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United States presidential election of 1808
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The election results of 1808 Asher B. Durand: portrait of James Madison Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Cotesworth Pinckney American presidential election, 1808
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Asher B. Durand: portrait of James Madison
Asher B. Durand: portrait of James Madison James Madison, detail of an oil painting by Asher B. Durand, 1833; in the collection of The New-York Historical Society.

United States presidential election of 1808

United States government
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Written by
John M. Cunningham
John M. Cunningham graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2000 with a B.A. in English. He worked at Britannica from 2004 to 2018. A student of pop culture and the arts, he wrote about popular (and semipopular)...
John M. Cunningham
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1808

United States presidential election of 1808, American presidential election held in 1808, in which Democratic-Republican candidate James Madison defeated Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney . Deciding not to run for reelection, Pres. Thomas Jefferson unofficially anointed James Madison, his secretary of state and fellow Virginian, as his successor. As an architect of the U.S. Constitution and Jefferson’s principal adviser, Madison appeared to be an ideal presidential candidate. However, widespread dissatisfaction with the Embargo Act of 1807—a foreign-policy maneuver contrived by Jefferson and Madison that had had unintended deleterious effects on the U.S. economy—led to fractiousness within the Democrat-Republican Party. At the ...(100 of 362 words)

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