the legislature to elect him to the U.S. Senate--a gesture designed to demonstrate the extent of his popularity in his home state. The election of 1824 had failed to determine President James Monroe's successor because the electoral ballots were split among four candidates, none of whom had a majority. According to the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, the House of Representatives was required to select the chief executive from among the three men with the highest electoral count. In 1824 these three included the Senator from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson, who had 99 electoral votes; the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, with 84 electoral votes; and the Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Crawford, who received 41 electoral votes. Henry Clay, who was the fourth candidate, was eliminated since this total electoral count reached only 37 votes. Jackson also took a commanding 40,000 popular vote lead over the second highest candidate, John Adams. According to the followers of Adams, Jackson's candidacy was a terrible judgment in that an uneducated, untrained, uninformed, and inexperienced Indian fighter would attempt to challenge governmentally established gentlemen for the highest political office in the nation. His opponents (both supporters of Adams and simply people against Jackson for personal reasons) first argued that he was incompetent by training and background to lead the nation as President. He was of course, uneducated in the fact that he did not attend college as all American Presidents before him had. To prove Jackson's lack of qualifications the friends of Adams were not above circulating forgeries which demonstrated Jackson's illiteracy. His overwhelming popularity and respectable reputation as a war hero had helped him to win the popular vote of 1824. However, since he was unable to obtain an electoral vote majority, the vote to decide who would become President would go to the House of Repre...
