The One-Party Presidential Contest

Donald Ratcliffe is emeritus reader in history at the University of Durham and supernumerary research and teaching fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. His many publications include Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793-1821 and The Politics of Long Division: The Birth of the Second Party System in Ohio, 1818-1828.

At last! A historian has finally got the complicated election of 1824 right. It's all here: popular participation, economic interests, slavery, ethnicity, and party politics. Congratulations to Donald Ratcliffe!" - Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 "Deeply researched and lucidly written, Donald Ratcliffe's new study of the presidential election of 1824 features fresh perspectives, convincing analysis, and, best of all for fans of political history, much that surprises. This is simply a terrific book." - Michael F. Holt, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus, University of Virginia "An entertaining and illuminating account of the neglected and misunderstood presidential election of 1824. Remembered for the supposedly 'corrupt bargain' between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay and the dramatic arrival of the democratic hero Andrew Jackson on the national political stage, the 1824 canvass has never before received the attention it so richly deserves. In addition to limning fresh and sometimes surprising portraits of all the presidential hopefuls Ratcliffe consigns most of what we thought we knew into the historiographical dustbin: the bargain was not corrupt, Jackson was not the people's choice, and sectional sentiment already played a decisive role in shaping the electoral landscape. Most importantly, Ratcliffe shows that the rise of democratic politics did not have to await Jackson's ascendancy. This is the most compelling and authoritative introduction we have to the complex, often messy and always fascinating history of democratic politics in the early American republic." - Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood