The Word Reconstruction Era

Taft was opposed by William Jennings Bryan, running for a third time. Progressives were excited with Taft's election and conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt. The campaign which Taft won was more about personality than the issues. Taft won with 52% of the popular vote.

The election of 1800 was a fight between the democratic-republicans and the federalists party for presidency. It also became the first time in American History where there was a peaceful shift in the political party, from the federalists party to the democratic-republicans party (Jeffersonians). The election of 1800 consists of five candidates, each believing that victory by the other side would ruin their nation. The candidates were, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson in the democratic-republican party, and John Adams, Charles Pinckney, and John Jay in the federalist party;

Although Adams and his supporters tried there hardest to corrupt Jackson's chances at becoming president, Jackson received three times the amount of electoral votes that Adams did, thus making him the President of the United States.

     Hayes won the disputed election. Four states submitted irregular returns. It was disputed if the Republican president of the Senate or the Democratic Speaker of the House should count them. It was decided that an electoral commission made up of fifteen men. There were eight Republicans and seven Democrats, so the Republicans won. The Democrats would only accept this with conditions, one of which was to remove troops from the south.

During the election of 1824, there were five candidates for the president. The election of 1824 was the fall of the Federalist Party that never would rise to power again. All the candidates were Democratic-Republican, but that didn’t seem to weigh heavily on the outcome of the election of 1824. The two front runners were John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson that would be decided by the House of Representatives because of the Twelve Amendment to the Constitution states the House will decide by majority vote between the two candidates when there is no majority of the electoral votes. As a result of the first ballot in the House of Representatives in voting for a president, John Quincy Adams emerged victorious at the election of 1824.

The election of 1824 is one of the most unique and interesting elections in American history. The four candidates in the election were William Crawford, Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. They were all from the Jacksonian Republican Party.

The Federalists no longer held power in the presidency and in Congress and as a whole, were “destined never to regain national power” (Tindall and Shi 317). The defeat of Adams was the beginning of the Federalists’ decline and their party would gradually fade over time into obscurity. Even more important was that the election of 1800 demonstrated the success of the so-called experimental republican government. Jefferson’s victory showed that it was possible for the government handle the transfer of power from the in-power party to the out-of-power party. Even though the period leading up to the election was filled with conflict between the political parties, after the election the presidency was transferred from Adams to Jefferson without bloodshed or legal issues. Jefferson was unanimously recognized as the president and the government was established as a legitimate political body that could handle change, not just a dynasty of Federalists (Mr. Weisend). The election of 1800 and subsequent deadlock between Jefferson and Burr also exposed a flaw in the U.S. Constitution that the original Founders did not expect. The Founders originally gave each elector in the Electoral College two ballots to cast for a President and a Vice President. They had hoped that the two candidates with the most votes would set aside their differences and assume the roles of President and Vice President,

John Ferling, the author, began by describing the events that occurred just prior to the election, and painted the picture of John Adams travelling to Washington D.C. from his Massachusetts farm and Thomas Jefferson from his hilltop lair of Monticello in Virginia—symbolizing the differences among Adam’s northeastern simple farming roots and Jefferson’s extravagant southern slave-owning background. From the start, the author explains (without tipping his hat to the debacle the system would cause in the 1800 election) how in the 1796 and 1800 elections, the Constitution required the practice of each political party nominating two presidential candidates, with the candidates with the most votes becoming President and the second most becoming Vice-President. The Federalists nominated Adams and Charles Pinckney from South Carolina;

The election of 1800 changed the system because each political party nominated candidates for president and vice president.

In the Election of 1848, Martin Van Buren ran his campaign on abolitionism and as the Free Soil Parties candidate. Lewis Cass, a Democrat, ran on the idea of compromise within the colonies and really strived to get an equal balance between both the North and the South. But in the end, a Southerner who ran under the Whig party, Zachary Taylor, ended up winning the election. This was one of the first elections with the organized Free Soil party and was an important piece in why the two party system would eventually crash and eventually lead to the Union falling apart in 1861.

The campaign of 1828 was an election unlike any other because of many reasons such as the shift from a First Party System to a Second Party System and how the candidates played dirty to get ahead in the polls. Although this election was a “mudslinging” election I thought the re-election of President John Quincy Adams was the better choice for the U.S. because of his qualities and past accomplishments as president.

Victory was won in the Electoral College for Lincoln. This election firmly established the Republicans who held presidency for 60 of the next 100 years. He helped form the new Republican Party, drawing on remnants of the old Whig, Free Soil, Liberty and Democratic parties.

Florida has been being a large impact on the outcome of presidential campaigns in past elections. One of these years in history was 1876 between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. During this election, Tilden and the Democrats were accused of winning southern states through violence and fraud causing Republicans to demand vote recounts. After recounts, Republicans were accused of throwing out Democratic votes so Hayes would gain support from states that were once Tilden 's (Morris 2003). For this election, Florida played a key role along with a few other states because of the electoral votes that were key in determining who would win this entire presidential election for that year.

The Election of 1824 is also known as the “Corrupt Bargain.” With James Monroe’s second term as president ending, the dominant Republican Party had to decide who was going to become the next president. The Federalist influence in government was diminishing. Therefore, the four men that were nominees for president, William Crawford, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams, were all Republican-Democrats.

By 1870, the Northerner lost interest in reconstructing the south. The north tried to reconstruct the south and change southerners attitudes about black people. Although they failed at this because many southerners were still racists and believed that the white race was superior to others, blacks were not as good as southern white men. To add to that, the Northerners lost interest in the reconstruction, which gave southerners a chance to gain control of their state governments again.