Andrew Jackson 1828 presidential campaign

Andrew Jackson for President
Campaign	U.S. presidential election, 1828
Candidate	Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson U.S. Senator from Tennessee (1797–1798, 1823–1825) John C. Calhoun 7th Vice President of the United States (1825–1832)
Affiliation	Democratic Party
Status	Won general election
Headquarters	Tennessee

This article is part of a series about Andrew Jackson
Personal Early life Revolutionary War service Early career Personal life Slave trading Military career Creek War Battle of New Orleans First Seminole War Presidential aspirations 1824 election Corrupt bargain 7th President of the United States Presidency First term 1828 campaign election 1st inauguration Jacksonian democracy Spoils system Petticoat affair Maysville veto Indian Removal Trail of Tears Nat Turner's rebellion Bank War Nullification crisis Foreign affairs Second term 1832 election 2nd inauguration Senate censure Payment of national debt Specie Circular Assassination attempts Reaction to anti-slavery tracts Texas Revolution Exploring expedition Panic of 1837 Judicial appointments Post-presidency Later life and death Legacy Legacy Memorials Manifest destiny The Hermitage Second Party System Bibliography
v t e

In 1828, Andrew Jackson, who had lost the 1824 election in a runoff in the United States House of Representatives, despite winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote by significant margins, ran for President of the United States. He had been nominated by the Tennessee state legislature in 1825, and did not face any opposition from Democratic candidates. Jackson launched his campaign on January 8, 1828, with a major speech on the 13th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans from 1815, thus marking the birth of the Democratic Party.^[1] Jackson accepted John C. Calhoun, incumbent vice president under John Quincy Adams, as his running mate.^[2]

John Quincy Adams was an unpopular President from the beginning of his term, and the Democratic Party, which was just beginning to emerge as a political force, mobilized behind Jackson, a popular war hero who had served in the Battle of New Orleans. Despite his successes as a member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the Military Governor of Florida, Jackson had been born in relatively modest surroundings in rural Carolina, which appealed to the majority of Americans, who were small farmers who benefited from the introduction of Universal male suffrage from the 1820s to the 1840s. This expansion of voting rights helped both major political parties (the Democrats and the National Republicans) canvass voters and expand the popular vote.

The campaign was marked by large amounts of nasty "mudslinging." Jackson's marriage, for example, came in for vicious attack. The Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy also played a major role. Charles Hammond, in his Cincinnati Gazette, asked: "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?"^[3] Jackson also came under heavy attack as a slave trader who bought and sold slaves and moved them about in defiance of modern standards or morality. (He was not attacked for merely owning slaves used in plantation work.)^[4] The Coffin Handbills attacked Jackson for his courts-martial, execution of deserters and massacres of Indian villages, and also his habit of dueling.