Nation Holds Election; Congress Selects Different Winner to Save Everyone the Trouble
Andrew Jackson took the most votes and the most electors. The House, applying the higher mathematics of patronage, made John Quincy Adams president instead.
The election of 1824 was a four-man scramble among men who all called themselves Republicans, the opposition party having courteously dissolved itself some years earlier. When the returns were in, General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee stood first in both the popular vote and the electoral count — 99 electors to John Quincy Adams's 84, with William Crawford on 41 and Speaker Henry Clay on 37.1 A plurality, however, is not a majority, and on this point the Constitution declines to be moved.
The Twelfth Amendment referred the matter to the House of Representatives, each state casting a single vote and choosing among only the top three. This conveniently eliminated Clay — the very man who, as Speaker, would now preside over the choosing. Clay regarded Jackson, a military chieftain of celebrated temper, as precisely the figure the Founders had lost sleep over, and he went to work on Adams's behalf.2
On February 9, 1825, the House made John Quincy Adams president on the first ballot, thirteen states to seven.3 A few days later Adams announced his Secretary of State — then the recognized waiting room for the presidency itself — and the name was Henry Clay's. To Jackson's men the sum required no carrying of digits: the man who had delivered the office had been promised the next one.2
Whether a literal bargain was struck has kept historians busy ever since; what is beyond dispute is that 'corrupt bargain' became the two most productive words in American politics. Adams — able, upright, and now permanently under indictment in the public mind — spent four years watching his every proposal die on arrival. In 1828 Jackson came back at the head of a furious new party and crushed him.1 The mechanism had functioned perfectly: it had selected a president, and in the same motion ruined him, discredited the method, and handed the Republic to the man it was built to exclude.
So you see, the Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver.— Andrew Jackson on Henry Clay, 1825
References & Citations
- Bill of Rights Institute — "The Corrupt Bargain," billofrightsinstitute.org, accessed 2026.
- USHistory.org — "The 1824 Election and the 'Corrupt Bargain'," ushistory.org, accessed 2026.
- National Archives, Pieces of History — "The 1824 Presidential Election and the 'Corrupt Bargain'," prologue.blogs.archives.gov, Oct 22, 2020.
- Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — "Corrupt Bargain," thehermitage.com, accessed 2026.