US Presidential Elections: Landmark Moments

Article by Tom Hercock. Edited by Liz Goodwin. Additional Research by Jack Barnes.

The 57th presidential election in the history of the United States will take place on November 6th this year. Having occurred every four years since the 1780s, the presidential election has become the staple of politics and history in the world’s oldest and most stable federal republic. From the landslide victories of Jackson, Roosevelt and Reagan to the knife-edge, disputed elections of 1876 and 2000, every presidential election (except perhaps Washington’s early uncontested victories or the frankly boring contests of the 1880s and 1890s) has been, to some extent, a landmark in American history. 

Presidential elections have often marked the climax of wider, longer-developing trends in the history of the United States. Andrew Jackson’s first victory in 1828 showed clearly that political and population changes were taking power away from the eastern intellectual establishment that had provided the leadership of the Revolution a generation earlier, and granting it instead to poorer farmers and frontiersmen from the Appalachian West. More than a century later, John F. Kennedy’s election as the first President from Irish Catholic immigrant stock saw what had once been a resented minority rise fully and finally into American respectability. We need only remember the last presidential election to see another example of the power of an election to change the history of the country. The election of Obama was hailed as illustrating how racial prejudice was disappearing from American life. Although with hindsight these hopes were overblown, there is no doubt that the election of a black president was a major step forward that would have been unthinkable a very short time ago. 

Undoubtedly the most significant presidential election, in terms of immediate consequences, was the contest of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln’s victory directly provoked Southern states to leave the United States, the beginning of the American Civil War. Although Lincoln’s victory was hardly a huge surprise by election day (the opposition split three ways, allowing him to win with just 40% of the vote), the election of an openly and outspokenly anti-slavery candidate was a watershed in American history, marking the end of the domination of politics by Southern slaveholders. Other elections in the 1860s and 1870s were pivotal too. Had Lincoln been defeated for re-election in 1864 (as even he expected to be two months before voting day) then his successor George McClellan might very well have been forced to recognise the independence of the Southern Confederacy. The 1864 election was also the first time in history a country had attempted to hold a national election during a civil war. In all of the 1868, 1872 and 1876 elections, the United States faced a choice between using the power of the federal government to defend the rights of the newly freed slaves from their erstwhile masters and white supremacist terrorist organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan. By 1876, the country had chosen to stand back – and the consequences for African Americans were huge. 

While no incoming President has been dealt a hand quite as bad as Lincoln’s in 1860, many presidential elections have fallen at moments of crisis. Just as Barack Obama was elected in 2008 against a backdrop of near-economic collapse, Franklin Roosevelt won the 1932 election at the height of the Depression. Roosevelt’s victory over Republican President Herbert Hoover was a major turning point as Roosevelt’s team embarked on the “New Deal”: a programme of radical economic reform aiming to solve the economic crisis. Roosevelt went on to be re-elected three times (in 1936, 1940 and 1944), making him the most electorally-successful and longest-serving of Presidents.

What will 2012 be remembered as? Will Obama secure a second term and go on to be seen by history in the same light as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or even Roosevelt? Or will he lose and be remembered in Jimmy Carter terms instead? Will Mitt Romney become the first Mormon President? Or will Newt Gingrich triumph and establish an American colony on the Moon? The possibilities are almost endless, illustrating one of the joys of American history – a new landmark, in the form of a quadrennial Presidential election, is never far off! 

• Eight US Presidents have died in office, four of these were assassinated. 

• FDR was the only person to be elected to 3 terms as president 

• Andrew Jackson became a national hero after he defeated a British army at New Orleans during the war of 1812.

← Back to Volume 3

← Back to Issue 4