Have you heard of the dirtiest elections in the history of America?

     Dirty is the least we can say about this year’s election, with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both trying unconventional ways to undermine their opponent. And with Trump’s victory, some people are calling his election as the dirtiest ever, but believe it or not, it doesn’t even come close to as dirty as the 1828’s election.

   John Quincy Adams became the sixth President of the United States in 1824, after an election in which he lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but was still appointed President.

   The elections of 1824 had four candidates competing for the presidency: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay, and although Jackson won the popular vote and the Electoral College, he didn’t make it to the white house. That’s because Jackson didn’t win the majority of the Electoral College, and fell slightly short of half the electors, which meant Under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment, the presidential election fell to the House of Representatives, who had to choose between the top 3 candidates.

   Henry Clay who was fourth and thus couldn’t make it on the ballot, but he still had considerable influence since he was the speaker of the House of Representatives, who again were about to choose the next president. Clay also, along with Adams, shared a hated Jackson as they saw him as an uneducated and brutish man who didn’t deserve the presidency, so he decided to put all his support behind Adams. After Adams won the presidency, he made Clay his secretary of state. As you would guess, this made Jackson furious, who called it “corrupt bargain”, and accused Adams of taking the presidency against the choice of the people.

   This election had some serious consequences, and one of the most notable of them was the divide between the Republicans and the Democrats. Before 1824, Democrats and Republicans were one party, called the Democratic-Republican Party, but after the election of Adams, Jackson couldn’t stay in the same party with the people who ripped the presidency from him, so he decided to start a new, The Democrats.

   But believe it or not, the next election was the one called the dirtiest in history. In 1828, Jackson’s supporters spread rumors that Adams was a pimp, and that the reason he was popular in Russia when he was ambassador was because he sold them women. Adams supporters weren’t saints either, and called Jackson’s mom a prostitute, and even spread the rumors that Jackson is the bastard son of a half black man. The election got so dirty that Adams decided to stop complaining. The controversy didn’t stop there, as Jackson was called an adulterer, because he met his wife Rachel while she was married, and after she couldn’t get a divorce she married him anyway. Rachel died before the end of the election, and Jackson blamed her death on the hurtful words that were said about her honor.

   After the election ended and Andrew Jackson finally and rightfully won, he still didn’t get over his anger, and refused to meet the ex-president Adams, who himself skipped Jackson’s inauguration. And here I am, thinking the Trump vs Clinton race was bloody!

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