But that world — one in which a handful of elite actors arrogated most political power to themselves, in the belief that only the elite could act in a disinterested way — was gone. A new world rooted in mass democracy was on the rise, and the election of 1824 did much to accelerate it.
Almost from the moment he took office, Adams had a target on his back. Under the leadership of rising political talents like New York’s Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s supporters created the first real presidential campaign, mobilizing newspaper editors; using patronage to win the support of state legislators, who in turn “nominated” the former general for president; creating state and local organizations that would prove critical in turning out the vote in 1828.
Both Adams, whose supporters would eventually coalesce under the National Republican banner, and Jackson, whose partisans called themselves Democratic Republicans, embraced new methods of communication, including partisan newspapers, handbills and even song (Jackson’s official campaign ballad was “The Hunters of Kentucky”). It ended up being the filthiest presidential campaign to date. The Adams press enthusiastically pressed rumors (probably true) that Jackson’s wife had still been married to another man when he took up house with her. Jackson men, in turn, cast the incumbent president as an effete intellectual, unequal to governing a country that was fast extending its frontier. They drew the choice as one “Between J.Q. Adams, who can write/And Andy Jackson, who can fight.”
Ultimately. Jackson’s popular appeal eclipsed that of Adams, whom many people regarded as cold and patrician. By 1828 every state except Delaware and South Carolina selected electors by popular vote. In that new electoral regime, Old Hickory swept the Electoral College by 178 votes to 83. It was the birth of the antebellum party system, one in which the object of a campaign was not so much to convince the small sliver of undecided voters as to drive turnout among the party faithful. The steady expansion of the franchise in the first decades of the 19th century, and the new electoral style that Jackson ushered in, would soon inspire new mechanisms to stir popular passions, including party clubs, rallies, campaign songs, pole raisings (a throwback to England’s Maypole rituals) and torchlight processions meant to inspire awe and fervor among ordinary voters. Democrats were first to adopt these practices, but the Whig campaign of 1840, in which young men flocked to the banner of the war hero and everyman William Henry Harrison, set a new standard for democratic electioneering.
In effect, Adams and his supporters won the election of 1824, but the backlash to their victory opened the floodgates to a wave of democratic participation.