On December 1, 1824, the unresolved presidential election of 1824 went to the US House. It was required by the US Constitution because no candidate had a majority of the Electoral College.
John Quincy Adams won eventually…………here it goes:
In the November 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president.
Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election.
On December 1, 1824, the results were announced. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams–the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States–received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Virginia won 37 electoral votes.
As dictated by the Constitution, the election was then turned over to the House of Representatives.
The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House.
Representative Henry Clay, who was disqualified from the House vote as a fourth-place candidate, agreed to use his influence to have John Quincy Adams elected.
Clay and Adams were both members of a loose coalition in Congress that by 1828 became known as the National Republicans, while Jackson’s supporters were later organized into the Democratic Party.
Thanks to Clay’s backing, on February 9, 1825, the House elected Adams as president of the United States.
And we think that our politics is crazy.
It was not pretty but the candidates were willing to abide by the rule of law. In other words, no one was happy with the outcome but the opposition accepted the results and the country moved on.
Four years later, Andrew Jackson easily defeated President Adams to become the 7th president of the US.
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