens the minimum principle which had been extended to cottons in 1816 was defeated by the opposition of the South. Any increase in the cost of cheap woolen goods was bound to enhance the cost of clothing the slaves. On the other hand, the representatives of the great grain-growing and farming States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, together with the States of the Ohio Valley, were almost unanimously in favor of the proposed bill. When the bill came to a vote in the House on April 16, 1824, only nine of the combined ninety-five votes of these sections were cast in the negative. Equally emphatic was the protest of the South and Southwest: only six out of seventy-six Representatives favored the bill. New England by its divided vote revealed the internal conflict between the commercial and manufacturing interests. The bill passed both houses of Congress by small majorities and received the signature of the President.

Of the presidential candidates, only one spoke with uncertain sound on the tariff issue. Clay was the outspoken advocate of a far-reaching American system; Adams thought the tariff of 1824 a fair compromise; Jackson, properly coached by his intimates, put himself on record as a supporter of a protective policy to create a home market; only Crawford, representative of the peculiar interests of the South and candidate for Northern support, felt the impossibility of harmonizing the conflicting interests of his followers by a clear-cut and explicit utterance on the tariff.

With so many candidates in the field, it was difficult to forecast the outcome of the presidential campaign. Even if there had been a pronounced popular drift toward any candidate, the result would have remained in doubt until the six States which still gave the choice of electors to their legislatures had completed the complicated electoral process. There was a strong likelihood, however, that the election would go to the House of Representatives. As the choice would then be confined to the three candidates having the highest vote, there was not a little bargaining in the States where the legislatures chose the electors. The completed returns gave Jackson 99 electoral votes; Adams, 84; Crawford, 41; and Clay, 37. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by more than two thirds of the electoral vote. The House, therefore, as wiseacres had foretold, was called upon for the second time to decide a contested presidential election.

The position of Clay was one of unenviable distinction and power. He could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he could not consider the killing of twenty-five hundred Englishmen at New Orleans proved the fitness of Jackson for the chief civil magistracy. Crawford was personally less objectionable to Clay; but he had suffered a paralytic stroke and his health was precarious. Besides, Crawford had opposed some of the policies which Clay had most at heart. For years Clay had been a bitter opponent of Adams; yet after all was said, he was bound to admit that his interests would be best served by an alliance with this stiff-necked New Englander. At an early date, therefore, he determined to throw his support to Adams.

For weeks the capital was enveloped in an atmosphere of intrigue. Clay was courted by all factions. The possibility of securing his support was a standing temptation to wire-pullers. Even Adams wrote in his diary, “Incedo super ignes” (I walk over fires). When Clay announced positively, on January 24, that he and his friends would support Adams, a storm of passionate denunciation broke upon him. An anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, charging that friends of Adams had offered Clay the Secretaryship of State in return for his support, and that friends of Clay had reported the offer to friends of Jackson, with the intimation that Clay would support the general on similar terms. When the friends of Jackson spurned these overtures, Clay sold out to Adams. With quite unnecessary heat Clay branded the author of this letter as “a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar.” His first instinct was to challenge the author whoever he might be; but when Representative George Kremer, an odd character who was chiefly conspicuous by reason of the leopard-skin coat which he wore avowed himself the writer of the offensive letter, Clay wisely concluded not to make himself ridiculous by an affair of honor with this Gil Blas. He demanded a congressional investigation instead.

While this investigation of the alleged bargain between Adams and Clay was pending, the House proceeded to the election of a President. On the first ballot, Adams received the votes of thirteen States, while Jackson was the choice of seven States, and Crawford of four. New England, New York, Louisiana, Maryland, and the States of the Northwest, except Indiana, supported Adams. Combined with these were now Missouri and Kentucky, which had voted for Clay. Jackson received the votes of the Southwest, together with those of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and South Carolina. Crawford was supported by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Two days later the President-elect announced that he had invited Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State. After some hesitation, Clay accepted the post.

The cry of corruption is a recurrent note in the history of democracies. The American democracy is no exception. With most of the charges of corruption, the historian has little concern; but the bargain and corruption cry of 1825 has a historical significance. The falsity of the charge against Clay has been proved as nearly as a negative can be. Adams may not have been above the uncongenial task of soliciting votes, but he kept safely within the moral domain which his conscience marked out. The motive which governed his appointment of Clay as Secretary of State is stated frankly in a letter to Monroe, two days after the election by the House. He considered the appointment “due to his talents and services to the western section of the Union, whence he comes, and to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations.” Upon one individual these considerations made no impression: Andrew Jackson left the capital with wrath in his soul. He felt that he had been defrauded by a corrupt bargain. From this time on his hand was against Clay,-that “Judas of the West,” as he afterward called him,-who had conspired to “impair the pure principles of our republican institutions” and to “prostrate that fundamental maxim which maintains the supremacy of the people’s will.”

Years after the events of 1824-25, the belief of Jackson that the will of the people had been defeated found classic expression in Thomas H. Benton’s Thirty Years’ View of Congress. What Benton termed “the Demos Krateo principle” was thoroughly in accord with the spirit of the new democracy, but it rested upon an entire misunderstanding of the Constitution. A direct popular election of the President was never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. It is impossible to find in either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution any justification for the view that the House of Representatives is bound to elect the candidate having the highest popular vote.

What the will of the people really was in the presidential election of 1824 is by no means clear. Even in those States where presidential electors were chosen by popular vote, Jackson received less than half of the popular vote; and in many of these States the actual vote fell far below the potential. In Massachusetts, where 66,000 votes had been cast for governor the year before, only 37,000 voters took the trouble to vote for President. In Pennsylvania, which boasted of a population of over a million, less than 48,000 voted in 1824. Moreover, the six States which chose the presidential electors through their legislatures, contained one fourth of the population of the country. One fact, however, stands out with unmistakable clearness,-and it did not escape politicians like Van Buren, of New York, who had their fingers on the pulse of the people,-this martial hero from out of the West had an unprecedented vote-getting capacity. It were well to observe the Western horizon more intently.