[Sidenote: The nomination of presidential candidates in 1824.]
Webster was not put forward by anybody, and did not offer himself as a candidate. Clay was nominated by the legislature of Kentucky. Jackson was nominated by the legislature of Tennessee, and by two Pennsylvania conventions. While Adams had the advantage of the precedent which, for nearly a quarter of a century, had pointed to the Secretary of State as the natural successor to the presidential office.
[Sidenote: Failure of the electors to elect the President.]
As was to be expected, the electors did not choose any one of the four, since the Constitution requires a majority of the whole number of the electors for a choice. Jackson led with ninety-nine votes; Adams was next with eighty-four; { 137} Crawford followed with forty-one; and Clay came last with thirty-seven.
[Sidenote: Territorial distribution of the electoral vote.]
The electoral vote was distributed territorially as might have been naturally anticipated, except in two particulars. These were, the failure of Van Buren to secure the electoral vote of New York for Crawford, and the solid vote of Pennsylvania and South Carolina for Jackson. These facts had some significance in connection with subsequent developments, and require a little explanation.
[Sidenote: New York in the Election of 1824.]
New York was one of the Commonwealths which, down to 1824, permitted the legislature to choose the presidential electors. In 1823 the legislature was still under the control of Van Buren and his colleagues in the "Regency," the Albany machine, and had the election taken place in 1823 he could doubtless have delivered the electoral vote entire to Crawford. But one of Jackson's shrewdest supporters, probably Clinton, started the scheme for transferring the choice of the electors from the legislature to the voters. This, if successful, would destroy the control of the "Regency" over the electoral vote. The opposition of the "Regency" to the bill, when it appeared in the legislature, caused its rejection by that body; but the popular indignation was roused to such a pitch against the "Regency" and its adherents in the legislature, in consequence of this act, that, in the Commonwealth elections of 1824, the "Regency" party was driven from power, and the new legislature chose electors who cast the electoral vote of the Commonwealth chiefly for Adams, as the Northern candidate.