While all elections for President are significant in American history, certain elections have had the significance of defining the progress of American history.

In the election of 1800, the Federalists and Republicans led by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson involved an election of two views of the future of America.

Adams and the Federalists asserted the greatness of the young nation would be achieved through the growth of international commerce, industry, and financial speculation.

Jefferson and the Republicans asserted that greatness would be achieved through individual agricultural labor, small and local government, and the primacy of hard currency.

The election of 1800 was a rematch of the election of 1796 in which Adams prevailed.

The election 1800 was harsh and nasty. In the end, Jefferson prevailed. The significance of the election of 1800 is that heads did not roll and armies did not move. Adams left on the day Jefferson took office.

The election of 1800 settled that in the American constitutional system of elections, the ballot settled all disputes and the bullet belonged to neither the victor nor the vanquished.

The elections of 1824 and 1828 introduced to American politics fractious party politics based on ideology, sectional factions, and the first “corrupt bargain” in selecting a president.

In 1824 Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay were all candidates for the presidency.

They represented different political ideologies within the Democratic-Republican Party.

The Federalist Party had dissolved over its actions in opposing the War of 1812.

The key issue separating the four candidates was support and opposition to the Second Bank of the United States and the nationalist philosophy of the Party, which was in line with the views of the Federalists, against the democratic philosophy of the Party, which was in line with the views of the Jeffersonian Republicans.

The election of 1824 left Jackson with the plurality of the popular and electoral votes, but not enough to win the presidency.

The election would be decided by the House of Representatives, but under the 11th Amendment only three candidates were eligible for consideration.

Clay, coming in fourth, lost the election. Clay, after a three-hour dinner with Adams, promised to support Adams over Jackson.

The deal, some argue, included Adams giving Clay the secretary of state position which would put him in a better position to run in 1828 or 1832.

The outcry was that Jackson, who had the most votes, lost to a corrupt bargain in which the moneyed interests and party bosses stole the election from the candidate of the people.

Sound familiar?

The election of 1828 was a nasty election in which Jackson was accused of being an adulterer and bigamist resulting from his marriage to his wife.

The election of 1828 was four years in the making and Jackson won handily.

But the humiliation of the bigamy charge killed his wife and he never forgave his political enemies for it.

The election of 1828 signaled the full arrival of party politics, national conventions, and the rise of democracy as a theory of American elections.

The election resulted in the Age of Jackson, the bank was, resentment and opposition to the financial interests (Wall Street), the maturing class warfare politics, and the rise of the theory of nullification.

South Carolina threatened to nullify national legislation only to be threatened with military force by Jackson.

The Jackson presidency broke the Democratic-Republican Party into the Whigs and the Democrats. This split led to sectional politics which was co-opted by the issue of slavery and the election of 1860.

The election of 1860 again split the party structures, not over economic policy, but over slavery.

The Democratic Party split between Northern (supported abolition) and Southern (supported slavery) Democrats and each proposed a candidate for president.

The Whig Party broke up over the debate on expansion of slavery into the territories.

The wing that opposed expansion became the party of Lincoln and the wing that wanted peace and avoidance of war became the Constitutional-Union party.

Because of the spit in the Democratic Party, Lincoln prevailed.

The South, under Southern Democrats, succeeded from the Union and war came. It was the election of Lincoln that brought the war and the history that came because of it.

The election 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, and Samuel Tilden, Democrat, was decided in the House of Representatives.

Southern Democrats agreed to support the election to Hayes with his promise to remove federal troops from the South.

This bargain resulted in the death of reconstruction and the rise of racial discrimination and Jim Crow for almost a century.

The election of 2016 is an election over the internal control of each party and which party will prevail in November.

The election of 1980 in which Reagan papered over of the differences between the various wings of conservatism within the Republican Party has failed.

Cruz and Trump are in a battle for the support of the populist, libertarian, Tea Party, anti-government, social and Christian conservative wings of the party.

Rubio, Bush, and Kasich are in battle for the Republican establishment, mainstream conservative, neo-con foreign policy, limited-government wings. Concurrently, the battles are over the definition of conservatism and what definition controls the Party.

The Trump candidacy has exposed and is exploiting the deep seated distrust and resentment of the various wings and how each blames the other for prior election defeats and social policy failures.

The Democratic Party is little better with the left wing of the party supporting an avowed socialist against the Clinton political machine which is seen as being owned by Wall Street and the banks who are blamed for the financial crash of 2007-08.

The winners of the internal battles within each party will have diametrically opposed visions for America and the differences will not be distinctions without differences.

The election of 2016 will leave a significant mark on American political history.

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Editor’s note: Arthur H. Garrison, LP.D. is an assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Department of Kutztown University.