Essay On Why Did Clay Win Dbq

Quincy Adams, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun emerged as Clay’s strongest competitors for the presidency. Later in 1822, General Andrew Jackson was elected by the Tennessee legislature to the senate. Although Clay did not take him seriously at first, Jackson began to threaten Clay’s presidential chances because the both had strong support in the western states. In 1823, Crawford had suffered a major stroke, and John C. Calhoun withdrew from the running when Jackson won support from the Pennsylvania legislature. This brought the 1824 election down to four major candidates. The four major candidates, Adams, Crawford, Jackson and Clay were all Democratic-Republicans. Clay assumed that with all four of them in the running, no candidate would win the majority of the electoral votes. This would then require the House of Representatives to decide the election. The top three electoral vote receives would go to a runoff in the House where each state receives one vote. Clay felt that if it came down to this, he would be able to win because of his power as Speaker of the House. Clay was correct in his assumption that no

candidate would win the majority of the electoral votes, however, his supporters had let him down and allowed Crawford to finish third, leaving him out of the running completely.
This loss greatly upset Henry Clay and humiliated him, however do to his power in the House of Representatives as the speaker, supporters of the remaining candidates immediately began asking for his support of the House vote. Adams then met with Clay privately on January
9, 1825.

During this three hour meeting, Clay promised to support Adams. Adams was the most open to Clay’s American system, and Adams was the only candidate that Clay saw as fit for the presidency. He regarded Jackson and sickly Crawford as unfit for this position. With Clay’s help, John Quincy Adams was able to able to win the House vote on the first ballot. After election to presidency, Adams offered Clay the position of Secretary of State. Clay accepted this position, although he was worried that he would later be accused of giving his support solely so he would be given that position. Henry Clay was right to be worried. Although both Adams and Clay deny discussing giving Clay this position in advance, Jackson was outraged when he heard about Clay receiving the job of Secretary of State. He and his supporters accused the pair of corrupt

bargaining.
Clay was accepted into the position of Secretary of State and remained in office from 1825-1829. Although Clay had a relatively successful time as Secretary of State, he had been severely hurt by the accusations from Jackson. These attacks on his character hurt him not just emotionally, but also politically. Over the course of his time in this position, Clay did eventually come to like Adams and Clay helped him develop a domestic program while facing Jackson’s attacks. Clay was more successful in his time as Secretary of State in regard to negotiating commercial treaties with Latin American republics. Clay would negotiate a “most favored nation” trading status with Latin American countries in order to make sure that no European country had an advantage over the United States.
Andrew Jackson only gained popularity during the Adams administration. Supporters of Adams and Jackson slowly began to align themselves with different parties: Adam’s supporters calling themselves National Republicans and Jackson’s supporters calling themselves Democrats. Jackson’s followers began to make use of newspapers to help spread the word of their campaign, while Adams still pursuit a letter-writing strategy of the past. A few of Adam’s followers accused Jackson’s wife of bigamy. Although Clay was not responsible for these accusations, he chose not to say anything about them and this caused there to be a permanent resentment towards Jackson and Clay. In the presidential election of 1828, Jackson took 56% of the popular vote and almost