 Hi everybody, I'm Mark Adams from the Truman Library. I'm the education director and I'm here with my colleague Angela Hi, I'm Angela East from the White House Decision Center. Thank you for joining us and as you know, the most recent presidential election was contested and eventually Congress authorized the 2020 presidential election and in our video We're going to show you four other presidential elections that were contested all the way back to 1800 and all the way back up to 2000 so 200 years looking at four different presidential elections, and we're going to do that By looking at some political cartoons and other visual materials and showing you some Strategies of how to use those in the classroom. Let me share my screen and we will show you our first image Okay, Angela. Can you see that image? I'm going to blow it up here in a minute But I just want to show you the whole image there on the screen. Yes, I can see it Okay, I'm going to go a little bit closer for you and I'm going to pose Angela some questions about this image After I go a little bit closer for her and then you might be able to model these visual thinking questions yourself with different visual sources So Angela I've blown that up a bit so you can see maybe the top two-thirds. What do you notice on that image? I Notice in the center is it says John Adams. He's the president of the United States Yeah, and so he was one of the candidates that was running in that election in 1800 is the election we're looking at and what other information do you notice on that image? It looks like it's he's surrounded by the squares of each one of the states Yeah, so which ones can you be able to read there? I can see how about Vermont? Vermont you're looking at my monster. There's New Hampshire. There's Vermont, and I'm just gonna Scroll in a little bit and get a little bit closer And we're gonna send you the PDF of this so you can see these All right, what can you tell me about the month there? Well, it looks like all the states have a shield and then they have images inside I guess that relate to their state and at the bottom it looks like it's Saying they have two senators two representatives hundred and six thousand nine hundred and twenty-three inhabitants, so it has their population two and Then if we go back out How many squares do you see I? See five across the top five at the bottom. It looks like three on each side So sixteen states at the time is that how many they had six Sixteen states in an eighteen hundred. Yeah, it's amazing and you could probably as an activity Compare these shields to maybe their state Flags or other images representing in each state and also compare the number of representatives of population for each of them too That's a fun activity. So we have John Adams here So do you know what happened in this election Angela? No, I don't So he was one candidate, but on the other side was Thomas Jefferson and in those days in that election The president presidential candidate and the vice presidential candidate were actually on separate ballots And so it ended up being a tie with Thomas Jefferson and Burr tying and it went to the House of Representatives to Settle the tie so to speak to vote on it. And you know how many times they voted? No, how many times that all the time? You'll be amazed they voted 36 times before they broke the tie Wow 36 36 and Thomas Jefferson became the president as of eventually after all of that Hand-ringing and voting but it meant that they realized there was a kind of a fault in the system And they needed to try and change things Through the 12th amendment. So do you know what the 12th amendment did Angela? I do know that if there's a dispute it needs to go to the House of Representatives to solve the dispute Right, and then they also decided to put the instead of having the president and the vice presidential Candidate on separate ballots. They were able to put them on the same ballot so that this Occurrence didn't happen again where they led to this kind of tide vote going voting over and over and over again because it was the presidential and vice Presidential candidate so right right Well, the reason I know that is if the next contested election is 1824 and Something very similar happened, but it had to do with the That 12th amendment and so the 12th amendment worked for all of those years So mark if you're looking at this political cartoon The strategy I like to use to interpret is always look for the the five W's the who what when where why? And so if you look at this one mark, can you tell where this is taking place at? Well, I see they're outside, but then there's some buildings in the background there on the right I'm going to I have control of a the plus minus here and zoom in a little bit on these buildings To me, there's kind of a dome there in the center and then two buildings next to it And as we're talking about elections, I'm wondering if that's the capital Yeah, that dome in the middle. Yeah, I think that is representing the capital for sure And if you look over in the center, what do you see there? The main focus in the center? Yes, go a bit closer. I think I've got an idea because to me it looks like kind of a fancy chair Maybe even a maybe even a throne Yeah, there's a close. There's a closer look. Yeah, I know it's really hard to see but yeah that that is Representing the president's chair And then you see right behind it. Yes, it is It's pretty significant in this in this image and you look right next to it I know you can't see that but that's actually a money bag And if you I thought you're gonna say a beehive, but it doesn't look like a money bag Yeah, it does look it is a money bag And so if you look out you can see the caption at the bottom and that'll help you to tell what's what's going on here So the caption says a foot race and that makes me look at these three gentlemen at the bottom who are kind of all leaning forward So I'm assuming those are the people racing and if we're talking about contested elections And that's Washington DC and the capital and the and the throne or the President's seat I would think maybe they're presidential candidates racing against each other because we often use that Phrase today at the rate of the presidency So I'm wondering if they're racing for the presidency there those three gentlemen on the left leaning forward Very good mark. Yes You're absolutely right. They are the final three candidates Actually, uh, the first one leaning over if you look at the bottom The first one leaning over there is John Quincy Adams if you could see him He is the son of John Adams the the photograph we just looked at in your first election in the first cartoon The man next to him is uh, William Crawford He is a slave owner from the south And then the next one is Andrew Jackson. Can you see what's on Andrew Jackson's side? Can you see that just kind of go a little closer in because it looks like there's something sharp Sticking out there. Maybe maybe a sword Um, yes, I think there may be a sword Yes, it is a sword. Andrew Jackson was known as a war hero. He was uh from the war of 1812 He also was in a lot of the battles with the Native Americans with the Cherokees and the Chickasaws And so he's very well known And so what happened is Andrew Jackson actually won the popular vote But he did not have enough to have the majority and he didn't win the electoral So, uh, if you see over way over on the right, do you see the gentleman with his hand on his head? This guy, yeah, he looks like he was racing himself because he looks tired And won out and he's got his hand on his head like he's quit the race And then this is another gentleman with his hand on his shoulder kind of almost Holding him back. Maybe Yeah, yeah, uh, you're actually right. He was running for president too. He just didn't have enough votes to be part of The three candidates actually went to the house of representatives to decide who who won the majority of the electoral votes That's Henry clay and he actually is the speaker of the house Um, so what he did when they would the votes went to the house of representatives because of the 12th amendment They had to decide Who's going to win this election? They're going to vote He did not really think Andrew Jackson was really qualified to be president So he favored John Quincy Adams. So he went to John Quincy Adams and he told him He said if you know, if you'll make me allegedly, of course, this is allegedly He said if you'll make me the secretary of state I will lobby for you and get you those votes in the house that you need to be president And that's exactly what he did. So he later became the secretary of state John Quincy Adams won the election Which the popular vote led from Andrew Jackson left him just a little bit angry. Would you imagine? Yeah, I would think so and that's interesting that he won the popular vote But then didn't get the enough electoral college votes I think that's going to be a theme that we might see with some of our other elections But what did he do if he was angry? What what did he do about it? Well, he and his followers were very angry and they spent the next four years campaigning for the next presidency And they they narrated this corrupt bargain that took place that stole the election from him And in the next election he won by a landslide Wow, very interesting So I think the next one we're going to look at is also an interesting one in terms of The popular vote not being the same winner as the electoral college, right? It is actually If we look at this one, this is going to be about the election of 1876 And this is a famous cartoonist And this is thomas nast and mark. What do you what do you see in this cartoon? Well, unlike that other one had all those people and this time we don't see any faces But we do see this round ball in the middle That says the ballot box, although it doesn't look much like a box to me I suppose the outside part does but the part of the middle is round like a ball And then there's all these feats surrounding it Uh-huh. And what's the caption say? The caption says a national game that is played out Very interesting Yeah, so do you know anything about sports during that time? I think that he's trying to create this analogy here and compare Yeah in the 1860s and 1870s they were organizing, you know professional Sports that we know today like football and soccer and rugby Round about that time in the 1860s and 1870s different organizations were organizing Formalized rules leagues throw those sports around the globe That's right. Yeah, and it's like this one looks this one looks like a soccer ball rather than a football Well, yeah, it came over from england and they were yeah It was uh rugby and soccer and football and they were trying to agree on where they're going to carry it with their hands Were they going to kick it and so? There was kind of a standoff, you know and and hold out who's going to do it Um, and then the same thing with this candidate or in this presidency We have candidates democratic Samuel Tilden and we have republican brotherford haze that are running in this same election And it's kind of the same thing. There's a standoff. There's an argument. How many feet do you see in that cartoon? I guess I see four see three Three pretty prominently and then there's one back on the right side. They just see the toe so I guess There's three plus one so four four feet all together Four feet kicking kicking that ball, right? And that that actually represents the colleges who were arguing over the uh, the rules of the new football or national game and it also Um refers to the four states that created a dispute in in counting the electoral college votes Tilden actually appeared to have the popular vote Uh, but when the states, um There were South Carolina and Florida and Louisiana and Oregon When they went to count their electoral votes and send it into the house of representatives They had conflicting information and specifically in the southern states Because you know, you have to remember this is after the civil war. Uh, we just had the 13th amendment That freed enslaved people. We had the 14th amendment that came about for equal protection And the 15th amendment that denied Did denied the right to vote to anybody who color of our race Or they could not be denied the right to vote. So we had an additional four million votes taking place From the new african-american freed people The reconstruction was going on. Um, we had troops in the south Our nation was really divided. So in these states what they did is they said, you know These districts that were voting they said there was fraud. There was intimidation. There was violence And so they started throwing out some of those democratic votes and they gave haze the win for their states But when they sent it to congress What was congress supposed to do with it? When they had conflicting information Right because they they would have different ballots to review So I guess looking back at other elections Did it go to the house of representatives then to try and solve it? Well, it it did and they decided that they were going to come up with A commission they were going to choose five people from the house of representatives Five people from senators five senators that were going to choose five supreme court justices And that would be a fair way to decide this and so that's what they decided to do They were going to use democrats equal a number of republicans democrats and independents But the problem in the very end is the independent supreme court judge He backed out and so they replaced him with a republican. So who do you think's going to win that? Oh, so if a republican replaced the independent then the republicans are going to win So that would be haze but he got less of the popular vote, right? Right, he didn't have the popular vote, but because of the partisan vote The eight to seven the republicans won with haze But as you can imagine many of the people in the democratic party said, whoa, this is not right. This is not fair So they went on for months. It was a stalemate Attentions were high secret negotiations were taking place and and finally the democrats said We won't dispute this race If you will cede the south back to our control Pull out the federal troops and allow a democrat in your cabinet that we won't dispute this and then you can have the presidency And rutherford b haze said he would do that And so he accepted the presidency two days later and he was inaugurated That's how long that took place and many people had fears that there was going to be another civil war That's amazing that they had both senators Representatives and the supreme court all represented on this particular election to try and Come up with a solution And it still sounds and it still sounds like it was an imperfect solution with deals being made Around the table very fascinating Right Can you think of another time when the supreme court was involved in an election? Right. So in our more recent one our fourth election, we're going to look at is the year 2000 And angela, I want you to take a look at this. Obviously. This is a more modern cartoon style But what can you notice in this particular cartoon? I see two gentlemen looking at one another They're both holding television sets One of them says bush defeats gore and the other says gore defeats bush And who do you think the two people are they've got these? cryptic name tags on there. What do you who do you think they are? Well al I know is al gore and he's the one holding bush defeats gore And then the w must be george w bush and he's holding up the one says gore defeats bush Yeah, so george w bush was the republican candidate And al gore was the democratic candidate and he was vice president prior to this election under bill clinton But yeah, they're holding up these television sets which have these headlines. What what makes you what conclusions Can you draw from these headlines on these television sets? There is a lot of conflicting information And it also reminds me of a time with harry s truman, right? Yeah, let's take a look at this photo. See if it jumps see if any comparisons can be made And this one from 1948 it wasn't a contested election, but it wasn't upset And there you see harry truman who won that election in november of 1948 holding this newspaper that says Dewey governor dewey of new york defeats truman. Well, of course truman won and this newspaper printed the wrong headline Well, I think that's a little bit of what's going on here except they're not they don't have that big beaming smile. Do they Right. Yeah, they're they're a little bit confused, aren't they? I love the way the cartoonist does their eyes on this one They look like big wide eyes with a little dot in the middle and then they're both kind of down 10 mouths And even their noses a little bit. They do look a little confused And what had happened was the television networks both on the night of the election And then the next morning Actually projected different winners. So the different networks One network had projected that george w. Bush had won and another network had Said that al gore had won and at one point al gore conceded the race and then Pulled back his concession of the election was so close And al gore does get the popular vote to go back to compare to our other presidents But george w. Bush it looked like had more of the electoral electoral college vote But it was so close that in fact if i the candidate Could sub secure victory in florida Then neither one of them could win it was that close florida became Of the center of attention And there was a recount there and then a dispute on the recount about which ballots should be counted And which ballots should not be counted And in the end it went all the way through the florida courts and to the supreme court So we mentioned the supreme court with our 1876 election with those five members on the commission you talked about Well in this case the nine supreme court justices looked at this And they ended up voting That george w. Bush was the winner of florida And that led him to the presidency And so this was a very drawn out effort didn't involve the commission, but it did involve the supreme court In really settling this dispute So quite an interesting way For that one to be resolved So as we said at the beginning, you know in 2020 we had this contested election Certainly we had some objections In the house of representatives and the joint session of congress by various Um congressmen or in this case it went to the supreme court And then there's the dewey one from 1948 So those are our four elections That we would shared with you and in the google doc We have lots of information about these four elections, but also some activity ideas For teachers and students as well You can see our email addresses there on our own website Address Truman liby dot gov with lots of information and resources for you So i'm going to let angela Uh say thank you and then we'll finish up our presentation Thank you Thank you everybody and please reach out if you have any questions about any of our presentation Yes