Picking A President: The Whig Party's Last Hurrah (1852)
The Whig Party would be successful in electing two Presidents in the era preceding the Civil War. The party had formed in the 1830s from an alliance of disaffected Democratic-Republicans, many of whom were antagonistic towards the policies of Andrew Jackson, especially to his opposition to the re-chartering of the national bank. The Whigs were successful two presidential elections, first in 1840, and then in 1848. In both cases history repeated itself. In each case the Whigs selected a former general as their victorious Presidential candidate, and each time that winning candidate died in office before completing his full term.
The party's effort to pick a President would be unsuccessful in 1852, and the soon it would be time to sing "turn out the lights, the part's over."
The issue of slavery would cause sectional divisions within the two major parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, but the issue would hurt the Whigs the most. As the 1852 election approached, the nation was being held together, barely so, by the compromise of 1850, signed by President Millard Fillmore. The compromise was almost universally unpalatable. In the north, free states bristled at the requirement of having to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return of escaped slaves. Southerners were unhappy that California had been admitted as a free state and that slavery in the territories acquired in the Mexican-American War was not automatic, but would be decided by popular sovereignty. Northerners resented the political power held by the slave states and southerners saw the growing anti-slavery sentiment in the north as an attack on their way of life.
These political tensions divided both parties, but the Whigs seemed to be more bitterly divided that the democrats. President Millard Fillmore, who had become President upon the death of Zachary Taylor in July of 1850, hoped to win election to the presidency on his own merit. He pointed to the Compromise of 1850, seeing it as a success, and as something that halted a secession movement. The northern Whigs believed that the Compromise of 1850 favored the slaveholding South over the North. Southerners generally supported Fillmore, for his support of the compromise, but many distrusted the President, who was from New York and who had anti-slavery sympathies, though his first professed loyalty was to following the Constitution, which at the time allowed for slavery.
The Congressional Whig caucus, led by North Carolina Senator Willie P. Mangum, met on April 9, 1852, to decide the date and location for the 1852 convention. The party chose to hold the convention in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. They agreed to hold the convention during the second week of June. In late 1851 and early 1852, state conventions began to meet to select delegates to the national convention. The party was divided between those who felt that Fillmore could not win the election and those who were loyal to the president's nomination. Despite the fact that Fillmore was a New Yorker, Northern Whigs did not think he could win the election. They turned to their previous tried and true formula: a victorious general. Many favored General Winfield Scott, commanding general in the Mexican War. Most Southern Whigs tended to prefer Fillmore.
The party was also torn on the issue of slavery. Most in the party wanted to prevent slavery from becoming the dominating issue in the election. However, the Whigs were split on the issue of the Compromise of 1850, which had been proposed and designed by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. President Zachary Taylor, a Southern Whig, had tried to avoid the issue altogether by proposing that California and New Mexico be admitted as free states immediately. After Taylor's death in July 1850, Fillmore, a moderate Whig, had supported Clay's compromise and was instrumental as president in its passage. Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward of New York, opposed the compromise because it did not apply the Wilmot Proviso (which banned slavery in any federal territory acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American War) to the western territories.
Northern anti-slavery Whigs tried to associate Scott with the Free Soil wing of the party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Just days before the convention was scheduled to begin, Southern Whigs warned that they would not support Scott unless he pledged to disavow the Free Soilers and to exclude them from his administration if he was elected.
Secretary of State Daniel Webster of Massachusetts launched another campaign for the presidency in 1851. Fillmore liked Webster, but he feared that a Webster victory would turn the party over to the Free Soil wing, which in turn would spell the end of the party.
Winfield Scott had supported the Compromise of 1850, and claimed not to support the Free Soil wing of the party, but his association with William Seward made him unacceptable to Southern Whigs. Southerners also distrusted Webster, and decided to backing Fillmore. Scott became the preferred candidate of most Northern Whigs, Fillmore became the main candidate of Southern Whigs, and Webster was only able to win backing from a handful of delegates, mostly from New England.
On the eve of the convention, The New York Times estimated that Fillmore would have the support of 133 delegates, Scott 120 and Webster 40. Meanwhile, two weeks before the Whig convention was set to begin, the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce, a northerner from New Hampshire, as their candidate. Supporters of Daniel Webster believed that Scott, not Fillmore, could defeat Pierce in the general election, because Pierce had also served as a general in the war, under Scott's command. This caused several delegates to switch their support from Webster to Scott.
The convention met from June 17 to June 20. On the first day, delegates selected former Senator George Evans of Maine as temporary chairman. A large number of delegates had not yet arrived, and many on the floor objected to the selection. The delegates also appointed the Whig Party's National Committee, as well as a Committee on Credentials and a Committee on Permanent Organization, before adjourning. On the second day, the party settled on its platform. Southern delegates submitted a platform, but it was rejected in favor of a relatively weak and noncontroversial one, which was easily passed by a vote of 227 to 66. Then the voting began.
Fillmore narrowly led on the first ballot, receiving 133 votes. Scott placed a close second with 131 votes. Webster received 29 votes. Five more ballots were held with little change in the vote before the convention adjourned for the weekend.
Both Webster and Fillmore were willing to withdraw in favor of the other, but their respective delegates at the convention were unable to unite around either candidate. The delegates resumed voting on Monday. On the 8th ballot, Scott took the lead with 133 votes to 131 for Fillmore, but neither received the necessary majority for nomination. The convention was deadlocked, and a number of delegates unsuccessfully moved to allow a nomination with a plurality, rather than a majority, of votes. After the 46th ballot, with Scott ahead by seven votes (but still without a majority), the delegates voted to adjourn for the night. On the first ballot of the final day of the convention, the 47th overall, Scott still had not received the majority of votes necessary for nomination. Several more votes were taken. Fillmore lost votes on each successive ballot. On the 52nd ballot, Scott received exactly one half of the vote. He was finally nominated on the next ballot, obtaining a majority when several delegates from New England and Virginia switched their support.
Scott had earned the nickname of "Old Fuss and Feathers" in the military due to his fascination with appearance and discipline. Though respected, he was also mocked for this trait. But going into the election, many Whigs were confident that he would command more respect among voters than his opponent, Franklin Pierce. William Alexander Graham was chosen as the vice-presidential nominee.
With both parties trying to manage their own internal sectional divisions, the Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats. The lack of significant differences on the issues between the two parties sent voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. Scott's antislavery reputation made him unattractive to many southern Whigs, while Pierce at least was reputed to be a "Doughface", that is a northerner with sympathies to southern political interests. The pro-slavery Whig platform also undermined the Northern Whig vote.
Scott's status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce had also served in the Mexican-American War at the rank of brigadier general. Whig efforts to slander Pierce as a coward and a drunk ("the hero of many a well-fought bottle") were not well-received by voters.
While there was such a thing as negative campaigning in those days, slandering Pierce for his military service was not looked upon well by voters. When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won the election by a significant margin. Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Pierce won the electoral vote by 254 to 42. He won 50.84% of the popular vote (to 43.87% for Scott.)
Despite their decisive loss in the 1852 elections, most Whig leaders still believed the party could recover during the Pierce presidency, just as it had during the presidency of James K. Polk. But the economy was strong and the Whigs could not unite on a platform of any substance. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act had effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, and this divided both parties, but the Democrats seemed better able to weather the storm. In northern states, opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave rise to anti-Nebraska coalitions consisting of Democrats focused on their opposition to the Act, along with Free Soil Party members and northern Whigs. In Michigan and Wisconsin, these two coalitions called themselves the Republican Party. Similar groups in other states initially took on different names.
Another political coalition appeared: the nativist and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" movement, which eventually organized itself into the American Party. Both the Republican Party and the Know-Nothings battled for the void left by the Whig Party, but they could not unite. Republicans focused their opposition on the "Slave Power," while the Know-Nothings focused on what they said was the anger of mass immigration and a Catholic conspiracy. The Republican Party almost exclusively appealed to Northerners, while the Know-Nothings had some support in both the North and South.
Congressional Democrats suffered huge losses in the mid-term elections of 1854, as voters provided test drove the vast array of new parties opposed to the Democratic Party. For those still left in the Whig Party, cooperation between Northern and Southern Whigs became increasingly impossible, and leaders from both sections continued to abandon the party. In 1855 Fillmore became a member of the Know-Nothing movement, not because he was anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic (his daughter had attended a Catholic school), but because he saw the party as the most politically viable. He encouraged his Whig followers to join as well. In September 1855, William Seward and his faction of Whigs joined the Republican Party. Now appearing to be a leaderless party, this effectively marked the end of the Whigs as an independent and significant political force. The 1856 presidential election became a three-way contest between Democrats, Know-Nothings, and Republicans. Democrat James Buchanan won the election with a majority of the electoral vote and 45 percent of the popular vote.
The Whig Party vanished after the 1850s, with most Whigs joining the Republican Party, a party that most southerners saw as the party that was determined to end their way of life.
The party's effort to pick a President would be unsuccessful in 1852, and the soon it would be time to sing "turn out the lights, the part's over."
The issue of slavery would cause sectional divisions within the two major parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, but the issue would hurt the Whigs the most. As the 1852 election approached, the nation was being held together, barely so, by the compromise of 1850, signed by President Millard Fillmore. The compromise was almost universally unpalatable. In the north, free states bristled at the requirement of having to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return of escaped slaves. Southerners were unhappy that California had been admitted as a free state and that slavery in the territories acquired in the Mexican-American War was not automatic, but would be decided by popular sovereignty. Northerners resented the political power held by the slave states and southerners saw the growing anti-slavery sentiment in the north as an attack on their way of life.
These political tensions divided both parties, but the Whigs seemed to be more bitterly divided that the democrats. President Millard Fillmore, who had become President upon the death of Zachary Taylor in July of 1850, hoped to win election to the presidency on his own merit. He pointed to the Compromise of 1850, seeing it as a success, and as something that halted a secession movement. The northern Whigs believed that the Compromise of 1850 favored the slaveholding South over the North. Southerners generally supported Fillmore, for his support of the compromise, but many distrusted the President, who was from New York and who had anti-slavery sympathies, though his first professed loyalty was to following the Constitution, which at the time allowed for slavery.
The Congressional Whig caucus, led by North Carolina Senator Willie P. Mangum, met on April 9, 1852, to decide the date and location for the 1852 convention. The party chose to hold the convention in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. They agreed to hold the convention during the second week of June. In late 1851 and early 1852, state conventions began to meet to select delegates to the national convention. The party was divided between those who felt that Fillmore could not win the election and those who were loyal to the president's nomination. Despite the fact that Fillmore was a New Yorker, Northern Whigs did not think he could win the election. They turned to their previous tried and true formula: a victorious general. Many favored General Winfield Scott, commanding general in the Mexican War. Most Southern Whigs tended to prefer Fillmore.
The party was also torn on the issue of slavery. Most in the party wanted to prevent slavery from becoming the dominating issue in the election. However, the Whigs were split on the issue of the Compromise of 1850, which had been proposed and designed by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. President Zachary Taylor, a Southern Whig, had tried to avoid the issue altogether by proposing that California and New Mexico be admitted as free states immediately. After Taylor's death in July 1850, Fillmore, a moderate Whig, had supported Clay's compromise and was instrumental as president in its passage. Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward of New York, opposed the compromise because it did not apply the Wilmot Proviso (which banned slavery in any federal territory acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American War) to the western territories.
Northern anti-slavery Whigs tried to associate Scott with the Free Soil wing of the party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Just days before the convention was scheduled to begin, Southern Whigs warned that they would not support Scott unless he pledged to disavow the Free Soilers and to exclude them from his administration if he was elected.
Secretary of State Daniel Webster of Massachusetts launched another campaign for the presidency in 1851. Fillmore liked Webster, but he feared that a Webster victory would turn the party over to the Free Soil wing, which in turn would spell the end of the party.
Winfield Scott had supported the Compromise of 1850, and claimed not to support the Free Soil wing of the party, but his association with William Seward made him unacceptable to Southern Whigs. Southerners also distrusted Webster, and decided to backing Fillmore. Scott became the preferred candidate of most Northern Whigs, Fillmore became the main candidate of Southern Whigs, and Webster was only able to win backing from a handful of delegates, mostly from New England.
On the eve of the convention, The New York Times estimated that Fillmore would have the support of 133 delegates, Scott 120 and Webster 40. Meanwhile, two weeks before the Whig convention was set to begin, the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce, a northerner from New Hampshire, as their candidate. Supporters of Daniel Webster believed that Scott, not Fillmore, could defeat Pierce in the general election, because Pierce had also served as a general in the war, under Scott's command. This caused several delegates to switch their support from Webster to Scott.
The convention met from June 17 to June 20. On the first day, delegates selected former Senator George Evans of Maine as temporary chairman. A large number of delegates had not yet arrived, and many on the floor objected to the selection. The delegates also appointed the Whig Party's National Committee, as well as a Committee on Credentials and a Committee on Permanent Organization, before adjourning. On the second day, the party settled on its platform. Southern delegates submitted a platform, but it was rejected in favor of a relatively weak and noncontroversial one, which was easily passed by a vote of 227 to 66. Then the voting began.
Fillmore narrowly led on the first ballot, receiving 133 votes. Scott placed a close second with 131 votes. Webster received 29 votes. Five more ballots were held with little change in the vote before the convention adjourned for the weekend.
Both Webster and Fillmore were willing to withdraw in favor of the other, but their respective delegates at the convention were unable to unite around either candidate. The delegates resumed voting on Monday. On the 8th ballot, Scott took the lead with 133 votes to 131 for Fillmore, but neither received the necessary majority for nomination. The convention was deadlocked, and a number of delegates unsuccessfully moved to allow a nomination with a plurality, rather than a majority, of votes. After the 46th ballot, with Scott ahead by seven votes (but still without a majority), the delegates voted to adjourn for the night. On the first ballot of the final day of the convention, the 47th overall, Scott still had not received the majority of votes necessary for nomination. Several more votes were taken. Fillmore lost votes on each successive ballot. On the 52nd ballot, Scott received exactly one half of the vote. He was finally nominated on the next ballot, obtaining a majority when several delegates from New England and Virginia switched their support.
Scott had earned the nickname of "Old Fuss and Feathers" in the military due to his fascination with appearance and discipline. Though respected, he was also mocked for this trait. But going into the election, many Whigs were confident that he would command more respect among voters than his opponent, Franklin Pierce. William Alexander Graham was chosen as the vice-presidential nominee.
With both parties trying to manage their own internal sectional divisions, the Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats. The lack of significant differences on the issues between the two parties sent voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. Scott's antislavery reputation made him unattractive to many southern Whigs, while Pierce at least was reputed to be a "Doughface", that is a northerner with sympathies to southern political interests. The pro-slavery Whig platform also undermined the Northern Whig vote.
Scott's status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce had also served in the Mexican-American War at the rank of brigadier general. Whig efforts to slander Pierce as a coward and a drunk ("the hero of many a well-fought bottle") were not well-received by voters.
While there was such a thing as negative campaigning in those days, slandering Pierce for his military service was not looked upon well by voters. When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won the election by a significant margin. Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Pierce won the electoral vote by 254 to 42. He won 50.84% of the popular vote (to 43.87% for Scott.)
Despite their decisive loss in the 1852 elections, most Whig leaders still believed the party could recover during the Pierce presidency, just as it had during the presidency of James K. Polk. But the economy was strong and the Whigs could not unite on a platform of any substance. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act had effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, and this divided both parties, but the Democrats seemed better able to weather the storm. In northern states, opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave rise to anti-Nebraska coalitions consisting of Democrats focused on their opposition to the Act, along with Free Soil Party members and northern Whigs. In Michigan and Wisconsin, these two coalitions called themselves the Republican Party. Similar groups in other states initially took on different names.
Another political coalition appeared: the nativist and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" movement, which eventually organized itself into the American Party. Both the Republican Party and the Know-Nothings battled for the void left by the Whig Party, but they could not unite. Republicans focused their opposition on the "Slave Power," while the Know-Nothings focused on what they said was the anger of mass immigration and a Catholic conspiracy. The Republican Party almost exclusively appealed to Northerners, while the Know-Nothings had some support in both the North and South.
Congressional Democrats suffered huge losses in the mid-term elections of 1854, as voters provided test drove the vast array of new parties opposed to the Democratic Party. For those still left in the Whig Party, cooperation between Northern and Southern Whigs became increasingly impossible, and leaders from both sections continued to abandon the party. In 1855 Fillmore became a member of the Know-Nothing movement, not because he was anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic (his daughter had attended a Catholic school), but because he saw the party as the most politically viable. He encouraged his Whig followers to join as well. In September 1855, William Seward and his faction of Whigs joined the Republican Party. Now appearing to be a leaderless party, this effectively marked the end of the Whigs as an independent and significant political force. The 1856 presidential election became a three-way contest between Democrats, Know-Nothings, and Republicans. Democrat James Buchanan won the election with a majority of the electoral vote and 45 percent of the popular vote.
The Whig Party vanished after the 1850s, with most Whigs joining the Republican Party, a party that most southerners saw as the party that was determined to end their way of life.