presidents and first ladies. learn about their politics and legacies, all this month in prime time and every weekend on american history tv on c-span3. announcer: coming up next on lectures in history, professor robert watson discusses the 1824 and 1828 elections, which resulted in the sixth and seventh presence of the united states. according to professor watson, these are among the most important and scandalous of american history. about 50 minute. prof. watson: today's topic, to look at the early elections in the 1800s, the elections of 1824 and 1828. before you roll your eyes and nod off to sleep, these elections in particular were among the most important in america's history, and two of the most intriguing as we will find out.

three main points i want to discuss. three so what's? our history is made by powerful and strong-minded individuals. in the white house character is key. what we are going to find out is these elections and other related elections were influenced to a good degree by the character of the individuals we will discuss. personalities shape history. scandals have shaped history. we don't like to admit this. it is not a source of pride for our country. but major scandals have had a significant impact on the course of history. for whatever political scandals there are today, we have been there, done that. whatever politicians are doing today, there is a long history. the most important factor in influencing the elections was

scandal. our democracy is a work in progress. democracy is never static. the framers were brilliant, they were not infallible. we continue to evolve and devolve in terms of how we massage this experiment. ok everyone? i want to start by talking about some context. the 1800 election. it was one of the most important in history. it featured a clash of the titans if you will. john adams against thomas jefferson. adams had been the sitting president. jefferson was his vice president. until 1804 and the 12 amendment, when you ran for the presidency you one separate, president and vice president. jefferson came in second so he was the vice president. no love lost between these guys.

i'm pretty sure adams needed a food tester in other words. it would be similar to having president obama, and mccain as the vice president. adams and jefferson were two of the most important founding fathers. adams chaired the committee charged with producing a declaration, jefferson wrote the declaration. it was a real contest. the first election in this young republic's history without washington on the scene. washington died in 1799. could the young republic endure without washington around? in the electoral college it was 73 for jefferson. 68 for adams.

the founding fathers were brilliant but they didn't foresee what we should do in the case of a tie. we're in palm beach, florida. we know about crazy electoral college counts. they decided to have a revote between jefferson and burr to break the tie. they revoted it and it was a tie. a third, a fourth, a fifth. they had 35 revotes. all 35 ballots were tied. it was not until the 36th ballot they were able to break the tie. we were in a constitutional crisis. the tiebreaker came in part because of alexander hamilton. hamilton and jefferson were archenemies. hamilton decided to tell others to throw their support behind jefferson, his enemy, because at least jefferson, unlike butter

-- unlike burr according to hamilton, was sane. this would be resolved when the two of them had a duel. the vice president killed the first secretary of the treasury. that is the context. as a result of that election, the 12th ammendment was in place in 1804. now the president and vice president run on the same ticket like we see today. they hoped to avoid further electoral college debacles like in 1800. it did not take long. 1824, lightning strikes a second time. that is context. our story begins in 1780, with a young woman. here is a likeness of her. rachel donelson. her father is an adventurous fellow, colonel donelson who

takes settlers from virginia across the frontier. the travel for four months and arrive in tennessee. colonel donelson fights indians and creates small settlements in tennessee, and founds tennessee. rachel becomes kind of the debutante if you will. glamorous, attractive, opinionated teenager, daughter of the most powerful man in the area. rachel does something she is not supposed to do. when she is 17 years old she elopes and marries an older man, many years her senior, captain lewis robards. this was a big scandal. she runs away and marries robards. robards she marries in 1785.

it appears he gambled his money away, drank constantly. even had her move in with him. she does what a proper girl ought not to do, she leaves him. divorce was almost unheard of at the time. before the revolutionary war every state and colony in the south outlawed divorce. she leaves him and goes back to tennessee. she goes back to make it work. he is very abusive. she leaves for a second time, and swear she is never coming back. she meets a dashing judge named andrew jackson. rachel's mother, the widow by now, there was an indian raid that killed colonel donelson, the widow donelson opens her

home for boarders. one of them is andrew jackson. you have built-in security. one of the toughest guys in the area, a tough frontiersman. he becomes a famous duelist. the widow donelson plays matchmaker and it works. andrew jackson and rachel fall madly in love. jackson helps rachel draft a letter and send back to robards, living in kentucky, saying please grant me a divorce. the laws at the time, women could not initiate divorce. women did not initiate a divorce. rachel sends it to robards and thinks that she is divorced.

in 1791, they get married. here is a likeness. this is not a real painting. andrew jackson and rachel getting married. the problem, two years later they find out she was never actually divorced. robards was so lazy he never got around to finishing the divorce. rachel becomes the most scandalous lady in tennessee. the adulteress, the bigamist, and the whore of tennessee. it's a huge scandal. andrew jackson, to say he is thin skinned is an understatement. he would be the most famous duelist in american history. we like to think he fought these duels because of high political principles. he thought these tools because of what men said about his wife.

so, they find out rachel was married to two men. it is a huge scandal. jackson drafts a famous letter sent to robards. jackson says i demand you immediately grant my wife a divorce, or i'm going to personally come to kentucky, cut off both of your ears with my sword, and something else too. robards knows jackson makes good on his threats. he grants the divorce. in january, 1794, they get married in a civil ceremony. a scandal would always dog them. this is the copy of the actual divorce statement. robards and the court. the divorce of rachel and lewis robards was one of if not the first divorce in the state of kentucky. here is the problem for jackson. this is leading to my point, the role of scandal and personality,

and headstrong characters shaping history. the widow donelson says to andrew jackson in a famous line, would you sacrifice your life to save my child's good name? rachel was seen as the whore. jackson said 10,000 times, madam, if i had them. jackson becomes a brawler, a warrior, a tough judge. andrew jackson today would be in these arnold schwarzenegger movies. it is hard to say what a hero he was to common folks. as a duelist, he thought multiple duels and killed folks. dueling at the time was seen as the proper way for gentlemen to settle their disagreements. the public would gather, it was like the ncaa final four.

each person brought a second in case if you chickened out, your second could fight for you. they served as an official over the duel. there were even dueling grounds, which is remarkable. everyone would bring back an official dueling ground for the congress. jackson fought some on dueling grounds. he would challenge someone to a duel and pull his pistols on the street and go at it in the street. one of his most famous duels, here is a likeness of it, charles dickinson. the year was 1806. dickinson and jackson had a disagreement over the debts of gambling and horse racing. dickinson also said something about jackson's wife, which always sets him off. dickinson was a sharpshooter artist.

he would do shooting demonstrations. dickinson once shot a string at 24 paces in half. he even tells his supporters he carries the string around as a memento. he gives the string to his supporters and says if you see colonel jackson, this is what's going to happen to him. the duel is not authorized. the crowds gathered. instead of standing at 24 feet and flipping to see who gets first shot, you and i are almost 24 feet, imagine standing there. this was one of those duels where it was a quick draw duel. this is jackson's thinking. if i quick shoot i'm likely to miss. dickinson will hit me no matter what. i'm just going to stand there

and let dickinson hit me. i'm going to live, and i'm going to shoot him back. they gather. imagine making that your strategy. crazy, and courageous at the same time. draw. dickinson shoots jackson in the chest. jackson stumbles backwards, but does not go down. dickinson says i could not have missed him. jackson removes his hand and blood starts filling up. dickinson is going wild. the officials have to stop them from running away. jackson pulls out his pistol and aims it, his pistol misfires. history is better anything that hollywood does. you can't write a script. you can't write a script like this. it builds the suspense. he gets a second pistol, shoots dickinson and kills him.

as jackson is walking off the dueling ground, you can imagine people. jackson is ready to collapse. the bullet lodges next to his heart, so close it is never removed. he carries it until the day of his death. as jackson is walking off to get in the carriage, he turns the crowd and says even if he had shot me straight through the brain, i would have shot him back. that is a soundbite. he was the hero of the war of 1812. in new orleans. 14,000 british soldiers, to take over new orleans and begin the southern invasion. an armada. jackson has five little gunboats.

jackson puts together the most ragtag, misfit band of soldiers in history. freed slaves, and slaves, cajuns from the swamps. jackson enlists john lafitte and his two brothers to join him. he holds this band together and destroys the british. numerically vastly superior, the british suffer over 2000 casualties. jackson loses 13 men. he is an enormous hero. dating back to his childhood, when he was a little boy, his father had died days before his birth. he was a poor farmer from ireland. andrew was the third son. they lived in poverty. when andrew was a boy there were three of them. his brother joined the revolutionary war.

jackson was too young. he and his middle brother go and lie about their age. they become even regulars. they are not actually part of the militia. they are guys who run through the woods and do guerrilla attacks on british lines. they get captured when he is a little boy, and they are marched 40 miles without water, without shoes to prison. disease is breaking out everywhere in the prison. smallpox is running wild in the prison. jackson and his middle brother, robert, contract smallpox. the older brother dies on the battlefield of a heat stroke. jackson's mother comes to the prison to beg for the release of her two boys. the prison guard, the british officer, tells jackson to shine his shoes. jackson says no.

the officer pulls a sword. it cuts him across the head. what a brave kid. 15, 14 years old. jackson and his brother are released with the mother. robert dies from smallpox. the mother feels inspired to help other young boys. she nurses other young boys. she contracts the disease and dies as well. jackson is orphaned. one other quick story. you can see on the lower right. when jackson was president, there is an attempted assassination on jackson. a man approaches jackson with two pistols while jackson is standing in front of the capitol. he pulls them, squeezes, misfires. jackson hears the crowd, turns around, you can see the scene there.

two misfires. what is the likelihood? jackson should have been dead. jackson pulls his cane and beats his assassin to the ground. it is jackson the crowd has to pull off. what a story. today there would be shown on cnn all the time. jackson was the hero. it is hard for me to emphasize what kind of a hero he was. when jackson was a judge, a story that spread through tennessee and helps make him this household name not only in tennessee and beyond, there was a fellow named russell bean, the town would have all of their court hearings. anyone who had to go to court would wait until he came to town. bean was described as the biggest man.

jackson's arrived as the judge. bean with a knife cut the ears off of a little kid while he is drunk and terrorizing the town. jackson wants to throw the book at the guy. bean walks out of the courtroom. jackson called the sheriff and says put him back in his seat. the sheriff doesn't want to touch him because he is so big and menacing. he orders the sheriff to go out and get him. jackson authorizes the the sheriff to put a posse together. the posse comes back empty-handed. everyone is afraid. word comes back in the courtroom bean is out front with two guns . jackson disrobe's and marches

out of the courtroom. he said blast it you infernal villain. bean looked at jackson and went to jail. he said i saw shoot in his eyes. these kinds of stories, you can't hire a d.c. pollster to make these stories. 1824, andrew jackson is a national hero. among the elites he is a dualer, a brawler, a drunk, a someone who runs with prostitutes. among the masses, he's a great hero, and brave. these are some quotes from newspapers and literature put out against jackson and his wife. rachel becomes the adulterous.

ought a convicted adulterous and her paramore husband be placed in the highest office of this free and christian land, says one newspaper. they say jackson thought it was ok to take another man's pretty wife. they say when jackson shows up at the presidential mansion he would show up with a scalping knife in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, always ready to scalp any person that differed. the 1824 campaign, that is henry clay of kentucky. lower left is john quincy adams. top right is william crawford of georgia. lower right is john c calhoun. these are four of the most powerful politicians in the country, and andrew jackson.

each one of these folks had a regional base of support. clay had some in the frontier and west. quincy adams in the north. crawford in the south. calhoun realizes without -- having to split his base of support -- he is not going to win. calhoun declares himself for the vice presidency. his strategy is they will be damaged goods, i will be their vice president. it was a brawl. a knockdown drag out. rachael the whore being one of the campaign issues. anytime anyone said that to jackson he was ready to duel. he wins the popular vote. he also wins the electoral

college vote. here is the problem. in order to win the presidency you need a majority. jackson had a plurality. he did not have a majority. if you don't have a majority, the vote goes to the house of representatives. the house picks among the three leading folks. each state gets to cast one vote. if we were virginia back then, let's say there were twenty of us. we would have to agree on who we would vote on. virginia cast its vote for crawford or whatever. jackson's fighting about who is going to win this race. he learns clay, henry clay, travels to massachusetts and visits with john quincy adams. it becomes known as the corrupt bargain.

clay cut a deal with john quincy adams. historians are not so sure. after john quincy adams wins the presidency he picks clay as his secretary of state, and a lot of other people for positions. where there is smoke, probably fire. clay had enormous respect at home. he made a great secretary of state. it gave the appearance of being improper. the constitution was unclear about the presidency. here we are again in 1824. what they would do is a handful of members of congress would get together and decide who the candidates were going to be, and who is going to be president of the united states. jackson helps raise consciousness and anger over this brouhaha.

he says everything is carried by intrigue and management. not the public vote. it is now a contest between a few demagogues and the people. it remains to be seen whether a minority can course the people. the people must assume their constitutional rights and put down these demagogues. the people were outraged. the election already occurred and the problem was, john quincy adams strikes a deal, wins the presidency. jackson's theory. he's picks of the corrupt bargain, he calls it the great whore of babylon. jackson says using a biblical reference, so you see the judas of the west has close the contract with the devil, and will receive the 30 pieces of silver. his end will be the same. then he says, was there ever

such a barefaced corruption in any country? we have a rematch in 1828. jackson runs against john quincy adams. it is potentially the most important in america's history. it was by far the ugliest in america's history. this was the ugliest election. jackson supporters view john quincy adams not as his excellency, but his fraudulency. the son of a president being made president. they also said jackson's wife was lady adulterous. rachel had aged very poorly.

she became bitter over of these scandals. the idea of her being a whore graded on her nerves. she says that the enemies of the general have dipped their arrows in poison and sped the matt mead. jackson wins in 1828. he wins -- it is significant for many reasons. one of the big issues was this . rachel jackson had wished her husband would not win. she said for mr. jackson's sake i'm glad he won but for my sake i never wished it. she did not want to go to the president's mansion.

a few weeks after the election, just before the inauguration, she dies of a heart attack. she is buried on christmas eve. she is buried in the gown she has just purchased for the inauguration. jackson says may god forgive her and her murderers. i never can. they had a good marriage. jackson was a monster. rachel soothed the beast. with rachel around jackson was less of a wild man. with her dead and jackson blaming her enemies on her death, he said she died of a broken heart, he enters the white house furious. the stubborn side of him returns. jackson is hell-bent on revenge in the white house. the irony was this.

jackson's enemies said there would be a whore in the white house. it appears that was not the case. here is what happened. jackson takes office at her and angry, and for all these scandals involving rachel and jackson, that was nothing for what he deals with an 1829 when he is inaugurated. one of his best friends was john eaton. they were two senators from tennessee. eaton was jackson's most trusted ally. the person on the left is peggy o'neill. she was sort of the first monica lewinsky. her father is an irishman, who opened a tavern and boarding house. franklin house was where all of the bachelor members of congress would stay when they came to washington. or folks like jackson.

it was a respectable brothel. it was a popular drinking establishment. when peg was a girl she would sing and play the piano for the patrons. jackson called her the most amazing little lady in america. she would sit on labs and they would buy her presents. little peg grew into a voluptuous, green eyed, dark-haired beauty. sultry. the descriptions of her are hot and heavy. the most beautiful woman anyone had seen. she's had multiple affairs. now she is sitting on the laps of members of congress for other reasons. everyone has the hots for little peg. she elopes with an older man.

she has so many attempted elopements. one man is said to have committed suicide when she turned him down. the father and mother sent her to a finishing school. she promises if they let her come back to the tavern, she will not miss behave. she uses what she learned in the finishing school in her arsenal. now she is an even better singer, better pianist, and she can speak some friends. -- french. one of the great founders, so many men are after peg. peg marries a man, john bowie timberlake. they move into a house her

father owns. timberlake is a drunk, can't hold on to a job. they pay off all of their debts. timberlake is forced to go off to sea. peg has three kids and multiple miscarriages. if you do the math, timberlake only comes back for brief visits. timberlake dies at sea. it appears that he either drank himself to death or committed suicide. he writes peg a letter saying if anything happens to me, you can trust senator john eaton. she did more than trust him. within days, eaton is courting her. she is the monica lewinsky of washington, d.c. jackson wants eaton in his cabinet.

jackson puts eaton as secretary of war. they get married on january 1, 1829 before the inauguration. jackson asks peg to serve as his hostess. now we have a whore in the white house. the public boycotts jackson's inaugural. the wives of washington, whose husbands were interested in peg, none of the wives would let their husbands go to the dinner. it took jackson nine months before he was able to have a cabinet dinner. at the dinner the wives sat there quietly. it was a common practice to visit ladies of washington, and leave your calling card. no one would return visits from peg.

even his niece said peg was an adulterous. one commentator wrote senator eaton married his mistress, and the mistress of 11 dozen others. jackson is furious. his nemesis was calhoun. talk about politics makes for strange bedfellows. calhoun is vice president to jackson. they are enemies. calhoun wants to win the presidency in 1832. he decides to make the peg scandal a huge scandal. he lets jackson be destroyed by the scandal. they have a huge fight.

jackson calls a meeting with his cabinet, calls a meeting with reverends and preachers. he announces he has taken affidavits, and there is no scandal involving peg, she has never misbehaved. calhoun makes fun of jackson and says age cannot weather her, nor custom stale her infinite virginity. when jackson hears it, he blows up. jackson and eaton want a duel with calhoun. calhoun resigns. the postscript, in 1832 probably one member of the cabinet stood with little peg and treated her well. martin van buren, known as the little magician of new york. why did he stand with little peg?

he was the cabinet member who was a widower. he didn't have a wife to prevent him from going to the cabinet meetings. after calhoun resigns, jackson picks van buren to be his minister to britain. calhoun uses his influence to get that defeated. jackson makes van buren his vice president and says he will be my successor. jackson is beloved by the public. in 1832 jackson backs van buren and wins the presidency. jackson backed van buren because he was nice to peg. his election in 1824 and 1828 changed the country. before jackson only the elites governed.

jackson was a brand-new type of president. adams, monroe, jefferson, they were the most elite privileged men. washington married into money. jackson is an orphan who runs around with prostitutes from the frontier. it brings in a coonskin democracy. the elites boycotted the inaugural. there were more men wearing coonskin caps. he brings in the average people. 800,000 people, over the 1824 election voted in 1828. an increase of 800,000 people.

democracy was probably dealt a blow in 1824 with the corrupt bargain, when the people voted for someone but that person didn't win, if you can imagine such a thing. we reaffirmed democracy in 1828. the people came out. jackson came out and made it right. one final postscript. in case you were wondering, what happened to little peg, the whore? she presided during jackson's presidency. jackson names her husband governor of florida. she was down here. it is always florida. when they announce a scandal we always say florida. they went to spain, she loved madrid. the scandal followed her across the atlantic. peg lives a long life.

he even leaves her a fortune. she is a prominent figure around washington but the women never make up with her. when she is 59 years old, her granddaughter, emily, is taking dance lessons from a famous 19-year-old italian dancer named antonio. romeo was probably his middle name. he was a famous womanizer. at 59 years old peg asks her to marry her. peg remains scandalous. he robs her of everything she has, the granddaughter and him run away together. late in life she lived in what is called an old woman's home.

she lived with her son, grandson john. when she died the new york times had a funny obituary. it said doubtless among the dead populating the cemetery are some of her assailants, and cordially as they may have hated her, they are now her neighbors forever. she was buried in the famous cemetery because of her husband being a u.s. senator. democracy devolved but then evolved. it was dealt a blow, but it was affirmed and then reaffirmed. it is constantly evolving and changing like that. the role of personality, jackson's strong-will shapes those elections. he was so stubborn. the role of scandal, all three elections.

24, 28 and 32 shaped by scandal, sex scandals nonetheless. it is not a part of our history we like to be proud of but it is an undeniable part of our history. let me take a question or two. >> you spoke about the electoral college during the talk. the previous elections before that, when is there going to be time to move on to what the people really think? prof. watson: the question was, we have seen the electoral college misfire a few times. 2000 being the most recent. when will we move beyond it?

the framers were brilliant but not infallible. they did not deal effectively with the issue of slavery. they allow the 3/5 clause. they picked the least harmful, the least of the bat options available to them. the electoral college has not worked properly five times in our history. it also misfired in 1876 where the person who won the popular vote lost the electoral college. one of the three states involved in 1876 was florida just like in 2000. in 1888, same thing. just as hayes won the electoral college in 1876. and gore won the popular vote but george w. bush won the electoral college. will we get rid of it? don't hold your breath. there have been more constitutional amendments to get rid of it than any other issue, including slavery.

at last count, there were over 740 attempted efforts. we have never come close to doing it. even though the electoral college may seem to be a flawed mechanism we would need to amend the constitution, and so far we have been unsuccessful. questions? >> was it significant that he didn't become president because he did offer the compromise? prof. watson: good point. calhoun was one of the giants on the political landscape. as was clay. they were giants on the political landscape. today we don't have a lot of members of congress that are national household names, that are just giant figures that loom over the congress. what calhoun wanted, he got. clay and calhoun would never get their destiny, because of andrew

jackson. john c calhoun, it was because of his opposition with jackson. he picked the wrong fight. calhoun was popular but jackson was more popular. going back to south carolina and saying i'm going to let jackson burn, because of the petticoat scandal, even though the elites were offended by the scandal, the masses ate it up. newspapers back then read like tabloids today. with stories about peg and eaton. jackson's heroic image, the orphan boy standing up to a british officer, the war of 1812, the duels, the attempt ed assassination.

you can't buy that kind of press. calhoun misjudged and would never fulfill his destiny. in modern times you may think of ted kennedy or someone like that. clearly you put clay and calhoun on the list. questions? a follow-up. >> is it true that he went on to bankrupt the first national bank? prof. watson: jackson had many feuds. when he picked a fight he was in it to win it. negotiate was not part of his vocabulary. one of the many feuds he had was with the u.s. bank. ironically, he was furious with the way the bank was run. over the same way today we may see the role of the government, republicans may say debt and deficit are too big. democrats may say we need more

education. is the bank a proper or improper role at the time? the president before, john quincy adams, gave us infrastructure. he built roads and canals. one of the unique sidebars. even though jackson was furious with the bank and the way it was run, the man who ran the bank, his wife said some negative things about peg. part of jackson's war was over principle with the bank. a good part of his frustration with it was personal. we get back to the role of personalities, to the role of character, and political pissing matches.

the head of the bank, i forget his name at the moment, his wife said some nasty things about peg so it was personal. with jackson, everything was personal. today we see the role of scandals, john edwards, mark foley, influencing politics and elections. just not so profound as it was then. thanks everybody. have a good day. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] join us every saturday evening as we join students to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution 9/11. lectures in history also all available as podcasts.

visit our website or download them from itunes. c-span. critic by cable television companies and brought to you as a public service. in 2015, the abraham lincoln published a book of musings celebrating or responding to that gettysburg address. each interesting -- entry consistent of the same number of words used in his speech. theext, the editor of gettysburg reply reads passages from the book including writings from jimmy carter,: follow -- jimmy carter, colin powell, and others.

>> it is my great pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker, carla khorowski. we have met a couple of times before. most recently at the new york historical society. carla khorowski is chief executive officer of the presidential library. the most visited residential library and museum in the noted -- united states. she writes a regular column for the foundation's magazine. she is the founder and executive director of the 1350 foundation, engaging citizens and active citizenship. she's the editor of "gettysburg replies: the world responds to abraham lincoln's gettysburg address."