With the 2012 presidential campaign gearing up, we wondered how Monroe conducted his two campaigns for president in 1816 and 1820. As it turns out, he had quite an easy time of it!
When James Madison announced that he would only serve two terms, Monroe was virtually guaranteed to receive the Democratic-Republican party’s nomination as successor. He had only one main opponent within his own party, William Crawford, and even Crawford did not try very hard to run against him for fear of potentially losing a cabinet seat in a Monroe presidency. The opposition party, the Federalists, had lost most of its political clout by 1816, and their candidate, Rufus King, was not formally endorsed.
There was very little negative campaigning, as Monroe was popular throughout the country, revered as the last of the Revolutionary generation. He won the vast majority of the Electoral College votes, 183 to King’s 34.
And by 1820, the Federalist party had declined so greatly that it did not even endorse a candidate to run against President Monroe. It was the third and last time in American history that a presidential candidate would run unopposed.
Can you imagine such a thing happening today?
Read more about Monroe’s presidential campaigns or the election of 1820.
“the last of the Revolutionary generation.”
I’m sure there are many reasons Monroe ran unopposed in 1820, but this can’t be the least of them. Most had first-hand memories of the great struggle to cast off the chains of tyranny, not once but twice (War of 1812). The country had a common enemy that united more than divided.
Today we have no such common enemy, or even a common cause or goal. In fact we have two disparate and in fact, mutually exclusive ideas for what the role of Government should be. Until we can agree on that most basic foundational tenant of what a Government is supposed to be, we will never be as united as the United States of 1820.