THE ELECTION OF ANDREW JACKSON

This is a detailed account of the bitter election campaign in which Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams for a second term as President. The campaign, however, actually began in 1824, when Jackson and Adams tied by popular vote for the presidency and Adams was elected in a House election by a narrow margin. Jackson and his backers at once began to work to win the 1828 election in a campaign which ""spattered more filth in more directions and on more innocent people than any other in history"". Jackson, a popular military hero, was supported by powerful politicians and his newly formed Democratic Party, which combined ""the highest ideals with the lowest skullduggery"". Adams, a brilliant and courageous diplomat but personally unpopular and a political blunderer, refused to defend himself against the libels of Jackson's subsidized press; his less reticent followers, however, retaliated unkind. For better or worse, the campaign marked a turning-point in American politics: it was the first one conducted by present-day methods, and the first in which organized mass propaganda was used to elect a President.