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For Better or Worse, The 1824 Election Changed America · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: No loss of energy here, my friends. Uh huh no, no, no, no.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Now we are in our twenty fifth year of doing
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this radio program. It's The Morning Show with Preston Scott.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I am Preston. He is Jose and this is doctor Edmore,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: formerly the president of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Now he is the resident historian of this radio program.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: How are you go? And I think I've been doing
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I know I've been doing that for more than twenty years, so.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I think we're right at about twenty years years. Yeah,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that's amazing. And they said it wouldn't last.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: And you don't look any older.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: You don't lie very well.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know. I came in twenty years ago
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: with white hair.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Yes you did so. Yeah, yeah, mine has been gradually
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: moving in that direction. I'm just grateful to have it.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: We have been talking about presidents that aren't very often
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in the discussions of presidents, not even in a discussion
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of great presidents or anything. Just in general. We forget
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: these guys.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we forget a lot of people during those time frames,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: not just presidents, vice presidents, speakers of the House, Supreme Court, judges,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: people that have you know, everybody knows the Founders. They
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: know I have bibbles. Yeah, You've got babbleheads of Founders.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: It's like the guys that made the plans and then
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: broke the ground. Everybody knows all of those guys, the
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: ones that end up erecting what we are as a
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: country and who we are as a country. Nobody knows
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: who they are, but a lot of major, major decisions.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: My attention today, and I sent you a text was, well,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we're gonna move on to Andy Jackson. And then when
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I started Andy, Yeah, Andy, you knew him by his
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: first you know, everyone knew him by Andy. That's what
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: you called him because that well, well we can talk
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: about the beginning of real politics in America. Yeah, that's
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: where it really began. And it was a cultural divide
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: sort of that occurred the eighteen twenty four election. And
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: we talked about that kind of last time, but I
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: want to talk a little more about it today. Eighteen
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: twenty four election when John Quincy Adams got elected by
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Congress and defeated Andrew Jackson was really the beginning of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: retail politics stuff as we know it today, party evolution.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Back then, when that election occurred there was really one party.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Was that the reason the way that that election unfolded,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: or was it more ideologically birthed?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I think it both. I think what occurred is that
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: election allowed regional differences to be magnified. It allowed cultural
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: differences to be magnified. And if you compare John Quincy
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Adams's upbringing, his life living in Europe for most of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: his adult life, coming back being President of the United
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: States out of Massachusetts, well educated, to Andrew Jackson or
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Andy from Tennessee rough heun you know, a general seminole war.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: He was down here Louisiana, the hero of their you
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: ended up. People started identifying with presidents in a different
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: way or candidates a different way, and we still do
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: that today. You know the old adages about way he's
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: a man of the people and these you know, uh
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Bob Graham doing the work of days to get in
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: touch with the even though he was at the elite level,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: he wanted to get in touch and stay in touch
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: with the common folk. Andy Jackson his whole image, even
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: though if you've been to Hermitage, not common. He didn't
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: live in some shock down by the river, right, I mean,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: he lived in a very big mansion and man of means,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: but his image that was portrayed. So that eighteen twenty
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: four election was probably the first one that you have
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: those kind of social conflicts where the people going against
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: one another and I don't like you because where you're
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: from or who you are, and you're too high falutin
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: for me, you know, that kind of stuff. The campaigning
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: started to be a little different, where they would have rallies,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: people bring in kegs of rum and big parties and
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It was the we were
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: learning the politics of all of that. And it was
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: also after the Twelfth Amendment had been passed, so how
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: we ended up picking presidents changed, which was a significant
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: change in the country.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Back with doctor Ed Moore, we were talking about the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: times surrounding Andrew Jackson as President of the United States,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: and you're not done.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not done. Yeah, yeah, my bad, I said, No,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna talk about Andrew Jackson all the day. But
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: then I started thinking more and more about that eighteen
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: twenty four election.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Well, actually, you said, Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: if we could get to.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: It, how many hours do you have? But we're talking.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So you're not done with the eighteen twenty four election.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: No, I think it was. It gets overlooked by historians,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: but I think it was a breaking point in our
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: country for how we dealt with politics. I mean, if
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you think of the two thousand election, that's very relevant
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: to Florida. A lot was going on here in Florida.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: We were the focus of the country and the time frame.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Part of what pushed that time frame then is we
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: had a November election and they had to get the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: certifications to so that the Electrical Electrical Electrical Electrical College
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: could meet and get stuff to Congress by a certain date,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: so they could be done by January seventh and inaugurate.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: It's January twenty as dates. Yeah, the pressure was on it,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of pressure to get a lot of stuff done.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Can you do recounts in twelve states in that short
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: time frame? No, And but we're going to we're dealing
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: with it. We haven't had that close of an election,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: but in this one, nobody got a majority. He had
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: four candidates running that Jackson was probably the most national
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: in a sense of the states that he won. But
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: you had Henry Clay running, who was Speaker of the
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: House from Kentucky. He won a certain number of states.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: He had William Crawford. Does anybody know who William Crawford was? No,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: William Crawford ended up winning four state ballots in the
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: House of Representatives as trying to decide who's going to
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: be president. William Crawford had had a stroke and a
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: heart attack and was barely moving and he still won
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: four states.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So kind of an orderly Joe Biden.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was maybe a little more advanced, and Joe
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: by making me love now. But you had two hundred
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: and sixty one electoral votes. Jackson won ninety nine. Okay,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: so he ended up being thinking he was the leader.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: He had thirty eight percent of the vote. I think
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: about this. There were maybe ten million people in the
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: twenty six states, or one hundred and fifty two hundred
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and seventy one votes Andrew Jackson, and he was the leader.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty one thousand out of ten million
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: people didn't vote. It wasn't that big of a deal.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: It really wasn't, you know. And it was very narrow
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: who got the vote, and women couldn't vote, slaves, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: then later on you got three fists, compromise and all
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: that stuff.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Well, in government expansion into every area of life, hadn't
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: it taken place?
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: This was the beginning of that, you know. And you
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: had people like Henry Clay, who was Hamiltonian in his viewpoint,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: where they thought there should be a much stronger role
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: of the federal government. You think about taxes, okay, I'd
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: rather not. Well, where were the revenue sources in eighteen
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: twenty four. They didn't have a They didn't have property
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: taxes per se. Some of the towns did, but the
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: federal government didn't. They didn't have an income tax, They
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: didn't have those various revenue sources excise taxes and stuff.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: What they had were tariffs. Where are we back to now? Tariffs?
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. It all
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: comes back that the tariffs ND selling land was what
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: was feeding the federal government in eighteen twenty four. They
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: would sell off federally owned land, particularly in the West,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: and that was why there was a big push and
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: there was no one looks really at the reasons for
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: manifest destiny and stuff. Well, yeah, the good pr Madison
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Avenue kind of things. It was a fundraiser, Hey, let's
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: go out west, and it's the girl Scout cookies of
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the time. You bet you, we'll sell you this acreage
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: and you get homestead it. And well, most homesteading failed,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Most people that went failed, But that's the environment we
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: were in. In eighteen twenty four, Congress met. There was
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: what they called a corrupt bargain between Henry Clay, who
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: was a speaker, John Quincy Adams, who won. Because of this,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: four states switched their votes that should have gone to
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Andrew Jackson. One I actually went to Crawford, oddly enough,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: who was very ill. And then John Quincy Adams became
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: president as a precursor for the eighteen twenty eight election
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: because for four years Jackson was mad and his supporters
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: were too.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Hose Ken. You see in Studio one A the Morning
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Show band over there in the suite with Iggy directing
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the band and in studio with me, doctor Ed Moore,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a little more history, and we're talking about we were
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: going to be talking about the presidency of Andrew Jackson.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But what we've really settled into, I think is a
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: deep dive into the election of eighteen twenty four, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it's the ramifications.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what it changed about our country and the forming
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: of political parties. I mean, at that point in time,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: there was the Democratic Republican Party that who the Federalists.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Imagine that, friends, you.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Know, the Federalists had faded. I get a kick out
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: of when they have the Jackson Jefferson Jackson used to dinners,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: and you know, they weren't today's Democrats or today's Republicans
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And the beginning, this was the beginning of
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the Republican Party. Henry Clay one of the most integral
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: people in the formation of what our country began. As
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: speaker and then as a senator, he formed a triumvirate
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: really of disparate people. John C. Calhoun, who was a
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Senator from South Carolina, was vice president for Quincy Adams
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: and vice president for Andrew Jackson, and they hated each other.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: But the way we picked back in those days, he
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: was on the cusp of that. He's also a relative
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: of mine, an ancestor of mine. He, Henry Clay and
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Daniel Webster kind of were three guys that would get together,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: maybe have a bourbon or something, and try to figure
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: out how could we best do this, how could we
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: do that? Not so animous to each other. Now. John C.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Calhoun down the road ended up being a big secessionist.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: But a lot of the groundwork for that kind of
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: stuff was how people got treated around eighteen twenty four
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and the Andy Jackson stuff and how that all evolved
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: into we are really a regional country. And when I
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: talked earlier about how we funded the government with tariffs
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: in the south. South hated tariffs because they produced mercantile
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: type goods and wanted to free trade, and the North,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: who was into all different kind of trade, they wanted
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to protectionists for manufacturing and other things going on. That's
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: when we started being divided. So when people say, oh,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: our politics today are so divided, we've always been divided.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: We're talking about two hundred and two years ago. Yeah,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: I mean the time flies we're getting ready to sell it.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Where we were in the middle of celebrating our two
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: hundred and fiftieth We had gotten through our infancy as
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: a country in eighteen twenty four, okay, but we weren't
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: and we were just trying to figure out how to
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: be an adult, and the world was very different the
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: way the rest of the world looked at us, and
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: we started to be able to flex a little bit
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and have a little bit of influence in what was
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: going on. But we were still focused inward, not outward.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: And then all of that evolved and next time we're
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: really talk about the eighteen twenty eight election. But it
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: was animosity on steroids. Nobody, like anybody varied a lot
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: of tension. We don't see that level of animosity even
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: in today's politics. Now, are you sure about that kind
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: of genteel I mean, DC always keeps trying to be
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: They don't call it like it is.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: It's rare.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: John Kennedy from Louisiana is about the only one that
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I see, and N Paul maybe where actually will say
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: what's on their mind and say it very forcefully. Most
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of them are little bumpers on them. And we got
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to I can't really tell you that I think you're
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: an idiot. You know, those do in a gentle way.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I love the way John Kennedy.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Well, the people that do that host talk shows.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Well, but you need people on the floor of the
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Senate to do the same thing, to call bs on
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: what these people are doing. If you don't think something's right,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: oppose it with all your might. Yeah, And we don't
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: tend to do that. We compromise, and well.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: We're certainly seeing that happened, but even then to no effect.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: But wrap up this segment, well, the role of the
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: federal government changed tremendously starting in eighteen twenty four, and
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I'll go through a quick list.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: We needed a standing army and the federal control of
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: state militias that began to occur. We needed the Navy,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: so they had to find a way to fund building frigates.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: It was the battleships in those days. We needed more
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: funds for national defense and a structure for national defense.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: We needed federal aid. It was the beginning of federal
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: aid for the construction of roads and canals for transport
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: of goods. The railroads were starting to be built predominantly
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: on the East coast, but then through the eighteen hundreds
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: going west. We needed a strong national bank and that
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: was a huge political issue during that time frame. And
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: stable credit. I mean, if you didn't have you couldn't
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: trade if you didn't have credit to do it. But
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of assets laying around. That was
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: done by finance, and what they ended up doing was
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: coming in with strong protective tariffs that the relationships between
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the North and Northern states and the South, agriculture and
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: cotton predominantly big ben change the role of anti slavery.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: There was no more slavery after what eighteen six I think,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: if I recall, no trading or whatever, but there were
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: still slaves existed. New states coming in affected the politics
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: would it be a slave state? The slave states wanted
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: to have a balance and keep the balance that they
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: were losing on that battle. All of this really began
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: to lead up to two things. The growth of our
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: country and what kind of a country we were going
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: to be, and then the division of our country in
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: eighteen sixty when we just fell completely apart.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: We're gonna have to pick it up there next time,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: next month, eighteen twenty eight and forward.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, I promise, Thanks so
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Much, Doctor Ed Moore with us this morning, a little
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: more history on the Morning Show with Preston Scott