WI: John Quincy Adams wins 1828 (if very narrowly)?

Believe it or not it was possible. To quote myself:

To quote Sean Wilentz (of The Rise of American Democracy fame): "If a mere 9,000 votes in New York, Ohio, and Kentucky had shifted from one column to the other, and if New York, with an Adams majority, had followed the winner take all rules of most other states, Adams would have won a convincing 149 to 111* victory in the Electoral College."

After some checking, his calculations were wrong numerically, but still true. Adams had 83 Votes OTL, +20 from a winner take all NY (have some better 1827 state elections as your POD), +16 from Ohio, +14 from Kentucky. Adams now has 133 Votes to Jackson's 128, just barely past the 131 marker. So long as there are no faithless electors, Adams in is the clear.

Adams also could have taken another 5 votes from Maryland, which had electoral districts vote on each EV. Conversely if Jackson wins a few of those he could beat Adams, but lets ignore that possibility for now.

What if? The South voted later from the Northeast, so some early strong victories for Adams could have overtaken him in the Electoral college, damn the popular vote. If he wins without a popular majority twice in a row would their be a stronger, more successful, movement to abolish it? A Civil War brewing from Adams twice stained victory? Jackson running a third time in 1832?
 
The hard part is switching Kentucky--see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/9XHOfVO5HGs/Idcs4lo0w0IJ

***

(4) Kentucky, 14 electoral votes (OTL Jackson 55.54, Adams 44.46). This
is the hard one. In Henry Clay's own state, Jackson won almost as
decisively as he did in the nation as a whole. That Adams was in trouble
in the state was evident from the August 1828 state elections. The Adams
party's candidate for governor, Thomas Metcalfe, did defeat the Jackson
party's candidate William T. Barry by more than a thousand votes, "but the
Jacksonians won a sixteen-vote majority in the lower house of the
legislature and a two-vote majority in the upper house." (Cole, p. 168.)
(To show how oversimplified the stereotypes of the two parties were,
Barry, the candidate of the "democratic" Jackson party, was a college-
educated ex-Federalist, while the "aristocratic" Adams party's candidate
Metcalfe was a self-made, little-educated stonemason.)

Perhaps having Clay on the ticket would have helped in Kentucky. He may
have lost some of his popularity, but his showing there in 1832 would seem
to indicate that much of it remained. Better organization by the Adams
party, here as elsewhere, would have helped--though it is not surprising
that the Jacksonians, who believed in political parties, were more
efficient at organizing them than their opponents, who often still held
the ideal of a president "above parties." (Adams' keeping John McLean, a
Monroe administration holdover and a friend of Calhoun's, as Postmaster
General, was a real political disaster. McLean controlled more patronage
than anybody else, and as Cole puts it, p. 52, "was more loyal to Calhoun,
Jackson and himself than he was to Adams and Clay.") And here too, more
emphasis on the tariff might have been helpful (in Kentucky's case
protection for hemp was popular). Indeed, it is hard to think of any
state where stronger support for a high tariff would have hurt Adams
except southern states he had no chance of carrying, anyway.

So a second Adams "minority" victory, while unlikely, was not impossible.
(A realization of this was probably one reason Jackson, early in his
presidency, urged a constitutional amendment providing for direct election
of the president.) This IMO would not necessarily have been good for the
country even if one sympathizes with Adams' agenda of positive government.
The South would be very bitter (especially if Adams won the electoral vote
in part by being more protectionist than in OTL) and nullification--and
even secession as a last resort--might get much more widespread support
than in OTL.
 
You really do have a soc.what-if quote for every occasion huh David?

Anyways. Do you mean Clay as an Adams VP? I don't think Clay would surrender his much more prestigious post of Sec of State for the rather limp Vice-Presidency. If the Senate was split however, not that he'd know that, he could be the tiebreaker and corrall his former Senate colleagues...not such a bad possibility. How to get him there is the real question.
 

Redhand

Banned
I think that the Populist Anger that would ensue from Jackson being denied again in the South and West would possibly get violent. I don't think a Civil War would happen, but the fact that the vote up until 1828 was really for Aristocrats for the most part and that the College Educated Brahmin had once again won by the narrowest of means would lead to some form of civil disorder.

I can see John Calhoun trying to stir up some problems relatively quickly, and I think that the South Carolina Crisis that happened during Andy Jackson's presidency could get a whole lot worse.
 
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