Counterfactual history — electoral votes switch and Clay is elected in president 1824

The presidential election of 1824, in the middle of a disintegration and re-alignment of American political parties, was the most vigorously contested in American history and is the second, and so far the last, to be decided by the House of Representatives after no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College.

Andrew Jackson had a plurality, though not a majority, in both it and the popular vote. John Quincy Adams was second in both.

And here is where alternative history is going to come in.

Henry Clay and William Crawford were third and fourth, respectively, but with different orders in the electoral college and popular vote. Clay was third in the popular vote, but fourth in the electoral college, with 37 electors to 41 for Crawford.

The Constitution specifies that, in cases of a runoff, only the top three people receiving electoral votes advance to the House, so Clay was out, by the 12th Amendment, which in addition to requiring president and vice-president to be on separate ballots with separate electors, (a fallout of the crisis-fueled election of 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr) also cut the "runoff" in the House from the top five candidates to the top three. (Note: This shows that the founders naively didn't anticipate political parties when they should have and that, IMO, they should have ditched their "balance of powers" shibboleth and gone done an optional route considered at Philadelphia — a semi-parliamentary system where the House, but not on a state-by-state vote, would elect the president.)

H.W. Brands, in his new book, talks about Clay's regret for not being able to swing Louisiana's caucus, and thus, eventually, its electors. (Several states still had doubly indirect voting for president at this time — voters didn't even vote directly for electors, let alone for president. South Carolina still had its state legislature select the electors until after the Civil War.)

As it was, Louisiana gave three electoral votes to Jackson and two to Adams. (Six states had split electoral votes in this election, so we cannot talk about faithless electors.) Had he been able to get all five electors, he's one ahead of Crawford and in like Flynn.

People who know the basics of the alleged "corrupt bargain" between Clay and Adams know the importance of this. Clay was Speaker of the House in the previous Congress, and in the previous several before that. That's why his offer to back Adams, rather than Jackson or Crawford, was so important.

As it turned out, one ballot, versus crisis-filled 1800, was all that was needed. The state-by-state vote was Adams 13, Jackson 7, Crawford 4.

What if it had been Clay instead of Adams in there? Let's look at Wikipedia's map of the House vote and go from there.

Let's give Jackson Crawford's Georgia and North Carolina. Let's give Clay Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Louisiana.

Nobody wins a majority on that first ballot.

Jackson now has nine states. Clay has eight. Adams has seven.

What next? Adams is out, right?

Well, no.

The 12th Amendment, in its own weakness after 1800, doesn't specify any winnowing or cutdown. Neither did the original Constitutional provision which mentioned the House considering the top five candidates if nobody got a majority. This in turn, contra "The Resistance" meatheads who glorify the Constitution because it has checks on Trump or something shows just what's wrong with such shallow thinking by them.

So, we have an 1824 version of 1800's cock-block, but now with a "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" style Mexican standoff.

And, besides Jackson partisans in their own corner, other House members consider Clay and Adams both well-qualified for the presidency.

Rather than Clay and Adams dealing, Clay figures he has one more ballot, possibly two, to use his powers before things devolve into a Jackson-Adams showdown between the top two vote-getters.

So, second ballot.

Clay peels Indiana and North Carolina away from Jackson. Clay was second in Indiana's popular vote. Crawford won North Carolina as well as Virginia, but we'll assume Clay has charm to work there.

Through his vice presidential connections, he peels New York away from Adams. (Maybe he'd already do this in a first ballot, but we'll save it.) He does the same with Connecticut.

After two ballots?

Clay has 12 states, one short of a majority. Jackson is at seven and Adams five.

In the third ballot, anti-Jackson representatives from either New Jersey or one of the New England states or another, accept reality and switch from Adams to Clay.

The future of America?

Clay, unlike Quincy Adams, is not a personal iceberg. And, there's no "corrupt bargain" being flung in the background.

He gets about half of his major "American System" ideas passed. The 1826 midterms don't swing as heavily Jacksonian as in reality. He listens enough to Vice President John Calhoun to make his Tariff of 1828 not quite as inflammatory as the Tariff of Abominations, rather writing something like the Tariff of 1832.

But, even without a "corrupt bargain," Jackson still calls for the will of the people.

Jackson wins the popular vote in 1828, but it's much narrower than the real contest. Popular vote is about 51.5-48.5, for states that record it. Clay gets six more electoral votes than Adams from the split New York delegation, wins Pennsylvania and wins Ohio, Indiana and his Kentucky homeland. That's a 69-vote swing, making ...

Henry Clay re-elected, but again as a minority president, with a 152-104 margin.

Clay manages to push through a 20-year renewal of the Bank of the United States' charter in his second term, thus preventing the worst of the Panic of 1837.

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What happens in the broader political world?

Clay, unlike Andrew Johnson, deigns not to serve in the Senate afterward. He does become a national statesman of sorts, and still makes recommendations from the bench as he deems fit.

Adams retires from politics at this point. He peevishly passes on being nominated for the House in 1826, but eventually accepts re-appointment to the Senate in the future. He defends the Amistad slaves, but being in the Senate, not the House, has no gag order to protest against.

Jackson's third time is the charm. He is elected in 1832 over Calhoun, who tries to pull together some John Tyler-like amalgamation of anti-Jackson Democrats and Whigs-to-be, not jet being as much a states-righter as in reality. Calhoun fails, being seen as too elitist.

Some Jacksonians, enraged at their lion's two losses, talk of abolishing the Electoral College. But southern Jacksonians, knowing that undermines the three-fifths compromise's power, refuse. Eventually, New York Congressional leaders, motivated by how that state chooses electors, proposes the New York Compromise. It states that one elector from each state's number must come from each Congressional district. The two remainders, the "Senatorial electors," can come from anywhere in the state. In a nod to federalism, unlike New York State's law then, and Maine's and Nebraska's today, it does not require the electoral vote to be split based on House districts, but it offers a "sense of the Congress" resolution that in the name of popular democracy, that is a preferred alternative. (In reality, in 1824, New York, like South Carolina, had the state legislature choose electors in a doubly-indirect presidential voting system, but unlike South Carolina, apportioned the results by House district. Five states — Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Tennessee — used electoral districts for ALL electoral votes, not just the "House electoral votes." Maine did as it does today.)

This Thirteenth Amendment, with the proviso that the idea isn't binding on states, but having the New York and Maine examples, and the quasi-example of five other states, four of them "frontier states" at the forefront of direct democracy, easily passes into law. The five states aforementioned slightly tweak their laws to follow Maine. Other states eventually follow suit.)

Jackson privately makes pledges to serve only one term if his health requires it, but actually serves two, with Martin Van Buren as his vice president.

Van Buren is elected in 1840, but schwaffles on Texas admission. Pro-Jackson Democrats call him a sellout and ram through the nomination of Polk after using the two-thirds rule to deny Van Buren renomination.

From there, counterfactual history looks similar to reality, other than that Jackson is unable to undo the renewal of the Bank of the U.S. Clay changes his mind about the Senate and accepts a special appointment, where he spearheads the Compromise of 1850. The Jackson-era Thirteenth Amendment generally forestalls further presidential election problems. Abraham Lincoln is still elected in 1860, but by a narrower margin than in reality.