A Short History of Presidential Election Crises. Alan Hirsch
to appear before it.
In a letter to his friend Francis T. Brooke on January 27, Clay reiterated both his bottom-line position and the basis for it: “I have interrogated my conscience as to what I ought to do, and that faithful guide tells me that I ought to vote for Mr. Adams.” Far from acknowledging any benefit to himself, Clay cast himself as a martyr. He would catch hell for his choice, but “what is a public man worth if he will not expose himself, on fit occasions, for the good of his country?”29 According to Adams’s diary, Clay visited Adams on January 29 and “sat with me for a couple of hours, discussing all the prospects and probabilities of the Presidential election.”30 Adams offered no elaboration, but that same day, Clay reiterated his choice of Adams in a letter to Francis Preston Blair. His assessment of Adams might qualify as damning with faint praise if there were even a whiff of praise: “I should never have selected [him] if at liberty to draw from the whole mass of our citizens for a President. But there is no danger in his elevation.”31
In Adams’s diary entry for the next day, he observed that “the intriguing for votes is excessive, and the means adopted to obtain them desperate.”32 The nation’s capital, if not the nation itself, was understandably obsessed with what Adams circumspectly referred to as “the topic which absorbs all others.”33 He observed that “the flood of visitors is unceasing” and “the excitement of electioneering is kindling into fury.”34 Fury was the right word. Adams claimed to have received an anonymous letter “threatening organized opposition and civil war if Jackson is not chosen.”35
While Adams always denied that Clay asked for personal benefit in exchange for his support, he did acknowledge such efforts by others on Clay’s behalf. In a diary entry on December 17, 1824, he noted the claim by Clay’s friend and confidant, Kentucky congressman Robert Letcher, that “Clay would willingly support me if he could thereby serve himself, and the substance of his meaning was, that if Clay’s friends could know that he would have a prominent share in the Administration, that might induce them to vote for me.”36 Adams claimed to give no such assurance, despite ongoing entreaties.
On the morning of January 21, 1825, for example, one congressman “spoke of himself as being entirely devoted to Mr. Clay, and of his hope that [Clay] would be a member of the next Administration,” according to Adams’s diary. Adams cagily replied that “he would not expect me to enter upon details with regard to the formation of an Administration, but that if I should be elected by the suffrages of the West I should naturally look to the West for much of the support that I should need.”37
Clay likewise continually disavowed any hanky-panky between himself and Adams. In a typical letter, this one, dated February 4 and addressed to his friend Francis T. Brooke, Clay wrote that “if Mr. Adams is elected, I know not who will be in his cabinet; I know not whether I shall be offered a place in it or not.”38 Their finesse in addressing the situation did nothing to quell concern that a deal between Adams and Clay would determine the election. In his diary entry for February 5, Adams acknowledged the view among some that “if I should be elected, it would only be by Clay’s corrupt coalition with me.”39
On February 9, the House finally voted, and needed only one ballot. Thirteen states voted for Adams, seven for Jackson, and four for Crawford, making Adams the nation’s sixth president. All four of the states Clay had won in the Electoral College (Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Missouri) went for Adams. In New York, Adams allegedly benefited from divine intervention as well as Clay’s. With the delegation split, the deciding ballot was cast by the wealthy philanthropist Stephen Van Rensselaer, generally considered a Crawford supporter. Van Rensselaer claimed that, as he was about to cast his ballot, he bent over in prayer. On the floor he spotted a ballot for Adams, and took that as a sign from above.
The next day, Adams expressed his intention to appoint Clay his secretary of state. The charge of a “corrupt bargain” between the two surfaced immediately, dogged both men for the rest of their careers, and contributed to Adams’s defeat at Jackson’s hands in their rematch four years later. (In 1826, Clay fought a duel over such charges by John Randolph, a senator from Virginia. Though shots were fired, none struck.) Jackson himself unambiguously attributed his defeat in 1824 to an unsavory deal: “The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. . . . Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?”40
Was the charge fair? Perhaps not. Adams’s diary showed Clay to be among the few men he esteemed. Long before the election reached the House, he observed that Clay’s “talents were eminent; his claims from public service considerable.”41 Curiously, as far back as November 30, 1822, two years before the election, Adams made reference to rumors of a deal with Clay whereby the latter would end up secretary of state. Adams dismissed the notion: “There was no understanding or concert between Mr. Clay and me on the subject, and never had been.”42 That would be a claim Adams would repeat many times before and after the House vote in February 1825.
His exhaustive diary, however, says nothing about Clay’s role in his victory and precious little about Clay’s selection as secretary of state. In his entry for February 9, 1825, Adams recorded his victory in the House in uncharacteristically gushing fashion: “May the blessing of God rest upon the event of this day!”43 Although he described the results as “completed, very unexpectedly, by a single ballot,”44 he made no reference to the fact that Clay’s allies in the House tipped the balance his way. In his entry for the next day, he mentions a visit by the secretary of the navy, Samuel Southard, and casually relates that “I told him I should offer the Department of State to Mr. Clay.”45
There had been no prior discussion in the diary as to when or why he settled on Clay, their previous falling out, whether he had considered anyone else, or much of anything related to this choice for a crucial post. The absence of such rumination is especially noteworthy because Adams knew that the appointment of Clay would be contentious. His diary entry for February 11 does note concerns that “if Mr. Clay should be appointed Secretary of State, a determined opposition to the Administration would be organized from the outset.”46 Adams writes, “I am at least forewarned,”47 but expresses no pause about picking Clay nor explanation for the absence of such pause. Later, in that same entry, he reports telling President Monroe that he would pick Clay “due to his talents and services to the Western section of the Union.”48 That is the full extent of Adams’s explanation for the most significant pick of his administration, one that arguably doomed it.
On February 12, he officially offered Clay the secretary of state position, and the latter (according to Adams) “said he would take it into consideration, and answer me as soon as he should have time to consult his friends.”49 Clay’s alleged reticence could suggest the absence of a deal between the two, or else Adams choosing to cover their tracks. In his diary entry for February 27, Adams noted “stores of opinion against the appointment of Clay as secretary of state.”50 Before accepting Adams’s offer, Clay acknowledged to others the sensitivity of the situation. In a letter to Francis T. Brooke, Clay noted that friends warned him that his becoming secretary of state “would be treated as conclusive evidence of the imputations which have been made against me.”51 That no more stopped him from accepting the offer than it stopped Adams from making it.
It was nearly suicidal for Adams to appoint Clay, and absent an agreement between them, there was no compelling reason for him to do so. In large part for that reason, most historians have concluded that Clay indeed swayed the House to make Adams president in exchange for his appointment as secretary of state—the traditional stepping stone to the presidency, an office Clay would never stop coveting. Ironically, becoming secretary of state may have doomed Clay’s larger aspirations. Even during his final bid for the presidency in 1844, Clay’s so-called “corrupt bargain” with Adams continually surfaced.
Clay always explained his decision to back Adams as stemming from Jackson’s lack of even minimal qualifications for the office. For example, in his letter to Francis Preston Blair dated January 29, 1825, Clay asserted the folly of selecting as president “a Military chieftain, merely