- [Instructor] So we've been talking about
the emergence of Jacksonian democracy
in the first half of the 19th century in the United States
and we've been talking about how in this time period,
the vote was slowly extended to all white male citizens
so that by the end of this period there were
no more property requirements in the United States
and any white male citizen could vote.
Now those property requirements had allowed
free people of color and women to vote in some states
and when voting became associated with white male citizens,
those little loopholes ended up getting closed,
but this expansion of voting rights
to all white male citizens really represents
a shift in how the average American
thought about who deserved to have a voice
in the political process of the United States.
They stopped placing so much value
on this sort of aristocratic republican citizenship
of the early days of the United States
where someone like George Washington
would never run for office.
He would stand for office.
You wouldn't promote yourself, that would be vulgar.
Instead, you would have men
of well-known character promote you.
But by the 1820s, very few Americans believed in the idea
that there could be such a thing as too much democracy
that you would have to avoid the mob rule.
Instead, they wanted the mob rule.
They wanted a great expansion of democracy and that was
to them the real character of the United States.
Now I should also mention that this expansion of democracy
was part of a larger international expansion of democracy.
Similar laws that eliminated property restrictions
on voting were also being passed
in England and France at this time period.
So there's kind of an international wave
to broaden the franchise,
but the extension of voting in Europe is nothing like
the extension of voting in the United States.
There are nearly twice as many eligible voters
in the United States in the 1830s as there are in Britain
with a population that's half the size.
So while European nations are taking small steps
toward expanding the franchise,
the United States is taking huge steps in this time period.
So the first election where we start to see the influence
of this new wave of voters is in the election of 1824
and let me give us a little bit more space
to talk about this.
So the election of 1824 was a contest
between John Quincy Adams,
son of American founder John Adams,
Andrew Jackson, famous war hero from the War of 1812,
the victor of the Battle of New Orleans,
and Henry Clay,
who will become known as the great compromiser
for having pretty much spent his entire political career
either running for president
or putting together some kind of compromise.
Now, John Quincy Adams I think kind of epitomized
the older school of American democracy.
He was reticent to campaign on his own behalf.
He was very interested in academics
and internal improvements.
He didn't really see himself as being
part of a particular political party.
In fact, all three of these men
were actually running as republicans
'cause in the era of good feelings
there's only the Republican Party.
So you can see how confusing this might as been as a voter
to have three different candidates from the same party
and they're supposed to be different than each other.
So in this election, Andrew Jackson wins the popular vote
and John Quincy Adams wins the electoral vote
and Henry Clay wins neither.
Now in a situation like this, who got to be president
was decided by the House of Representatives.
Well guess who was speaker of the house.
Henry Clay.
So he's out of the running himself,
but he is in a position to make quite an impact
on who wins the presidency.
Well John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay
didn't have a whole lot of common,
but they sure both hated Andrew Jackson.
So Clay and Adams meet and Henry Clay says, "Yeah John Q.,
"I'll see if I can get the House to vote for you,"
and that's what happens.
So the House elects John Quincy Adams president
and then just a couple days later,
John Quincy Adams says that Henry Clay
will get to be his Secretary of State,
which was quite a plum of a political position
and Andrew Jackson and his supporters go ballistic.
They say that this was a corrupt bargain
behind closed doors
in which John Quincy Adams bribed Henry Clay
to give him the presidency
in exchange for this political position.
Now, there's no evidence that
this actual corrupt bargain really happened,
but even if it did, it was totally in line
with the earlier playbook of American democracy,
a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours kind of situation
where the better sort of men, the higher men of character
made a deal between themselves of who would lead this nation
and the outrage over this possible collusion
between Adams and Clay really signaled that
the old days of a couple of people making decisions
about American politics were over,
that this kind of deal between statesmen
was now seen as undemocratic or crooked
or something that was done behind closed doors
and that was against the American character
and Andrew Jackson is really going to
ride his wave of popular discontent
over someone winning the popular vote,
but losing the electoral vote
due to in his mind a corrupt bargain
right into the presidency in the election of 1828
and we'll get to that in the next video.