Presidential elections were held in the United States from November 1 to December 4, 1816. The Democratic-Republican ticket of secretary of state James Monroe and the governor of New York Daniel D. Tompkins defeated the de facto Federalist candidate, the senior U.S. senator from New York Rufus King. Although not formally nominated, King became the last Federalist presidential candidate upon receiving 34 votes from Federalist unpledged electors. In the next election, the Federalists carried three states but did not field their own candidate, instead supporting the incumbent Monroe, before disappearing by the end of the 1820s.
The outgoing president James Madison did not seek re-election to a third consecutive term. Monroe emerged as the Democratic-Republican frontrunner and secured the party's nomination at its congressional nominating caucus in March, narrowly defeating the secretary of war William H. Crawford. The caucus nominated Tompkins for vice president over the governor of Pennsylvania Simon Snyder. The Federalists were disorganized following the end of the War of 1812 and did not hold a caucus or formally select a candidate. King himself remained aloof from the campaign and did nothing to promote his candidacy. No consensus on a vice presidential candidate emerged among the Federalist electors, who scattered their votes between four candidates.
Monroe benefited from the popularity of the outgoing Madison administration and resurgent nationalism following the end of the war. Madison's 1816 message to Congress endorsed an ambitious economic program that robbed the Federalists of much of their platform, most notably chartering the Second Bank of the United States. In spite of significant discontent with the caucus system and the incumbent Virginia dynasty, the Democratic-Republicans were able to avoid a major factional schism in contrast to the previous election. The Federalists meanwhile were demoralized, dogged by accusations of treason, and ill-prepared to mount a national campaign. Most took Monroe's election for granted and did not attempt to prevent it. In three states where electors were chosen by the legislature, Federalists controlled the selection process and appointed unpledged electors who voted for King. Monroe carried the 16 remaining states, including every state where electors were chosen by popular vote, amidst widespread voter apathy and anemic turnout.
Nominations
Democratic-Republican Party
Caucus
Monroe followed an uncertain path to the nomination in 1816. He had feuded with Madison for most of the preceding three decades, running against him for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1789 and for the presidency in 1808. Monroe mended relations with Madison during the War of 1812, serving as secretary of state and secretary of war in the latter's administration, and by 1816 was positioning himself as the president's natural successor. Monroe was not personally popular, and his candidacy encountered resistance from northern Democratic-Republicans and others opposed to the extension of the Virginia dynasty. During the winter of 1815–16, New York governor Daniel D. Tompkins and Monroe's successor as secretary of war William H. Crawford emerged as rivals for the presidency.
Popular in his home state, Tompkins could count on the loyal support of the Anti-Clintonian faction of the New York Democratic-Republican Party, but his candidacy struggled to attract a national following. While the New York General Assembly formally nominated him for president on February 14, his lack of name recognition, youth, and volatility were seen as serious disadvantages. By March, Tompkins had seemingly given up all hope of his nomination and instead focused his efforts on the vice presidency.
Although Crawford publicly denied interest in the presidency, his candidacy quickly gathered significant support from editors and politicians ahead of the party's congressional nominating caucus, and by February had amassed enough strength to present a serious challenge to Monroe. Despite this, Crawford remained hesitant to openly seek the nomination. Having personally assured the secretary of state that he would not be a candidate in 1816, he was reluctant to damage his standing in the party with a fight for the nomination. The continued enthusiasm for his candidacy following his public refusal in February left the war secretary unsure of how to proceed.
Substantial public opinion opposed the caucus system as corrupt, undemocratic, and potentially unconstitutional. While Monroe preferred to retain the caucus system, Crawford's popularity among Democratic-Republicans in Congress made calling a caucus immediately disadvantageous to Monroe's chances of gaining the nomination. When finally an anonymous notice announced the date of the caucus as March 12, the meeting was attended by only 58 members, principally supporters of Crawford. The gathering was judged too small to command public credibility, and on the motion of Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio, the caucus adjourned until March 16. During the recess, Crawford instructed the U.S. senators from Georgia Charles Tait and William W. Bibb to withdraw his candidacy, having decided to postpone his ambitions until 1824. When the caucus met again on the 16th, all but 22 Democratic-Republican members were in attendance. Henry Clay and John W. Taylor again moved that it was "inexpedient" to nominate a presidential candidate, but were voted down; the caucus then nominated Monroe by a vote of 65 to 54.
Monroe owed his majority over Crawford to the 11 Virginians in attendance, who supplied the margin of victory. Crawford received the votes of the New York, New Jersey, Georgia, and Kentucky delegations, notwithstanding their candidate's withdrawal. Of the 22 Democratic-Republican members who did not attend the caucus, the majority were Crawfordites who absented themselves at Crawford's request to allow Monroe's nomination. The narrow margin between the candidates and the presumed sympathies of the 22 absent members encouraged the belief that "Crawford would certainly have been nominated had he made even the slighted effort on his behalf."
In the event of his defeat, Crawford had instructed Tait and Bibb to issue a statement that he had been drafted without his consent; this the senators neglected to do. Crawford would subsequently attribute Monroe's lack of support for his candidacy in 1824 to this embarrassment.
Vice presidential nomination
Maneuvering for the vice presidency began in the weeks preceding the caucus, when the identity of the presidential candidate was still an open question. Sensing his presidential chances lagging, Tompkins advertised his willingness to accept the vice presidency under either Monroe or Crawford. Several others were considered available candidates, including the governor of Pennsylvania Simon Snyder and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky. Snyder's hopes were dashed when he failed to secure the formal endorsement of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation. It was widely assumed that Crawford and Tompkins each sought to recruit the other for the second place on the ticket. The New York delegation floated a Tompkins–Crawford ticket that could unite all foes of the Virginia dynasty; when this failed, they approached Clay, to no avail. Tompkins emerged as the overwhelming favorite when the caucus met on March 16 and was nominated by a large majority, while Snyder finished a distant second. Passed over for the presidency, the New Yorker substantially exceeded Monroe's margin over Crawford, winning the votes of nearly three quarters of the members in attendance.
Federalist Party
Failure to nominate a ticket
The Federalist Party entered the election in disarray. Following peace with Britain in 1815, "the strength that the Federalists had shown in the middle states during the war years melted away." Disconnected state parties lacked a unifying national organization capable of fielding candidates or mounting a national campaign. Where Federalists were more than a negligible presence, charges of disloyalty hounded the party in the wake of the Hartford Convention. This enfeebled party apparatus proved incapable of even selecting a candidate to oppose Monroe: although different names were mentioned in hearsay reports and private correspondence, no caucus was ever held, no consensus among state parties or the Federalist press emerged, and as late as December it remained unclear for whom (if anyone) the Federalist electors from Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts would vote.
If the Federalists were to choose a candidate, King appeared by far the likeliest possibility. A respected senator and former delegate to the Constitutional Convention who had twice been the party's vice presidential candidate in 1804 and 1808, by 1816 King was the only individual capable of uniting the party's remaining supporters. In February, the New York Evening Post predicted that King and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Langdon Cheves would be the nominees of the Federalist caucus for president and vice president. However, in the interim, the New York Federalist Party nominated King for governor in the April 1816 election after the party's original candidate, William W. Van Ness, withdrew. King lost the election to Tompkins, and although the Democratic-Republican majority was not overwhelming, the defeat ended any hope of King's nomination for president. While some Federalists suggested the former U.S. senator from Maryland John Eager Howard or even Crawford as possible candidates, no serious movement to nominate either man ever materialized. The Federalists thus entered the fall campaign without a ticket, and with most party leaders resigned to an inevitable Democratic-Republican victory.
Campaign issues
Uncontested election
The failure of the Federalist Party to nominate a ticket effectively conceded the election to Monroe. In New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and in every state south of the Potomac River, the Federalists did not seriously contest the election. Federalist unpledged electors ran in several states, and in Pennsylvania, Monroe's opponents fielded an Independent ticket supported by disaffected Democratic-Republicans and Federalists. Lacking a candidate, the opposition all but ignored the presidential race and instead reserved their energies for state and local elections in which the remnants of regional Federalist strength might still be salvaged. In New York and New Hampshire, where a real effort was made to defeat the Democratic-Republican ticket, the Federalist campaign was distracted and uncoordinated. So great was the sense of inevitability surrounding Monroe's election that most public speculation focused on the composition of his incoming cabinet.
Rufus King shared the view of nearly all observers who considered Monroe's election a foregone conclusion. He took no part in the campaign and said nothing to indicate that he considered himself a candidate. Following his gubernatorial defeat, King encouraged his colleagues to accept Monroe's election and suggested the Federalist Party should disband. Nothing in King's private correspondence mentions his candidacy for president; in a letter to Christopher Gore dated November 5, he referred to Monroe as running unopposed. The partisan press did not consider King a candidate. The Democratic-Republican Vermont Gazette laughed that Connecticut's Federalist electors "probably do not know for whom they shall vote themselves!" As late as December 3, the Federalist Boston Daily Advertiser admitted it did not know for whom the state's Federalist electors would vote. King would not learn of his selection by 34 Federalist electors until after the electoral colleges had already met.
Caucus system
The caucus system was a major issue in the campaign. A gathering of members of Congress had selected the Democratic-Republican national ticket in every consecutive election since 1796. Electoral candidates and candidates for state office were commonly chosen by similar gatherings of state legislators. By design, the caucus system gave elected lawmakers substantial influence over the choice of party nominees for state and national office. This feature attracted criticism from Federalists and anti-caucus Democratic-Republicans who argued that the practice of caucus nominations undermined democratic elections, gave undue influence to career officeholders, and potentially violated the constitutional separation of powers. With no organized opposition to Monroe, they noted that the election effectively had been decided by members of Congress and alleged that the constitutional election process had been subverted. The perception that the caucus had forced its choice upon the nation irrespective of the opinions of most voters was particularly salient. "A president is to be made thinks I," went one editorial, "but what shall we call the process? Not an election! for the people have nothing to do with it and the electors have nothing to do with it. One half of the republicans and all the federalists are against the man; but the caucus have said 'it shall be so,' and it must be so." The Federalist press made a significant effort to capitalize on opposition to the caucus. The Portland Gazette suggested that voters should boycott the election in protest against "this manifest violation of one the most important provisions of the national Charter." Anti-caucus feeling, which smoldered all through the campaign, would continue to mount over the course of the next decade, and became a major issue in the election of 1824.