Chapter 5

The Election of 1824 and the Breakup of the Republican Coalition

By The editors of the Democratic Republican PartyPublished How we check facts

The short answer

In 1824, four candidates from the same Republican coalition split the electoral vote, and the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams on February 9, 1825, though Andrew Jackson had led in electoral votes. Jackson's supporters charged a "corrupt bargain" when Adams named Henry Clay secretary of state. The coalition then divided: the modern Democratic Party traces its origin to the Jackson coalition, while the modern Republican Party was a new organization of the 1850s.

Historical setting

By 1820, the Federalist Party no longer offered a national presidential candidate. James Monroe received 231 electoral votes that year and John Quincy Adams 1 archives.gov. A party without an opponent has less reason to stay united, and the Republican coalition did not.

The Senate Historical Office explains the underlying division. Beginning in the 1820s, Democratic Republicans in Congress divided over the powers of the federal government. Those who favored a national bank and federal funding of internal improvements became known as National Republicans, while "Old Republicans" continued to support states' rights and a smaller federal government senate.gov. The election of 1824 turned that policy disagreement into a contest between personal followings.

The candidates

Every serious candidate in 1824 came out of the same coalition:

  • Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, the commander at New Orleans in 1815 and a senator in 1824 millercenter.orgmillercenter.org.
  • John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Monroe's secretary of state from 1817 to 1825, who had served in the Senate as a Federalist from 1803 until he resigned in 1808 after breaking with that party history.house.gov.
  • William H. Crawford of Georgia, Monroe's secretary of the treasury, who had received 54 votes to Monroe's 65 in the Republican congressional caucus of 1816 and who suffered a stroke in 1823 that hurt his campaign georgiaencyclopedia.org.
  • Henry Clay of Kentucky, Speaker of the House, listed by the House History Office as the Democratic Republican candidate in 1824 history.house.gov.

The Miller Center notes that John C. Calhoun also entered the race and then withdrew to run for vice president on both the Adams and Jackson tickets millercenter.org. The National Archives record shows Calhoun receiving 182 electoral votes for vice president archives.gov.

Four presidential candidates sharing one party name is the clearest evidence that the name had stopped organizing politics. What divided them was regional strength, personal loyalty, and the policy questions that the Senate Historical Office describes senate.gov.

Evidence

The electoral vote

The National Archives record for 1824 gives these totals for president archives.gov:

Candidate Electoral votes
Andrew Jackson 99
John Quincy Adams 84
William H. Crawford 41
Henry Clay 37

There were 261 electoral votes, and 131 were needed for a majority archives.gov. No candidate reached it. The Miller Center adds that Jackson carried 11 of 24 states millercenter.org.

The Miller Center reports that Jackson received more than 150,000 popular votes, nearly 40,000 more than Adams, and puts Jackson's share at 43 percent millercenter.orgmillercenter.org. It also gives the necessary caution: the national popular vote had no standing, because some state legislatures still chose the electors themselves millercenter.org. In those states, there was no popular presidential vote to count. A national popular total for 1824 measures only part of the country and should never be read as a full national verdict.

The House decides

Under the 12th Amendment, when no candidate wins a majority, the House chooses among the top three, with each state delegation casting one vote history.house.gov. That rule removed Clay, who finished fourth, from the contest while leaving him in the chair as Speaker.

The House voted on February 9, 1825, and elected Adams on the first ballot history.house.gov. The National Archives records the result: Adams 13 states, Jackson 7, Crawford 4 archives.gov. Adams took office on March 4, 1825 millercenter.org.

The "corrupt bargain" charge

Clay supported Adams in the House, and Adams then named Clay secretary of state. The Miller Center records that Jackson's partisans alleged a "corrupt bargain" and used the charge to mobilize for 1828, and that Jackson resigned his Senate seat and vowed to run again; the Tennessee legislature nominated him for president on October 1, 1825 millercenter.org.

It is important to state what kind of claim this is. "Corrupt bargain" was a charge made by political opponents. No document reviewed for this chapter proves an explicit agreement trading votes for office, and scholars have tested the charge in other ways. Michael L. Rosin reports that political scientists Jeffery A. Jenkins and Brian R. Sala, analyzing the House vote in 1998, concluded that Adams's support was consistent with sincere voting by members and did not support the corrupt-bargain hypothesis researchonline.stthomas.edu. This site has not reviewed that study directly. The appointment happened; the bargain remains an allegation.

Rosin's own 2018 analysis raises a different structural question. He argues that without the three-fifths clause, Clay rather than Crawford would have finished third in the electoral vote and would therefore have been one of the three candidates before the House, and he concludes: "A plausible argument can be made that the House would not have elected John Quincy Adams" researchonline.stthomas.edu. That is a counterfactual, and he presents it as one.

What came after

1828: Jackson returns

Jackson defeated Adams in 1828 with 178 electoral votes to 83 archives.gov. The Miller Center gives him 56 percent of the popular vote millercenter.org. The National Archives labels Jackson "Democratic-Republican" and Adams "National Republican" in that year's record archives.gov, which shows how unsettled party names still were.

The Senate Historical Office is direct about what Jackson's victory represented: he was "backed by a new coalition party with national reach and a popular base of state and local support, the Democratic Party" senate.gov.

1832: conventions and a new opposition

The Miller Center notes that the 1832 campaign was the first to use national nominating conventions instead of the discredited congressional caucus. Jackson's supporters, "popularly though not yet officially known as Democrats," met in Baltimore. Clay ran as the National Republican nominee, and the Anti-Masonic Party nominated William Wirt. Jackson won 219 electoral votes to Clay's 49 millercenter.org. The bank was a central issue: Jackson had vetoed the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States on July 10, 1832 avalon.law.yale.edu.

The anti-Jackson forces regrouped. The Senate Historical Office records that Henry Clay led a coalition of anti-Jackson forces in the Senate "who called themselves Whigs," and that the Democratic and Whig Parties soon became competitive in states throughout the country senate.gov. Clay ran for president as a Whig in 1844 history.house.gov. Adams, after his presidency, returned to the House in 1831 as an Anti-Jacksonian and later served as an Anti-Mason and a Whig, until his death in the Capitol on February 23, 1848 history.house.gov.

The 1850s: a different Republican Party

The Senate Historical Office explains that when the Whig Party dissolved over slavery in the 1850s, it was replaced by "a new Republican Party," a coalition dedicated to blocking the spread of slavery into the western territories senate.gov. Its party abbreviation key warns that "Republican" refers to two different parties widely separated in time, and identifies the present Republican Party as one "founded in the 1850s" senate.gov.

The specific origin is itself contested between places. Congress enacted the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise guides.loc.gov. The Wisconsin Historical Society records that on March 20, 1854, the schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, served as a meeting hall for 54 voters, mostly Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats, who agreed that a new party should be formed and called "Republican," without formally adopting the name; it also notes that Michigan's state party was founded in July 1854, a week before Wisconsin's, and that the national party was established at the 1856 convention in Pennsylvania wisconsinhistory.org.

Why the modern parties are not halves of the old one

It is tempting to draw a tree: one Democratic-Republican trunk, two branches, today's Democrats and Republicans. The record does not support that picture.

The modern Democratic Party traces its organizational origin to the Jackson coalition of the late 1820s, which the Senate Historical Office calls a new coalition party senate.gov. That coalition drew many people and practices from the old Republican coalition, but it was organized around Jackson, and its opponents came from the same Republican background.

The modern Republican Party was founded in the 1850s as a new organization, drawing Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats who opposed the expansion of slavery senate.govwisconsinhistory.org. It reused the word "Republican." It did not descend from the Jeffersonian organization, which had ceased to function as a single party a generation earlier.

The label "Democratic-Republican" is useful precisely because it keeps these apart. The Senate key exists to stop readers from confusing the two Republican parties senate.gov.

What the evidence does not show

It does not show that Jackson "won the popular vote" in any complete national sense, because in some states the legislature, not the voters, chose the electors in 1824 millercenter.org.

It does not prove a corrupt bargain. It proves an appointment, a charge, and a powerful political campaign built on that charge.

It does not show a clean date for the end of the Democratic-Republican Party. The coalition's last uncontested victory came in 1820; its candidates divided in 1824; new parties formed in the late 1820s and 1830s. Dissolution, like formation, was a process.

It does not show that today's parties inherited the positions of 1824. Policy positions on banks, tariffs, internal improvements, and federal power moved among coalitions repeatedly over the following century.

Sources

  1. National Archives, Electoral College results, 1820 and 1824. archives.gov and archives.gov (locator: results tables and notes). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  2. U.S. Senate, "Parties and Leadership: Overview." senate.gov (locator: sections on the 1820s and 1850s). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  3. U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives, "ADAMS, John Quincy." history.house.gov (locator: biography). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  4. "William Harris Crawford (1772 to 1834)," New Georgia Encyclopedia, Georgia Humanities. georgiaencyclopedia.org (locator: sections on 1816 and 1824). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  5. U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives, "CLAY, Henry." history.house.gov (locator: biography). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  6. Miller Center, University of Virginia, "Andrew Jackson: Campaigns and Elections." millercenter.org (locator: sections on 1824, 1828, 1832). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  7. Miller Center, University of Virginia, "John Quincy Adams: Key Events." millercenter.org (locator: entries for 1824 and 1825). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  8. U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives, "Electoral College Fast Facts." history.house.gov (locator: contingent elections, 18th Congress; contingent election rules). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  9. Michael L. Rosin, "The Three-Fifths Rule and the Presidential Elections of 1800 and 1824," University of St. Thomas Law Journal 15 (2018): 159. researchonline.stthomas.edu (locator: pp. 223 n.198, 226 to 227). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  10. National Archives, Electoral College results, 1828. archives.gov (locator: results table). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  11. Andrew Jackson, Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States, July 10, 1832, Avalon Project, Yale Law School. avalon.law.yale.edu (locator: title and date). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  12. U.S. Senate, "Key to Party Abbreviations." senate.gov (locator: entry R and footnote). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  13. Library of Congress, "Kansas-Nebraska Act: Primary Documents in American History," research guide. guides.loc.gov (locator: introduction). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  14. Wisconsin Historical Society, "The Little White Schoolhouse Listed in the National Register of Historic Places," press release, August 2, 2024. wisconsinhistory.org (locator: full release). Accessed 2026-10-28.
  15. Miller Center, University of Virginia, "James Madison: Key Events." millercenter.org (locator: January 8, 1815). Accessed 2026-10-28.

Last checked against its sources on October 28, 2026. Report a correction.