1828 United States presidential election

1828 United States presidential election

October 31 – December 2, 1828
261 members of the Electoral College 131 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	57.3% 30.4 pp
Nominee Andrew Jackson John Quincy Adams Party Democratic National Republican Alliance Anti-Masonic Home state Tennessee Massachusetts Running mate John C. Calhoun Richard Rush Electoral vote 178 83 States carried 15 9 Popular vote 638,348 507,440 Percentage 55.5% 44.0%
Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Jackson and Calhoun or Smith, light yellow denotes those won by Adams/Rush. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election John Quincy Adams National Republican Elected President Andrew Jackson Democratic

The 1828 United States presidential election was the 11th quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Friday, October 31 to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a repetition of the 1824 election, as President John Quincy Adams of the National Republican Party faced Andrew Jackson of the Democratic Party. Both parties were new organizations, and this was the first presidential election their nominees contested. This election saw the second rematch in presidential history, something that would not occur again until 1840.

With the collapse of the Federalist Party, four members of the Democratic-Republican Party, including Jackson and Adams, had sought the presidency in the 1824 election. Jackson had won a plurality (but not majority) of both the electoral vote and popular vote in the 1824 election, but had lost the contingent election that was held in the House of Representatives. In the aftermath of the election, Jackson's supporters accused Adams and Henry Clay of having reached a "corrupt bargain" in which Clay helped Adams win the contingent election in return for the position of Secretary of State. After the 1824 election, Jackson's supporters immediately began plans for a campaign in 1828, and the Democratic-Republican Party fractured into the National Republican Party and the Democratic Party during Adams's presidency.

The 1828 campaign was marked by large amounts of "mudslinging", as both parties attacked the personal qualities of the opposing party's candidate. Jackson dominated in the South and the West, aided in part by the passage of the Tariff of 1828. With the ongoing expansion of the right to vote to most white men, the election marked a dramatic expansion of the electorate, with 9.5% of Americans casting a vote for president, compared with 3.4% in 1824. Several states transitioned to a popular vote for president, leaving South Carolina and Delaware as the only states in which the legislature chose presidential electors.

The election marked the rise of Jacksonian Democracy and the transition from the First Party System to the Second Party System. Historians debate the significance of the election, with many arguing that it marked the beginning of modern American politics by removing key barriers to voter participation and establishing a stable two-party system. Jackson became the first president whose home state was neither Massachusetts nor Virginia, while Adams was the second to lose re-election, following his father John Adams.

Background

While Andrew Jackson won a plurality of electoral votes and the popular vote in the election of 1824, he lost to John Quincy Adams as the election was deferred to the House of Representatives (by the terms of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a presidential election in which no candidate wins a majority of the electoral vote is decided by a contingent election in the House of Representatives). Henry Clay, unsuccessful candidate and Speaker of the House at the time, despised Jackson, in part due to their fight for Western votes during the election, and he chose to support Adams, which led to Adams being elected president on the first ballot.

A few days after the election, Adams appointed Clay his Secretary of State, a position held by Adams and his three immediate predecessors prior to becoming president. Jackson and his followers promptly accused Clay and Adams of striking a "corrupt bargain," and continued to lambaste the president until the 1828 election.

In 1824, the national Democratic-Republican Party collapsed as national politics became increasingly polarized between supporters of Adams and supporters of Jackson. In a prelude to the presidential election, the Jacksonians bolstered their numbers in Congress in the 1826 Congressional elections, with Jackson ally Andrew Stevenson chosen as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1827 over Adams ally Speaker, John W. Taylor.

Nominations

Jacksonian Party nomination

1828 Jacksonian Party ticket
Andrew Jackson	John C. Calhoun
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Senator from Tennessee (1797–1798 & 1823–1825)	7th Vice President of the United States (1825–1832)
Campaign

In October 1825, the Tennessee legislature re-nominated Jackson for president. Congressional opponents of Adams, including former William H. Crawford supporter Martin Van Buren, rallied around Jackson's candidacy. Jackson's supporters called themselves Democrats, and would formally organize as the Democratic Party shortly after his election. In hopes of uniting those opposed to Adams, Jackson ran on a ticket with Calhoun. Calhoun would decline the invitation to join the Democratic Party, however, and instead formed the Nullifier Party after the election; the Nullifiers would remain largely aligned with the Democrats for the next few years, but ultimately broke with Jackson over the issue of states' rights during his first term. No congressional nominating caucus or national convention was held.

Adams' relationship with Vice President John C. Calhoun deteriorated, with Calhoun opposing Clay's appointment as Secretary of State due to his own presidential ambitions. In June 1826, Calhoun gave his support to Jackson for the 1828 election. Calhoun's stance on the removal of Native Americans was not accepted by the Georgian electors who instead voted for William Smith.

Van Buren, who supported Crawford during the 1824 election, supported Jackson during the 1828 election and aided in the selection of Calhoun as vice president in order to prevent DeWitt Clinton, his political enemy, from being selected. Clinton died on February 11, 1828. Van Buren arranged for incidents to divide Calhoun and Adams such as him abstaining from a vote on tariff legislation supported by Adams in order for Calhoun to break the tie by voting against it.

Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Examiner, was one of the leading supporters of Crawford during the 1824 election and Van Buren convinced him to support Jackson. Van Buren convinced him of an alliance "between the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North".

Anti-Jacksonian Party nomination

1828 Anti-Jacksonian Party ticket
John Quincy Adams	Richard Rush
for President	for Vice President
6th President of the United States (1825–1829)	8th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (1825–1829)

President Adams and his allies, including Secretary of State Clay and Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, became known as the National Republicans. The National Republicans were significantly less organized than the Democrats, and many party leaders did not embrace the new era of popular campaigning. Adams was re-nominated on the endorsement of state legislatures and partisan rallies. As with the Democrats, no nominating caucus or national convention was held. Adams chose Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush, a Pennsylvanian known for his protectionist views, as his running mate. Adams, who was personally popular in New England, hoped to assemble a coalition in which Clay attracted Western voters, Rush attracted voters in the middle states, and Webster won over former members of the Federalist Party.

Adams support in New York aligned with the Anti-Masonic Party and Thurlow Weed, his campaign manager in the state, was sympathetic to the anti-masonic movement.

General election

Campaign

"Some account of the bloody deeds of General Andrew Jackson", c. 1828

The campaign was marked by large amounts of nasty "mudslinging." Jackson's marriage, for example, came in for vicious attack. When Jackson married his wife Rachel in 1791, the couple believed that she was divorced, but the divorce was not yet finalized, so he had to remarry her once the legal papers were complete. In the Adams campaign managers' hands, this became a scandal. Charles Hammond, in his Cincinnati Gazette, asked: "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?"

Jackson's campaigners fired back by claiming that while serving as minister to Russia, Adams had procured a young girl to serve as a prostitute for Emperor Alexander I. They also stated that Adams had a billiard table in the White House and that he had charged the government for it. (in fact Adams while minister to Russia had employed a young girl as a maid to his wife; the girl had written a letter which had been intercepted by the Russian postal services. Alexander I had been curious to meet the letter writer publicly at court and Adams had done so. The billiard table was Adams' personal property; a bill for repairing it had been accidentally included in the White House expense accounts. Adams also came under attack for having a chess set). Jackson also came under heavy attack as a slave trader who bought and sold slaves and moved them about in defiance of modern standards of morality (he was not attacked for merely owning slaves used in plantation work). The Coffin Handbills attacked Jackson for his courts-martial, execution of deserters and massacres of Indian villages, and also his habit of dueling and that he supposedly fought over 100 duels. In fact Jackson had only fought three duels: in the first both men had fired at each other but made up; in the second duel, Jackson vs John Sevier, it had taken place but only two persons not connected with either party had been slightly injured. The third duel was with Charles Dickinson in which Dickinson was mortally wounded while Jackson was left with a bullet in his chest. A so-called fourth duel between Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton was in fact a frontier brawl which left Jackson badly wounded in the shoulder.

Ezra Stiles Ely attacked Adams' Unitarian beliefs and called for Christians to vote for Jackson.

Jackson avoided articulating issue positions, instead campaigning on his personal qualities and his opposition to Adams. Adams avoided popular campaigning, instead emphasizing his support of specific issues. Adams's praise of internal improvements in Europe, such as "lighthouses of the skies" (observatories), in his first annual message to Congress, and his suggestion that Congress not be "palsied by the will of our constituents" were given attention in and out of the press. John Randolph stated on the floor of the Senate that he "never will be palsied by any power save the constitution, and the will of my constituents." Jackson wrote that a lavish government combined with contempt of the constituents could lead to despotism, if not checked by the "voice of the people." Modern campaigning was also introduced by Jackson. People kissed babies, had picnics, and started many other traditions during the campaign.

Jefferson's opinion

Thomas Jefferson wrote favorably in response to Jackson in December 1823 and extended an invitation to his estate of Monticello: "I recall with pleasure the remembrance of our joint labors while in the Senate together in times of great trial and of hard battling, battles indeed of words, not of blood, as those you have since fought so much for your own glory & that of your country; with the assurance that my attempts continue undiminished, accept that of my great respect & consideration."

Jefferson wrote of the outcome of the contingent election of 1825 in a letter to William H. Crawford, who had been the nominee of the congressional caucus of Democratic-Republicans, saying that he had hoped to congratulate Crawford on his election to the presidency but "events had not been what we had wished."

In the next election, Jackson's and Adams's supporters saw value in establishing the opinion of Jefferson in regards to their respective candidates and against their opposition. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 on the same day as his predecessor, John Adams, Adam's father.

A goal of the pro-Adams was to depict Jackson as a "mere military chieftain." Edward Coles recounted that Jefferson told him in a conversation in August 1825 that he feared the popular enthusiasm for Jackson: "It has caused me to doubt more than anything that has occurred since our Revolution." Coles used the opinion of Thomas Gilmer to back himself up; Gilmer said Jefferson told him at Monticello before the election of Adams in 1825, "One might as well make a sailor of a cock, or a soldier of a goose, as a President of Andrew Jackson." Daniel Webster, who was also at Monticello at the time, made the same report. Webster recorded that Jefferson told him in December 1824 that Jackson was a dangerous man unfit for the presidency. Historian Sean Wilentz described Webster's account of the meeting as "not wholly reliable." Biographer Robert V. Remini said that Jefferson "had no great love for Jackson."

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of blue are for Jackson (Democrat) and shades of yellow are for Adams (National Republican).

Gilmer accused Coles of misrepresentation, in Jefferson's opinion had changed, Gilmer said. Jefferson's son-in-law, former Virginia Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., said in 1826 that Jefferson had a "strong repugnance" to Henry Clay. Randolph publicly stated that Jefferson became friendly to Jackson's candidacy as early as the summer of 1825, perhaps because of the "corrupt bargain" charge, and thought of Jackson as "an honest, sincere, clear-headed and strong-minded man; of the soundest political principles" and "the only hope left" to reverse the increasing powers assumed by the federal government. Others said the same thing, but Coles could not believe Jefferson's opinion had changed.

In 1827, Virginia Governor William B. Giles released a letter from Jefferson meant to be kept private to Thomas Ritchie's Richmond Enquirer. It was written after Adams's first annual message to Congress and it contained an attack from Jefferson on the incumbent administration. Giles said Jefferson's alarm was with the usurpation of the rights of the states, not with a "military chieftain." Jefferson wrote, "take together the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of the constitutional compact acted on by the legislature of the federal bench, and it is but too evident, that the three ruling branches of that department are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic." Of the Federalists, he continued, "But this opens with a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plowman and beggared yeomanry." The Jacksonians and states' rights men heralded its publication; the Adams men felt it a symptom of senility. Giles omitted a prior letter of Jefferson's praise of Adams for his role in the embargo of 1808. Thomas Jefferson Randolph soon collected and published Jefferson's correspondence.

Results

All of the states, except for Delaware and South Carolina, selected their electors through a popular vote. The selection of electors began on October 31 with elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania and ended on November 13 with elections in North Carolina. The Electoral College met on December 3.

Adams won the same states that his father had won in the election of 1800 (the New England states, New Jersey, and Delaware) and Maryland, but Jackson won all other states and won the election in a landslide.

The Democratic Party in Georgia was hopelessly divided into two factions (Troup and Clark) at the time. Despite this, both factions nominated Jackson for President, with the election being primarily a test of the strength of these two factions - the Adams electors ran a very poor third, with just 3.21% of the vote. The winning slate, which received a 3,000 vote majority.

Jackson received 50.3% of the vote in states without slavery while he received 72.6% of the vote in states with slavery. He received 200,000 votes in the South and 400,000 votes in the North, but the Three-fifths Compromise, which inflated the South's electoral votes, resulted in him receiving 105 electoral votes from the South and 73 votes from the North.

This was the first election in American history in which the incumbent president lost re-election despite winning a greater share of the popular vote than in the previous election. This would not happen again until 2020.

This was the last election in which the Democrats won Kentucky until 1856. It is also the only election where Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont voted for the National Republicans, and the last time that New Hampshire voted against the Democrats until 1856.

It was also the only election in which an electoral vote split occurred in Maine until the election of 2016, the first election in which the winning ticket did not have a north–south balance, and the first election in which two northerners ran against two southerners.

Electoral results

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote(a)		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Percentage		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
Andrew Jackson	Democratic	Tennessee	638,348	55.33%	178	John Caldwell Calhoun (incumbent)	South Carolina	171
						William Smith	South Carolina	7
John Quincy Adams (incumbent)	National Republican	Massachusetts	507,440	43.98%	83	Richard Rush	Pennsylvania	83
Other			7,991(b)	0.69%	—	Other		—
Total			1,153,779	100%	261			261
Needed to win					131			131

Source (Popular Vote): Dubin, Michael J. United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860 Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.

^(a) The popular vote figures exclude Delaware and South Carolina: both states' electors were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by a popular vote.

^(b) The other vote was from Georgia where two slates pledged to Jackson, representing factions of the party, ran. The winning slate was Jackson with Smith - the Troup Faction - and the other was Jackson with Calhoun - the Clark faction. Many sources combine the vote when reporting the Georgia results, but this is legally incorrect.

Results by state

Legend

States/districts won by Jackson/Calhoun
States/districts won by Adams/Rush
†	At-large results (For states that split electoral votes)

		Andrew Jackson Democratic			John Quincy Adams National Republican			Margin		State Total
State	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	#
Alabama	5	0001361816,750	89.78	5	000486691,976 a	10.22	-	14,774	79.90	18,726	AL
Connecticut	8	4,488 b	24.5	-	13,838	75.5	8	-9,350	-51.02	18,326	CT
Delaware	3	no popular vote			no popular vote		3	-	-	-	DE
Georgia c	9	17,703	96.70	9	605	3.31	-	17,098	93.39	18,308	GA
Illinois	3	9,582	67.18	3	4,681	32.82	-	4,901	34.36	14,263	IL
Indiana	5	22,140	56.60	5	16,978	43.40	-	5,162	13.20	39,118	IN
Kentucky	14	39,085	55.41	14	31,456	44.59	-	7,629	10.81	70,541	KY
Louisiana	5	4,603	53.04	5	4,076	46.96	-	527	6.07	8,679	LA
Maine†	2	13,808 d	40.18	-	20,558	59.82	2	-6,750	-19.58	34,366	ME
Maine-Cumberland	1	4,227	51.11	1	4,043	48.89	-	184	2.22	8,270	ME1
Maine-York	1	1,865	37.97	-	3,047	62.03	1	-1,182	-24.06	4,912	ME2
Maine-Kennebec	1	1,057	25.58	-	3,075	74.42	1	-2,018	-48.83	4,132	ME3
Maine-Lincoln	1	820	29.79	-	1,933	71.21	1	-1,113	-40.43	2,753	ME4
Maine-Oxford	1	2,812	47.05	-	3,248	52.95	1	-364	-5.90	6,170	ME5
Maine-Hancock & Washington	1	1,235	35.26	-	2,268	64.74	1	-1,033	-29.49	3,503	ME6
Maine-Somerset & Ponobscot	1	1,792	36.99	-	3,052	63.01	1	-1,260	-26.01	4,844	ME7
Maryland-1	1	1,101	35.19	-	2,027	65.8`	1	-926	-29.60	3,128	MD1
Maryland-2	1	1,328	42.85	-	1,771	57.14	1	-443	-14.29	3,099	MD2
Maryland-3 e	2	6,177	50.24	2	6,117	49.76	-	60	0.49	12,294	MD3
Maryland-4 e	2	6,058	51.33	2	5,743	49.66	-	315	2.67	11,801	MD4
Maryland-5	1	2,942	64.74	1	1,602	35.26	-	1,340	29.49	4,544	MD5
Maryland-6	1	2,213	49.68	-	2,242	50.33	1	-29	-0.65	4,455	MD6
Maryland-7	1	1,122	48.15	-	1,208	51.85	1	-86	-4.04	2,130	MD7
Maryland-8	1	1,050	40.37	-	1,551	59.63	1	-501	-19.26	2,601	MD8
Maryland-9	1	2,574	44.15	-	3,256	55.85	1	-682	-11.70	5,830	MD9
Massachusetts	15	6,016	16.78	-	29,842 f	83.22	15	-23,826	-66.45	35,858	MA
Mississippi	3	7,086 g	81.56	3	1,602	18.44	-	5,484	63.12	8,688	MS
Missouri	3	8,287	69.30	3	3,672	30.70	-	4,615	38.59	11,959	MO
New Hampshire	8	21,182	46.76	-	24,120	53.24	8	-2.938	-6.48	45,302	NH
New Jersey	8	21,951	48.02	-	23,764	51.98	8	-1,813	-4.02	45,715	NJ
New York h	2	139,412	51.45	2	131,563	48.55	-	7,849	2.9	270,975	NY
New York-1	1	3,075	51.93	1	2,847	48.07	-	228	3.85	5,922	NY1
New York-2	1	2,936	59.89	1	1,966	40.11	-	970	19.79	4,902	NY2
New York-3	3	15,435	61.56	3	9,638	38.44	-	5,797	23.12	25,073	NY3
New York-4	1	3,788	54.57	1	3,153	45.43	-	635	9.15	6,941	NY4
New York-5	1	4,680	58.92	1	3,263	41.08	-	1,417	17.84	7,943	NY5
New York-6	1	3,798	59.49	1	2,586	40.51	-	1,212	18.98	6,384	NY6
New York-7	1	4,624	69.71	1	2,009	30.29	-	1,212	18.27	6,633	NY7
New York-8	1	3,446	48.62	-	3,642	51.38	1	-196	-2.77	7,088	NY8
New York-9	1	4,263	47.83	-	4,650	52.17	1	-387	-4.34	8,913	NY9
New York-10	1	3,924	48.33	-	4,195	51.67	1	-271	-3.34	8,119	NY10
New York-11	1	5,331	61.27	1	3,370	38.73	-	1961	22.54	8,701	NY11
New York-12	1	3,740	59.14	1	2,584	48.86	-	1156	18.28	6,324	NY12
New York-13	1	4,241	52.09	1	3.900	47.91	-	341	4.19	8,141	NY13
New York-14	1	5,136	46.89	-	5,817	53.11	1	-681	-6.22	10.953	NY14
New York-15	1	3,177	55.86	1	2,510	44.14	-	667	11.73	5,687	NY15
New York-16	1	3,778	48.69	-	3,982	54.76	1	-204	-2.63	7,760	NY16
New York-17	1	2,929	45.25	-	3,545	45.24	1	-616	-9.51	6,474	NY17
New York-18	1	2,658	39.42	-	4,085	60.58	1	-1,427	-21.16	6,743	NY18
New York-19	1	4,503	47.18	-	5,042	52.82	1	-539	-5.65	5,922	NY19
New York-20	2	9,081	49.77	-	9,164	50.23	2	-83	-0.45	18,245	NY20
New York-21	1	4,329	58.15	1	3,116	41.85	-	1,213	16.29	7,445	NY21
New York-22	1	4,136	45.40	-	4,974	54.60	1	-838	-9.20	9,110	NY22
New York-23	1	4,264	52.90	1	3,796	47.10	-	468	5.81	8,060	NY23
New York-24	1	4,159	63.25	1	2,416	36.75	-	1,743	26.51	6,575	NY24
New York-25	1	5,427	59.10	1	3,755	40.90	-	1,672	18.21	9,182	NY25
New York-26	2	7,011	43.47	-	9,119	56.53	2	-2,108	-13.07	16,130	NY26
New York-27	1	4,631	39.55	-	7,079	60.45	1	-2,448	-20.91	11,701	NY27
New York-28	1	5,347	54.89	1	4,395	45.11	-	952	9.77	9,742	NY28
New York-29	1	3,256	32.28	-	6,832	67.72	1	-3,576	-34.54	10,088	NY29
New York-30	1	3,660	31.44	-	7,983	68.56	1	-4,323	-37.13	11,643	NY30
North Carolina	15	37,634	72.97	15	13,938	27.03	-	23,696	45.95	51,572	NC
Ohio	16	67,596	51.58	16	63,456	48.42	-	4,140	3.16	131,052	OH
Pennsylvania	28	102,151	66.79	28	50,783	33.21	-	51,368	33.59	152,934	PA
Rhode Island	4	820	22.95	-	2,753	77.05	4	-1,933	-54.10	3,573	RI
South Carolina	11	no popular vote		11	no popular vote			-	-	-	SC
Tennessee-1	1	3,136	100.00	1	0	0.00	-	3,136	100.00	3,136	TN1
Tennessee-2	1	3,418	95.98	1	143	4.02	-	3,275	91.97	3,561	TN2
Tennessee-3	1	4,001	94.03	1	254	5.97	-	3,747	88.06	4,255	TN3
Tennessee-4	1	3,211	99.78	1	7	0.22	-	3,204	99.56	3,218	TN4
Tennessee-5	1	5,196	98.60	1	74	1.40	-	5,122	97.19	5,270	TN5
Tennessee-6	1	3,605	100.00	1	0	0.00	-	3,605	100.00	3,605	TN6
Tennessee-7	1	5,008	87.51	1	715	12.49	-	4,293	75.01	5,723	TN7
Tennessee-8	1	3,443	99.83	1	6	0.17	-	3,437	99.65	3,449	TN8
Tennessee-9	1	4,311	95.14	1	220	4.86	-	4,091	90.29	4,531	TN9
Tennessee-10	1	3,481	95.11	1	179	4.89	-	3,302	90.22	3,660	TN10
Tennessee-11	1	5,282	89.16	1	642	10.84	-	4,640	78.33	5,924	TN11
Vermont	7	8,335	25.49	-	24,365	74.51	7	-16,030	-49.02	32,700	VT
Virginia	24	26,842	69.13	24	11,989	30.87	-	14,853	38.25	38,831	VA
TOTALS:	261	638,348	55.71	178	507,440	44.29	83	130,908	11.43	1,145,788	US
TO WIN:	131

Close states

Districts where the margin of victory was under 1%:

1. NY-20 0.45%
2. MD-3 0.49%
3. MD-6 0.65%

States and Districts where the margin of victory was under 5%:

1. Maine-Cumberland 2.22%
2. NY-16 2.63%
3. MD-4 2.67%
4. NY-8 2.77%
5. Ohio 3.16%
6. NY-10 3.34%
7. NY-1 3.85%
8. New Jersey 4.02%
9. MD-7 4.04%
10. NY-13 4.19%
11. NY-9 4.34%

States and Districts where the margin of victory was under 10%:

1. NY-19 5.65%
2. NY-23 5.81%
3. Maine-Oxford 5.90%
4. Louisiana 6.07%
5. NY-14 6.22%
6. New Hampshire 6.48%
7. NY-4 9.15%
8. NY-22 9.20%
9. NY-17 9.51%
10. NY-28 9.77%

John Quincy Adams received a similar number of electoral college votes in 1824 and 1828.

John Quincy Adams Electoral College Votes

State	1824	1828
Massachusetts	15	15
Connecticut	8	8
New Hampshire	8	8
Rhode Island	4	4
Vermont	7	7
Maine	9	8
New York	26	16
New Jersey	0	8
Maryland	3	6
Delaware	1	3
Illinois	1	0
Louisiana	2	0
Total	84	83

Popular vote Jackson   55.33% Adams   43.98% Other   0.69%

Electoral vote—President Jackson   68.20% Adams   31.80%

Electoral vote—Vice President Calhoun   65.52% Rush   31.80% Smith   2.68%

_a Stated total was 1,993
_b Stated total was 4,448
_c There were two Jackson tickets in Georgia representing different factions of the party. The Troup faction "won" with 9,712 votes and the Clarke faction lost with 7,991. They are combined here, though legally this is incorrect. The state rejected returns from 10 counties and 8 others submitted none. Including the rejected returns, the total votes are Jackson (Troup) 10,508, Jackson (Clarke) 8,854 and Adams, 642.
_d Stated total was 13,927
_e In Maryland's 3rd and 4th districts, voters voted for two electors, with each pledged to one candidate or another. The votes in the 3rd were 6,177 for William Fitzhugh, Jr. and 6,164 for William Tyler, both for Jackson, versus 6,117 for George Baltzell and William Price for Adams. In the 4th the votes were 6,058 for Benjamin Chew Howard and James Sewell for Jackson versus 5,743 and 5,742 for the Adams electors. [Note: Dubin mistakenly swapped the 3rd and 4th districts in his book, but that has been corrected here].
_f Stated total was 29,836
_g Stated total was 7,088
_h Two statewide electors were chosen by the electors elected at the district level.

Aftermath

Rachel Jackson had been having chest pains throughout the campaign, and she was traumatized by the personal attacks on her marriage. She became ill and died on December 22, 1828. Jackson accused the Adams campaign, and Henry Clay even more so, of causing her death, saying, "I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy."

1829 caricature by Robert Cruikshank of U.S. President Andrew Jackson's inauguration

Andrew Jackson was sworn in as president on March 4, 1829. After the inauguration, a mob entered the White House to shake the new president's hand, damaging the furniture and lights. Jackson escaped through the back, and large punch bowls were set up to lure the crowd outside. Conservatives were horrified at this event, and held it up as a portent of terrible things to come from the first Democratic president. When Jackson arrived in Washington D.C., he was to pay the customary courtesy call on the outgoing president, but he refused to do so. John Quincy Adams responded by refusing to go to the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, similar to his father who did not attend the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson 28 years before. While Jackson did not hold John Quincy Adams among those who had slandered Rachel Jackson, social relations between the two men were cold and impersonal: for example, when Adams heard from a third party that Jackson would invite him to a social dinner he responded that Jackson should send the invitation personally. In his diary Adams also revealed his disgust that not only was his Alma Mater Harvard College going to award Jackson an honorary Doctor of Law degree (Jackson had not gone to study law in college but had learned law as a law clerk to a judge) but that they were doing to do so to a "barbarian" [i.e., someone who had not studied the classical languages of Latin and Greek].

Electoral College selection

Method of choosing electors	State(s)
Each Elector appointed by state legislature	Delaware South Carolina
State is divided into electoral districts, with one Elector chosen per district by the voters of that district	Maryland Tennessee
Two Electors chosen by voters statewide One Elector chosen per Congressional district by the voters of that district	Maine
One Elector chosen per Congressional district by the voters of that district Remaining two Electors chosen by the other Electors	New York
Each Elector chosen by voters statewide	(all other states)

See also

• First inauguration of Andrew Jackson
• History of the United States (1789–1849)
• Jacksonian democracy
• 1828–29 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1828–29 United States Senate elections

Bibliography

• Bemis, Samuel Flagg (1956). John Quincy Adams and the Union. Vol. 2. New York, Knopf.
• Cheathem, Mark R. (2013). Andrew Jackson, Southerner.
• Cheathem, Mark R. (2018). The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson.
• Cheathem, Mark R. (2014), "Frontiersman or Southern Gentleman? Newspaper Coverage of Andrew Jackson during the 1828 Presidential Campaign", The Readex Report, vol. 9, no. 3
• Cole, Donald B. (2009). Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two Party System. excerpt and text search
• Heidler, David S.; Heidler, Jeanne T. (2018). The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics.
• Holt, Michael F. (1992). Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln.
• Howe, Daniel (2007). What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507894-7.
• Howell, William Huntting (Summer 2010). "Read, Pause, and Reflect!!". Journal of the Early Republic. 30 (2): 293–300. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0149. S2CID 144448483. examines the campaign literature of 1828
• McCormick, Richard P. (1966). The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
• Parsons, Lynn H. (2009). The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828. excerpt and text search
• Remini, Robert V. (1959). Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party. New York, Columbia University Press.
• Remini, Robert V. (1981). Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832. ISBN 9780060148447.
• Stahr, Walter (2012). Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-2118-4.
• Swint, Kerwin C. (2006). Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time. Praeger Publishers.
• Ward, John William (1955). Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Watson, Harry L. (1990). Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America. ISBN 0-374-52196-4.
• Wilentz, Sean (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.

Further reading

• "A Brief Biography of Andrew Jackson 1767-1845: The Election of 1828". From Revolution to Reconstruction. Archived from the original on February 22, 2008. Retrieved November 15, 2004.
• "Election of 1828". U-S-History.com. Retrieved November 15, 2004.
• "A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College". The Green Papers. Retrieved March 20, 2005.

External links

• Presidential Election of 1828: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• Historian James Parton describes election
• The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson and the Growth of Party Politics
• Election of 1828 in Counting the Votes Archived January 1, 2018, at the Wayback Machine