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This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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People's Ticket

by Louis P. Towles, 2006

The People's Ticket of Andrew Jackson for president and John C. Calhoun for vice president won the popular vote of North Carolina in the 1824 election despite the overwhelming support of the Democratic-Republican Party caucus for William H. Crawford of Georgia. Following the election of 1820, state Republican leaders began to solicit backing for Crawford, whose views were more compatible with their political philosophy than those of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts. By 1824 key individuals in the party who made up the state's caucus had pledged their support and the implied vote of their state to Crawford for president. Many North Carolinians, particularly those in the west and along Albemarle Sound, were angry. The depression of 1819 had drained their resources and made money scarce. Most of them had endorsed the failed campaign of Archibald D. Murphey for increased state public education, internal improvements, and political reapportionment in the west. When Crawford's nomination was announced, the dissidents joined with Murphey, William Polk, and Charles Fisher to form the People's Ticket, with John C. Calhoun, a prominent advocate of education and internal improvements, as their candidate.

Popular support for Calhoun proved insufficient, but Andrew Jackson quickly caught the public fancy. An alliance of Jackson for president and Calhoun for vice president was accordingly concluded, and the two politicians carried the election in North Carolina, although they lost the national vote. In 1828, this time with the state caucus behind them, Jackson and Calhoun won North Carolina by an even larger margin on their way to the presidency and vice presidency.

References:

R. D. W. Connor, A History of North Carolina (1919).

Robert C. Jeffrey, The Thought of John C. Calhoun (1985).

David Lindsay, Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun (1973).

Additional Resources:

Drexler, Kenneth. "Presidential Election of 1824: A Resource Guide." Digital Reference Section. Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/elections/election1824.html (accessed September 5, 2012).

Archibald D. Murphey to Colonel William Polk, letter, February 27, 1824. The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey. Raleigh, N.C.: E.M. Uzzell & Co. 1914. p.291. http://books.google.com/books?id=H_awB8GenOoC&pg=PA291#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution:Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. Oxford University Press. 1994. p.190. http://books.google.com/books?id=AjmGCYAlEcEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA190#v=onepage&q&f=false

Jeffrey, Thomas E. State Parties and National Politics: North Carolina, 1815-1861. Athens: University of Georgia Press. 1989. http://books.google.com/books?id=mt5HNfTdYgwC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false