1828 - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

I have read that the election of 1828 was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Andrew Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple,  to over one million (being still fewer than 60% of eligible voters).  

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - President John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren and "Andy" Jackson did not invent Adam's acidic image, but they did build upon it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them as such.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by over two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828, when his dear wife died.

 - 30 -

1828 - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

 

I have read that the election of 1828 that it was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple that,  to over one million (being still fewer than 6 in 10 eligible voters). 

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren did not invent Adam's acidic image, but he did build on it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by almost two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little  Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828.

 - 30 -

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

 

I know we like to think our nation was founded by political geniuses armed only with the best of intentions. But the truth is, if the vast majority of our founding fathers were to somehow magically reappear in today's political arena, they would probably be most comfortable as members of the Klu Klux Klan – being by current definition both sexists and white supremacists. 

Under the first constitution for South Carolina (signed in 1778) Catholics were not allowed to vote. Delaware's first constitution denied the vote to Jews, and Maryland did not permit the sons of Abraham to cast a ballot until 1828. And, of course, women and both sexes of African-American descent either were or would shortly be arrested if they tried to cast a ballot anywhere in America. But the most fundamental bigotry in America was and is not racial or religious. It is monetary. The most hated, despised and disenfranchised group in America has always been anyone who was “not rich”.

In ten of the 13 original United States you had to own at least 50 acres of land or $250 in property before you were judged qualified to vote. The official price for uncleared land along the frontier was set at just ten cents an acre, but usually sold in lots no smaller than a section of 640 acres. At the same time the average yearly income for a laborer was about ninety dollars (with the income level in slave states being even lower), meaning a section would cost a middle class worker over 8 months salary. 

Few working people could afford the investment. So the land speculators stepped in. They had the cash, or the credit, to acquire hundreds of sections of land at a time, survey, subdivide and resell the property in plots down to 40 acres each. It was a system rife with legal and illegal fraud. And the speculators' profit margins tripled or quadrupled the price per acre to the yeoman farmers who usually borrowed to buy the land, often then went bankrupt, lost their investment, and were forced to move even further west to try again, still without the right to vote on the legality of such monetary rules.

This explains why, forty years after the American revolution, only half a million out of the ten million Americans could qualify to vote, and why in 1824 less than 360,000 actually cast a ballot. The debacle of 1825, when the “corrupt bargain”,  and the earlier deadlocked election in 1800, led to the realization that the first objective of fair elections must be to keep the professional politicians from screwing the rest of the population and dictating the outcome. That was why, beginning in the new states beyond the Appalachian crest, the wealth restrictions on voting were dropped. And slowly this influenced the politics back in the original 13 colonies. Slowly.

On 7 October 1825, with John Quincy Adams ensconced in the White House for less than 8 months, Senator Andrew Jackson (above) rose in the Senate chamber. Nominally he was to comment on a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent another “corrupt bargain” from ever happening  It was something Jackson should be eager to support. But, “I could not”, Jackson assured his fellow politicians, “consent either to urge or to encourage a change which might wear the appearance of being ...a desire to advance my own views” (He meant unlike Henry Clay, and President Adams, of course.)  And reluctantly,  he said, “I hasten therefore to tender this my resignation.” 

It wasn't that Jackson was clearing his schedule for the upcoming 1828 rematch . Oh, no.  He was resigning so “my friends do not, and my enemies can not, charge me with...degrading the trust reposed in me by intriguing for the Presidential chair.” As he walked out of the Capital that afternoon, it's a wonder his trousers did not burst into flames. The proposed amendment was then quietly allowed to die.

On the same day, on the west fork of the Stones river, meeting in St. Paul's Episcopal Church on East Vine Street in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (where their capital had burned down two years earlier), the state legislature unanimously nominated Andrew Jackson to be the next President of the United States – three years hence. 

What a happy coincidence of timing, with those two events occurring over a thousand miles apart, and on the same day – proof positive that no one could accuse Andrew “Jackass” of “intriguing” to ride the wave of populism about to break over the electoral college. And if any of you reading this are offended by modern pundits theorizing about the next election almost before the last one is completed, welcome to the brave new world of 1825

Of course, if you were looking for more hard evidence of intrigue you might journey to the 9th Congressional District of Virginia, tucked away in the south-western corner of the Old Dominion. The two term representative for this last gasp of the Shenandoah Valley and its encroaching mountains was a transplanted Pennsylvanian, a graduate of William and Mary, and a Crawford-Republican named Andrew Stevenson (above). 

Like many converts, the dapper Stevenson was heavily financially and emotionally invested in the peculiar institution of slavery, and savvy about the politics of his adopted state. He had been the Speaker of the House of Burgess, where he was considered a member of the “Richmond Junta” which ran Virginia politics. So why would a member of the Richmond Junta decide to join forces with a Yankee from the Albany Regency, to support Andrew Jackson from Nashville, Tennessee, for President?

First, the south had something that New Yorker Martin Van Buren (above) wanted – electoral votes. The institution of slavery was indeed peculiar because although those humans treated as property had no rights, each slave did count as 3/5ths of a person for determining congressional districts which meant electoral votes. And the census of 1820 gave the south 22 additional congressional districts – and 22 additional electoral votes – which their white population alone did not entitle them too. This was the deal with Satan the founding fathers from New England had been forced to make in order to form a “more perfect union.” Those 22 electoral votes were more than enough to throw a close election in whatever direction Van Buren from New York, wanted.

What Stevenson and other Southerners wanted was a guarantee that the economy of the south would be protected from the growing wealth of the North.  Practically, this meant low tariffs. The slave states produced few of the machines that were increasingly vital to modern life,  largely because slaves were never allowed to share in their master's profits, and thus had no incentive to invent or invest of themselves any more sweat than was required. 

A little over two weeks after Jackson's resignation from the Senate, the Erie Canal (above) officially opened, connecting the produce of  Ohio to the markets of New York City. It was visible evidence of the economic giant the workers and consumers of the "Free States" were becoming.  But in a nation without an income or a sales tax, a tax levied on imported goods, or a tariff, was the only way to support projects like the canal, or the national highway..

The Bank of the United States was a vital part of the infrastructure which John Quincy Adams was advocating. He believed projects such as the National Road and canals connecting the great lakes with the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, would unite the nation both physically and economically. What Adams saw was government preforming the unprofitable investment in infrastructure so that business could use it as a base for their future profits. But Stevenson and his ilk saw “Big Government”, supported by tariffs, as a multi-head snake (above) designed primarily to choke off the South -  and thus a threat to slavery. And they were both right.

In 1831 (six years hence) a young French official, Alexis de Tocqueville, journeyed to America to observe the young nation's institutions and people. And in perhaps his most famous passage he touched upon this central issue. “The State of Ohio”, wrote de Tocquville,”is separated from Kentucky just by one river; on either side of it the soil is equally fertile, and the situation equally favorable, and yet everything is different...(In Ohio the population is) devoured by feverish activity, trying every means to make its fortune...There (in Kentucky) are people who make others work for them...a people without energy, mettle or the spirit of enterprise...These differences cannot be attributed to any other cause but slavery. It degrades the black population and... (saps the energy of) the white.”

This was a hundred years before the Republican Party adopted its infamous “Southern strategy” to convert segregationist “boil weevel” "Dixie-crats into a southern Republican block. But Northern Democrats, at very the moment of their party's birth, made a much more disgusting bargain – agreeing to protect real slavery in all its foul existence,  in exchange for gaining national power for themselves and their masters, the money classes.

Jackson was a slave owner, and his natural inclination would be to support slavery. He was opposed to the national bank, and Adam's program of “big government” investments. But was that because he saw them as a threat to the South, or because he saw Adams as cheating him out of the White House?, Whatever his priorities it is clear Jackson had no interest in the details of forming a political party. His only interest was in winning over those who “cheated” him. Forming the party that would carry him to victory could be left to his loyal followers, men like Van Buren and Stevenson, who were binding Northern bankers to the Southern slave owning ruling elite. And ensuring the bankers would own them. That accommodation would be the foundation of the Jackson Democratic Party.  And, in the twentieth century, in it's turn. the Republican party

- 30 -

1828 - Chapter Eight - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

 

I mentioned earlier in these essays on the election of 1828 that it was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple that,  to over one million (being still fewer than 6 in 10 eligible voters). 

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren did not invent Adam's acidic image, but he did build on it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by almost two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little  Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828.

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