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Government & LawIndustrial Age

1820 U.S. presidential election

1820

James Monroe is reelected without opposition, losing a single electoral vote at the height of the Era of Good Feelings.

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The story

In 1820 James Monroe was reelected without an opponent. No party nominated anyone against him, and he received 231 of the 232 electoral votes cast. The single exception came from William Plumer, a New Hampshire elector and former governor, who voted for Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Monroe's running mate, Daniel Tompkins, was also reelected vice president.

The quiet vote hid real trouble. The Panic of 1819, the country's first major financial crash, had ruined banks and farmers across the West. In early 1820 Congress fought bitterly over whether Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state, settling it with the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri with slavery and Maine as a free state and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes. Missouri's electoral votes were even challenged during the count because the state had not yet been formally admitted. Neither crisis produced an opposition party yet, but both pointed to the divisions that would split the Republicans in 1824.

Why it mattered

Marked the high point of one-party rule in the Era of Good Feelings.
Left the succession wide open, setting up the four-way Republican contest of 1824.
Came in the same year as the Missouri Compromise, an early sign that slavery would divide national politics.

Sources

James Monroe: Campaigns and Elections Miller Center
An elector changes his vote Annenberg Classroom
Missouri Compromise Miller Center

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

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election of 1820 Monroe Era of Good Feelings Missouri Compromise lecture

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At a glance

When: Fall 1820
Where: The 24 states
Key people: James Monroe (reelected president)
Daniel D. Tompkins (reelected vice president)
William Plumer (New Hampshire elector who voted for John Quincy Adams)

231 of 232electoral votes cast for Monroe

1vote for John Quincy Adams

280earlier events it rests on

1later events that depend on it

Couldn't have happened without

1816 U.S. presidential election1816

ImportantMonroe's first-term popularity and the Federalist collapse left no one to oppose him.

Missouri Compromise1820

HelpedThe Missouri crisis loomed over the year and even disrupted the count of Missouri's electoral votes.

Led to

1824 U.S. presidential election1824

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