1800s

The Revolution of 1800 matched Jefferson against incumbent Adams amid the Alien and Sedition Acts and quasi-war with France. Jeffe...

The first election run under the Twelfth Amendment, with distinct presidential and vice presidential ballots, worked smoothly. Jef...

Nominated behind the scenes by Jefferson, Madison secured the Democratic-Republican caucus nod over James Monroe and Vice Presiden...

The first wartime presidential election, held as the United States moved toward declaring war on Britain in June 1812, pitted Madi...

With the Federalist Party discredited by Hartford Convention whispers of New England secession during the war, Secretary of State ...

Monroe faced no organized opposition, and only New Hampshire elector William Plumer withheld his vote, nominally to preserve Washi...

With the Democratic-Republican Party splintering, four candidates divided the vote: Andrew Jackson 99 electoral votes and a popula...

The rematch of 1824 was the first true mass election, as most states had dropped property qualifications and chose electors by pop...

The 1832 race introduced national party conventions, as Democrats renominated Jackson in Baltimore while National Republicans and ...

The new Whig Party, unable to settle on a national leader, ran William Henry Harrison in the North and West, Hugh White in the Sou...

William Henry Harrison's campaign invented modern image politics, turning his humble log cabin and hard cider into symbols against...

The Democrats surprised everyone by nominating dark horse Polk, an expansionist committed to Texas annexation and Oregon, on the n...

The first election held on a single November day nationwide matched war hero Taylor, a slaveholding Whig with no political record,...

Pierce, a little-known New Hampshire Democrat nominated on the 49th ballot, obliterated Winfield Scott 254 to 42, losing only Mass...

The Democrats turned to Buchanan, untainted by the Kansas bloodshed, while the new Republican Party, born of fury at Kansas-Nebras...

The most consequential American election fractured along sectional lines. Lincoln, nominated on the Republican platform of stoppin...

Held during civil war with eleven Confederate states unrepresented, the election tested whether democracy could conduct a conteste...

Ulysses Grant's popularity carried him past New York's Horatio Seymour 214 to 80, with Grant winning the popular vote by about 5.4...

Facing a split between Democrats and Liberal Republicans united behind Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, Grant won e...

Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote by 3 points and stood one electoral vote short with 184, while twenty votes in Florida...

Ohio Representative James Garfield, a dark horse nominee, beat Winfield Hancock, hero of Gettysburg, by fewer than 8,000 popular v...

Grover Cleveland, the reform Democratic governor whose slogan was public office is a public trust, faced James Blaine, tarred by r...

Tariffs dominated as Benjamin Harrison, protecting high duties, defeated President Cleveland 233 to 168, even though Cleveland won...

Cleveland's rematch victory over Harrison, 277 to 145 with 22 for Populist James Weaver, made him the twenty-second and twenty-fou...

William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech won him the Democratic nomination at 36, fusing Democrats and Populists behind free ...

The 1866 elections became a referendum on President Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policy and on the proposed Fourteenth ...