The Election of 1824 is usually remembered for one phrase: the “corrupt bargain.”

But that’s not really what made it a turning point. In 1824, Andrew Jackson won more popular votes and more electoral votes than any other candidate — and still lost the presidency in the House of Representatives. Constitutionally, the system worked exactly as designed.

Politically, millions of Americans concluded the system no longer deserved their trust. This episode tells the story of 1824 not as a scandal, but as a legitimacy crisis — the moment when a political order built on elite mediation collided with a rapidly democratizing electorate shaped by the Panic of 1819 and the Market Revolution.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Panic of 1819 and the “general mass of disaffection” it created

• How Andrew Jackson’s candidacy began as elite maneuvering — and escaped elite control

• Jackson as symbol: opposition to banks, insiders, and distant authority • The collapse of the congressional caucus system

• John Quincy Adams’s national vision — and why it felt abstract to many voters

• Henry Clay’s American System: development or acceleration of inequality?

• William H. Crawford and the defense of old Republican discipline • State-level democratic mobilization (Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina)

• The expansion of white male suffrage and the rise of public, confrontational politics • Why Jackson offered judgment rather than policy

• The House decision and the constitutional mechanism few voters accepted • The “corrupt bargain” as perception — and why perception mattered more than proof

• The deeper legitimacy question: do rules deserve obedience if they override popular will?

• How 1824 transformed Jackson from candidate into cause

• Why the real turning point wasn’t 1828 — it was the crisis of 1824

Guiding question: When Andrew Jackson lost in 1824 despite winning the most votes, was that a constitutional outcome — or a political rupture that permanently changed American democracy?

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Chapters: 00:00 — Cold open: “Something had just been stolen” 02:22 — Welcome + guiding question 03:38 — Jackson’s hesitant candidacy and elite expectations 07:40 — Opposition politics: banks, insiders, and resentment 11:36 — The collapse of the caucus system 13:00 — Adams, Clay, Crawford: competing visions of authority 16:59 — What voters increasingly wanted: judgment and accountability 18:08 — Jackson’s image and elite alarm 20:17 — Democratic mobilization in the states 24:42 — Politics becomes public, emotional, confrontational 25:20 — Election results: plurality without majority 26:40 — The House decides: constitutional procedure vs popular legitimacy 28:25 — The “corrupt bargain” and collapse of trust 29:40 — Why 1824 — not 1828 — was the true turning point 30:15 — Closing

Look, I don’t like expanded police powers, surveillance, emergency declarations, suspension of normal rules… but this is an emergency. We can deal with civil liberties later. That logic isn’t new. It’s a recurring pattern in U.S. history — and almost every time, the rollback never comes. A crisis hits, government claims extraordinary authority, and when the crisis fades, the powers don’t fully retreat. They ratchet. The baseline shifts. What used to be unthinkable starts to feel normal. In this episode of Past is Prologue, I trace that “emergency powers ratchet” across two centuriesbefore bringing it to the present moment and what’s unfolding right now. In this episode, we cover: The Quasi-War and the Alien & Sedition Acts (1798): “national security” as cover for partisan repression The Civil War: suspension of habeas corpus, military arrests, and how emergency authority becomes precedent World War I: the Espionage Act, sedition enforcement, propaganda, and Schenck’s “clear and present danger” The post-WWI pivot: the Palmer Raids and the migration of emergency logic inward (“the enemy among us”) World War II mobilization — and the moral catastrophe of Japanese American internment (Korematsu) The Cold War as “permanent emergency”: HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology as governance 9/11 and the War on Terror: the Patriot Act, DHS, surveillance, indefinite detention, Guantanamo, and the end of endpoints The core argument: emergency powers are politically addictive — and institutions rarely return to baseline once fear becomes normal The present: why today’s claims of emergency and “security” should trigger immediate skepticism — and civic resistance

00:00 — The “emergency” argument (and why the rollback rarely comes) 00:35 — The emergency powers ratchet: crisis → authority → baseline shift 01:27 — Past Is Prologue intro + today’s topic 01:53 — The Quasi-War: fear, fragility, and the first big expansion of police power 03:09 — Alien & Sedition Acts: national security as cover for partisan repression 04:19 — The recurring formula: emergency + politics = expanded power 05:07 — The Civil War: Lincoln, habeas corpus, and executive power in existential crisis 07:18 — The lesson that sticks: “move first, ask legal questions later” 07:45 — World War I: total war and emergency governance at scale 08:07 — Espionage Act + sedition: criminalizing dissent and manufacturing unanimity 09:36 — Creel’s propaganda apparatus + managing the press 10:03 — Schenck v. U.S.: “clear and present danger” and the legal rubber stamp 12:49 — Postwar pivot: emergency logic migrates inward 13:10 — The First Red Scare + Palmer Raids: repression in the name of “internal security” 14:29 — The New Deal builds capacity; WWII turns it to full throttle 15:46 — WWII mobilization: coordination, rationing, censorship, and propaganda 17:05 — Japanese American internment: the clearest civil liberties catastrophe 18:20 — Korematsu: courts defer; fear overrides rights 19:14 — What remains “acceptable” after 1945: the ideas that linger 20:20 — The Cold War: emergency power becomes a default setting 21:23 — The enemy “among us”: second Red Scare conditions take shape 22:01 — HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology 23:25 — McCarthy exploits a system already built for repression 24:01 — The Cold War’s inheritance: emergency governance sustained indefinitely 25:04 — 9/11: the modern ratchet click forward 25:57 — Patriot Act + surveillance expansion 26:20 — DHS: the security state reorganizes itself 27:12 — The War on Terror’s key shift: a war with no endpoint 27:49 — Guantanamo, indefinite detention, and legal black holes 29:08 — Rendition, torture-by-proxy, and reputational damage 29:55 — Domestic politics adapts: disloyalty narratives and opportunists 31:03 — Iraq: narrative convergence and marginalizing skepticism 32:12 — Takeaway: emergency powers are politically addictive 33:15 — The present moment: federal power surge in

The Missouri Compromise is often remembered as a clever fix — a temporary truce, a line on a map, a way to “save the Union.”

But that’s not what it really was.

In 1820, Congress faced a choice it had spent decades trying not to make: confront the future of slavery now, while the country was still small and fragile — or postpone the reckoning and keep the system expanding. Congress chose postponement. And by doing so, it didn’t avoid the slavery question. It built it into the machinery of national politics.

This episode tells the story of the Missouri Crisis and Compromise as a turning point — the moment the United States chose accommodation over confrontation, and set itself on a path of escalating sectional crisis that would eventually end in Civil War.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Missouri statehood triggered an explosion: slavery’s expansion, power in the Senate, and sectional deadlock

• The Tallmadge Amendment: what it tried to do — and why the South treated it as an existential threat

• Slavery’s transformation after 1790: cotton, the domestic slave trade, and the rebirth of plantation power

• Fear and hardening ideology: Haiti, Gabriel’s Rebellion, and the end of gradual-emancipation optimism

• The political math behind the crisis: the Virginia Dynasty, 3/5 representation, and northern fears of planter domination

• The compromise deal: Maine + Missouri, and the 36°30′ line that “contained” slavery on paper

• Missouri’s pro-slavery constitution — and the fight over banning free Black Americans from entering the state

• Jefferson’s “fire bell in the night”: why many understood the crisis wasn’t solved, just deferred

• The pattern that follows: balance → containment → postponement (Texas, Mexican Cession, Kansas-Nebraska)

• The core question: did the Missouri Compromise create more problems than it solved?

Guiding question:

Did the Missouri Compromise end up creating more problems than it ultimately resolved?

Sources referenced:

American Pageant

Give Me Liberty

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought

Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846

John Craig Hammond, “President, Planter, Politician: James Monroe, the Missouri Crisis, and the Politics of Slavery”

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Chapters:

00:00 — Cold open: the choice Congress didn’t want to make

01:21 — Welcome + sources

03:38 — The Missouri Compromise: not a fix, a choice

05:04 — Why many thought slavery would fade

06:34 — Cotton + expansion + the rebirth of slavery

08:12 — Haiti/Gabriel’s Rebellion and hardening white politics

09:22 — Missouri applies for statehood: why it detonates

10:09 — Congress’s earlier attempts to limit slavery in Missouri

11:19 — Hemp, growth, and Missouri’s enslaved population

12:00 — The Illinois slavery fight and the “butternut” West

14:25 — The illusion breaks: slavery is advancing west

15:03 — Tallmadge Amendment: restriction + gradual emancipation

16:42 — Not abolitionism: northern fear of planter domination

18:02 — Southern backlash: states’ rights and disunion threats

20:24 — Amendment passes House, dies in Senate: sectional deadlock

20:57 — Why the Union felt fragile in 1819–1820

23:05 — Maine leverage and the deal-making logic

23:42 — The 36°30′ line and Monroe signs the...