Our Presidents and How We Make Them

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

I have endeavored in this volume to supply a want in our political history by giving not only a detailed and reliable report of the nomination and election of every President of the United States, but by giving with it many important sidelights relating to the selection and character of our Chief Magistrates.

With a personal knowledge of national conventions covering over half a century, and an intimate acquaintance with the chief actors of both parties in selecting Presidential candidates, I am able to give the inside movements of some of our important national struggles which are imperfectly understood. The inspiration and organization of all the various political parties, great and small, are concisely presented, and the personal reminiscences of the struggles of the great men of the country have been most carefully prepared.

Absolute accuracy in the preparation of political history covering a period of one hundred and twelve years is not to be expected, as record evidence is at times either imperfectly preserved or entirely destroyed; but no pains have been spared to make this volume a complete and reliable history of our Presidents and how we make them.

I am indebted to Edward Stanwood’s “History of Presidential Elections” and to Greeley’s “Political Text-Book of 1860” for valuable data of the earlier conflicts for the Presidency. Many of the personal and political reminiscences given are an elaboration of a series of articles originally prepared for the Saturday Evening Post, of Philadelphia.

A. K. M.

Philadelphia, March 1, 1900.

THE WASHINGTON ELECTIONS

1789–1792

The first election for President of the United States was held on the first Wednesday of January, 1789, and it was an election in which the people took no part whatever in most of the States. The election should have been held in November, 1788, but the Constitution of 1787, that required ratification by nine States to make it the supreme law of the nation, did not receive the approval of the requisite number of States until the 21st of June, 1788, when New Hampshire made up the ninth State approving it. Vermont followed five days later, and New York, after a bitter struggle, ratified the Constitution on the 26th of July. There was then ample time for Congress to make provisions for a Presidential election in November, but many weeks were wasted in a struggle for the location of the national capitol, and it was not until the 13th of September that Congress was prepared to pass a resolution declaring the ratification of the Constitution, and directing the election of Presidential electors.

Communication was at that time very slow and uncertain between the several States, and as Congress did not fix the time for an election until the middle of September, the first Wednesday of January, 1789, was deemed the earliest period at which an election could be had. Considering the length of time required to communicate with the different States, and the extreme difficulty in the States communicating with their people and Legislatures, it was practically impossible to have a Presidential election in which the people of the country generally could participate.

None of the States had made any preparation for an election, and the only practical method for choosing electors was by the Legislatures, as the Constitution provided then, as it does now, that each State shall appoint Presidential electors “in such manner as its Legislature may direct.” Attempts were made to hold popular elections in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, but even in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, after elections had been held after a fashion, the Legislatures of those States finally chose the electors. There were next to no votes cast in Pennsylvania,[1] Maryland, and Virginia, as there was no contest, the election of Washington being conceded by all; and whatever votes were cast in the States have never found their way into the political statistics of the country. Rhode Island and North Carolina had not ratified the Constitution and did not choose electors, and in New York a bitter contest arose in the Legislature between the friends and opponents of the Constitution, resulting in a disagreement between the Senate and House that was not adjusted in time for the Legislature to choose electors. Thus, New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina gave no votes for President in the Electoral College of 1789.

There had been no formal nomination of Washington for President and Adams for Vice-President in any part of the country. In later Presidential elections it was common for Legislatures and mass-meetings to present candidates for President, but I cannot find a record of any formal presentation of either the name of Washington or Adams as candidates at the first Presidential election. Washington was accepted as the logical ruler of the Republic, whose sword had won its independence, and Massachusetts, the State of Lexington and Bunker Hill, was conceded the second place on the ticket by general assent. Both were pronounced Federalists, and Washington was much more positive in his partisanship than is now generally believed. He was consulted about the choice of a Vice-President, and he answered that while he took it for granted that “a true Federalist” would be elected to the Vice-Presidency, he was unwilling to indicate any preference; but it was generally known that he and his immediate friends preferred John Adams, who had been one of the committee with Jefferson to prepare the Declaration of Independence, and who had written a very vigorous pamphlet in favor of the adoption of the Constitution.

It is now generally assumed that there was no shade of opposition to Washington’s election to the Presidency, but the anti-Federalists, many of whom were opposed to the Constitution, made several ineffectual efforts to defeat him. It is known that Franklin was approached on the question of being Washington’s competitor, but there is little doubt that he peremptorily refused. At that time the Presidential electors did not vote directly for President and Vice-President as they do now. Each elector voted for two men for President, both of whom could not be a resident of the same State, and the candidate receiving the largest vote, if a majority, was chosen President, and the candidate receiving the second largest vote for President became Vice-President. Several movements were made, without ever attaining the dignity of importance, to have votes quietly taken from Washington and given to Adams, and other movements were made to defeat Adams for Vice-President, but all of them were signal failures. It is understood that Hamilton, the closest friend of Washington, was not friendly to Adams. There is some reason to believe that he would have seconded the movement of the anti-Federalists to make George Clinton Vice-President had it given any promise of success.

The electoral colleges met on the first Wednesday of February, 1789, and elected Washington President, he receiving 69 votes, being the full number of electors, and John Adams received 34 votes for President, which made him Vice-President, although he did not receive a majority of the electoral votes. The following table shows the vote in detail as cast by the Electoral College, all of the men having been voted for only as Presidential candidates:

The Congress of the Confederation had provided that the new Congress chosen under the Constitution should meet in New York on the first Wednesday of March to declare the result of the Presidential election and inaugurate the new Republic, but a quorum of the Senate did not appear until the 6th of April, and on that day the electoral vote was counted in the presence of the two Houses, and Washington and Adams declared elected. They were notified of their election as speedily as possible, but it was not until the 30th of April that they were inaugurated.

Washington’s second election was quite as unanimous as the first, both at the polls and in the electoral colleges. No opposition electoral tickets were formed in any of the States, as the re-election of Washington and Adams was universally accepted. The Presidential electors of that day were appointed in accordance with the obvious spirit of the Constitution, that meant to provide an entirely dispassionate and independent tribunal in the Electoral College to exercise the soundest discretion in the choice of a President and Vice-President. No pledges were asked or given by any one named as an elector, and each one was free to vote according to the dictates of his own judgment. Had there been opposition electoral tickets, they would have logically run on opposing lines with distinct obligations on the part of each side as to how their votes would be cast, but no such question arose until the first battle between Adams and Jefferson in 1796.

There was no organized opposition to the administration of Washington at the close of his first term, but the Democratic sentiment, so ardently cherished by Jefferson, had been steadily growing, and with two such able and aggressive opposing partisans as Jefferson and Hamilton in the Washington Cabinet, it was only natural that opposition to the Federal policy would gradually take shape to be effective when the overshadowing personality of Washington became eliminated from the politics of the country. Jefferson and Hamilton often had serious differences in the Cabinet, and Washington uniformly sided with Hamilton. Washington had little personal and no political sympathy whatever with Jefferson, and only one of Jefferson’s rare tact and sagacity could have remained in the Washington Cabinet and fashioned the great opposition party that carried him triumphantly into the Presidential chair four years after Washington’s retirement. As opposition to the re-election of Washington and Adams would have been entirely fruitless, it was wisely not attempted, and the election passed off in almost as perfunctory a manner as did the first election in 1789.

Rhode Island and North Carolina had ratified the Constitution, and Vermont became a State on the 4th of March, 1791, and Kentucky on the 1st of June, 1792, giving fifteen States to participate in the second Presidential election. In nine of the States Presidential electors were chosen by the Legislatures, and by popular vote in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia, but there were very few votes polled, and what were cast indicated nothing politically, as there were no opposing electoral tickets.

Washington again received the unanimous vote in the electoral colleges—132 in number—and Adams became Vice-President by receiving 77 votes for President. When the two Houses met to declare the vote, Vice-President Adams presided in the House, opened and read the certificates of the votes of the several States, and declared Washington and himself elected President and Vice-President. The following is the official vote in the electoral colleges as cast in 1792:

THE ADAMS-JEFFERSON CONTEST

1796

While it was generally accepted that Washington would not be a candidate for a third term, he gave no definite expression on the subject until he issued his farewell address a short time before the election of 1796. Washington was an extremely reticent man, and it is possible that, in view of the serious complications between this country and France, he may have anticipated a contingency that would make him accept a third election to the Presidency, but it seems to have been well understood by those nearest to him in official circles that he earnestly desired to retire to private life at the expiration of his second term. He was then the richest man in the country, his wealth being almost wholly composed of land and slaves, and for twenty years he had been unable to give any attention to his large business interests. While his election and re-election to the Presidency by a unanimous vote were very gratifying to him, he greatly preferred the life upon his plantation, where he gave most careful attention to all the details of its management.

As early as 1793 it was generally accepted by the public that Washington would not be a candidate for re-election, and that Jefferson and Adams would be the logical competitors for the succession. Jefferson had cleared his decks for the battle by resigning his office as Secretary of State early in 1794. He was not in harmony with the severe Federal policy of Washington, and was very positively hostile to the policy of the administration in failing to support the French Revolution. Jefferson led the Democratic forces of the country; Washington, and Adams as his logical successor, led the Federal forces, and between them there was an irreconcilable dispute as to the form of government the new Republic should assume. Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and their associates did not believe in the capacity of the people for self-government. They favored the strongest possible government, with checks and balances which could effectually restrain what they regarded as positive and dangerous ebullitions of public sentiment. They would have made Senators for life and given only the semblance of government to the people. Jefferson, on the other hand, took the broad ground that the people were sovereign and should rule. He logically supported the French Revolution against the Bourbon Kings, and cherished the strongest prejudices against England. As Secretary of State he could not well have remained in the Washington Cabinet the last two years of the administration, but he doubtless resigned to be entirely free to make his great battle for the Presidency in 1796.

Neither Jefferson nor Adams was nominated for the Presidency in 1796 by any Legislature or mass-meeting of which there is any record as far as I have been able to ascertain. Adams was the choice of Washington, and the logical successor to Washington as the Federal candidate for President, and Jefferson stood head and shoulders over all the Republicans of that day. The title of Republican was adopted by the friends of Jefferson, and the Democratic party was founded in 1796 by Jefferson under the name of Republican, established as the majority party of the nation four years later, and it fought and won the Democratic battles under that name until 1824, when the Jackson party changed the title to Democracy.

If the overshadowing individuality of Washington could have been eliminated from the contest of 1796, Jefferson would have defeated Adams by a decided majority, but Washington was earnestly enlisted in the support of Adams, and all the power of the administration was wielded in favor of the Federal candidate. While Washington was not charged with violent partisanship in his appointments, it is none the less true that when the issue came between Adams and Jefferson, every Federal official of the country felt bound to support, with all the power he possessed, the candidate preferred by Washington. Had Grover Cleveland lived in that day, he would have had ample opportunity to denounce the “pernicious activity” of office-holders with as much reason as he denounced them a century later in his support of civil service reform.

Not only were the Federal officials aggressively enlisted in favor of Adams, but the personal influence of Washington, that was greater than that ever wielded by any other official or citizen of the Republic down to the present time, was a serious obstacle to Jefferson’s success. The people loved Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence, and a large majority of them sympathized with his liberal ideas of popular government, but the name of Washington was sacred to a large majority, and his wishes were paramount in deciding their political action. Such were the conditions under which Jefferson entered the contest against Adams in 1796.

In this contest, for the first time, there were two candidates distinctly declared as competitors for the Presidency, and other candidates as distinctly declared as competitors for Vice-President, although all had to be voted for as candidates for President in the Electoral College. At that time Aaron Burr was in the zenith of his power. He was one of the most astute politicians of that day, inordinately ambitious, unscrupulous in his methods, and he was generally accepted by the friends of Jefferson as the candidate for Vice-President.

New York was a Federal State, but it was hoped that by the masterly ability of Burr the electoral vote of New York might be won for Jefferson, although while there was entire unanimity among the Republicans in support of Jefferson, there was not equal unanimity in the support of Burr. He failed to carry New York for Jefferson, but succeeded in carrying it for Jefferson and himself in 1800, and his victory was won so early in the contest by the election of a Republican Legislature in that State in May, 1800, that he practically decided the battle against Adams.

The Presidential contest between Jefferson and Adams developed into the most defamatory campaign ever known in the history of American politics, unless the second campaign of 1800 between the same leaders may be accepted as equalling it. In no modern national campaign have candidates and parties been so maliciously defamed as were candidates and parties when Jefferson and Adams fought for power in the contest of the Fathers of the Republic. Jefferson was denounced as an unscrupulous demagogue, and Adams was denounced as a kingly despot without sympathy with the people, and opposed to every principle of popular government.

There were few newspapers, but it was the age of the pamphleteer, and the political pamphlets of those days, if compared with the political asperities of the present age, would make the partisan vituperation of the evening of the nineteenth century appear as tame and feeble. Nor were political leaders of that day any less unscrupulous than are the political leaders of the present. The struggles of mean ambition were as common then as now, and political leaders jostled each other in the most vituperative assaults to give victory to their cause.

The contest ended in November, when the elections were held in the various States. Tennessee had been admitted to the Union on the 1st of June, 1796, making sixteen States to participate in the choice of a President. Of these, six States held some form of popular elections, while ten chose their electors by the Legislature. The popular vote cast at these elections had no material significance. There was but one ticket voted for in nearly or quite all of the six States which assumed to choose electors by popular vote, as the New England States were solid for Adams, and the Southern States, where elections were held, were strong in the support of Jefferson. The result was the election of Adams in the Electoral College by a vote of 71 to 68 for Jefferson, who thereby became Vice-President. The following is the vote in detail, as cast in the Electoral College, the electors voting only for President:

It will be seen by the foregoing table that Pennsylvania,[2] Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina cast divided electoral votes for the Presidency between Jefferson and Adams. In Pennsylvania, Adams received 1 electoral vote to 14 for Jefferson. In Maryland, Adams received 7 to 4 for Jefferson. In Virginia, Jefferson’s own State, Adams received 1 to 20 for Jefferson, and in North Carolina the vote was 1 for Adams to 11 for Jefferson. In all of these States the electors were chosen by popular vote, and they were doubtless selected with reference to their character and intelligence without pledges as to how they should cast their ballots in the electoral colleges. One of the Virginia electors exercised his admitted right to vote against Jefferson, who had the largest popular following in the State. It was this independent action of a few electors in 1796 that made both parties draw their lines severely in the selection of the candidates for electors, and from that time until the present all electoral tickets have been made up of men who were accepted as solemnly pledged to vote for their party candidates in the Electoral College.

THE JEFFERSON-ADAMS-BURR CONTEST

1800–1

The Presidential contest of 1800 was as revolutionary in its aim and in its accomplishment as was the Republican revolution of 1860. The Federalists had practically undisputed control of the Government for twelve years, under Washington and John Adams, and the power of the Federal party, with the overwhelming individuality of Washington in its favor, accomplished the election of Adams over Jefferson in 1796. When the battle of 1800 opened, Washington was dead, and Hamilton, one of the ablest of the Washington political lieutenants, was not in hearty sympathy with Adams.

The Federalists held both branches of Congress, and a tidal wave of partisan bitterness and personal defamation ran riot, both in Congress and throughout the country. Our foreign complications with France had become very serious, and Congress approved what was then regarded as very extensive preparations for a war that was bitterly opposed by the Republican minority, the followers of Jefferson. So violent were the political discussions of the country that Adams, acting in accord with the Federal theory of a strong suppressive government, demanded and secured the passage of what are known as the Alien and Sedition laws, which now rank among the most odious legislative acts in the history of the Republic.

While the Alien and Sedition laws were apparently aimed at those who were open enemies of the country in war, they were, in fact, intended to suppress criticism of the administration and to impose the severest penalties for open hostility to its policy. The first session of the Congress of 1797–98 lasted eight months, and even in the fierce passions of civil war the Congressional debates did not equal the asperities of the Congressional debates of a century ago. The first Alien law lengthened the period for naturalization to fourteen years, and all emigrants were required to be registered and the certificate of registration to be the only proof of residence. All alien enemies were forbidden the right of citizenship under any circumstances.

Another of the series gave the President the power in case of war to seize or expel all resident aliens of the nation at war with us, and yet another gave the President power to deport any alien whom he might think dangerous to the country, and if after being ordered away he remained in the country, he was subject to imprisonment for three years and forbidden citizenship. In addition to these provisions, aliens so imprisoned could be removed from the country by the President’s order. Such were the general provisions of the Alien law. The Sedition bill, that was part of the same policy, declared that any who hindered officers in the discharge of their duties or opposed any of the laws of the country were guilty of high crime and misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment. Those who were guilty of writing or publishing any false and malicious writings against Congress or the President, or aided therein, were made punishable by a fine of $2000 and imprisonment for two years.

These measures were in harmony with the Federal theory of government. The Federal leaders did not believe the people capable of self-government, and Adams felt justified in imposing the severest penalties upon all who severely criticised or violently opposed the administration. Washington was yet alive and in full mental and physical vigor when these laws were passed, and it is reasonable to assume that he approved of them, as he could have defeated them if he had opposed their enactment. Hamilton vainly protested against the Alien and Sedition laws as a fatal political blunder, but Federalism had never suffered defeat, and President Adams never doubted his re-election until the vote was declared against him.

The contest of 1800 had its lines so well defined from the outset that candidates for President and Vice-President were as clearly indicated, although without any formal declaration, as national tickets would be indicated by a national convention of modern times. There is no record of the Congressional caucus in 1800, but it seems to be an accepted tradition that the Federals, who had a majority of the House, first called a secret caucus to confer about the management of the campaign. They did not formally name candidates, but by general consent Adams was accepted as the candidate for President and Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, for Vice-President. Apparently well-authenticated reports tell of a Republican Congressional caucus held during the same year, but there is no preserved record of it. If such a caucus was held, candidates were not nominated nor was any declaration of principles made. The chief object of the Republican caucus seems to have been to harmonize the friends of Jefferson on Burr as the accepted candidate for Vice-President, but no preference was expressed in any formal way. When the Federalists held their first caucus the Republicans denounced it as a “Jacobinical conclave,” and so severe were the criticisms of the Philadelphia Aurora, the leading Jefferson organ, that its editor was at one time arraigned before the bar of the Senate.

The contest of 1800 opened early in the year, the reported Congressional caucuses having been held in February or March, and from that time until the election the political discussions were acrimonious to a degree that would surprise the present generation. Jefferson had cordially united his friends in the support of Burr, and it was Burr’s magnificent leadership that carried the electoral vote of New York by winning the Legislature of that State as early as May. New York had voted for Adams in 1796, and the loss to Adams of one of the leading States of the Union and its transfer to Jefferson made the battle next to hopeless for Adams, but he and his friends fought it out to the bitter end.

No new States had been admitted during the Adams administration, and the same sixteen States which had elected Adams over Jefferson were then to pass a second judgment upon the great leaders of the two opposing political theories of that day. In Pennsylvania the Federalists controlled the Senate chiefly by hold-over Senators, as the popular sentiment of the State was strongly for Jefferson. In the three previous elections for President the Pennsylvania Legislature had passed special acts authorizing a popular vote for President, but in 1800, the Federals having control of the Senate, refused to pass a bill for an election whereby the choice of electors was thrown into the Legislature, and it required joint action of the Federal Senate and the largely Republican House to provide for a choice of electors even by the Legislature. The Federal Senators refused to go into joint convention except upon conditions which would divide the electoral vote, and the Republicans of the House were compelled to choose between disfranchising the State, as New York had been disfranchised in 1789, or to concede a large minority of the electors to Adams.

It was finally agreed that each House should nominate 8 electors, and that the Houses should then meet jointly and each member should vote together for 15 of the 16 thus nominated. The result was that the Federalists forced the election of 7 Adams electors with 8 for Jefferson. The Federal Senators, 13 in number, who controlled the Senate against the 11 Republicans, were heralded by their party papers and leaders as grand heroes, because by the accident of power in one body of the Legislature not immediately chosen by the people they had wrested 7 electors from Jefferson, which would have been given to him either by a popular vote or by a joint vote of the Legislature.

Rhode Island at this election for the first time chose electors by popular vote, making 6 States which chose electors by the vote of the people and 10 which chose electors by the Legislature. As the electoral colleges could vote only for candidates for President, Jefferson and Burr received precisely the same vote, 73 in number, and Adams received 65, with 64 for Pinckney and 1 for John Jay. The following is the table of the vote as cast in the electoral colleges:

It is impossible to give anything like an intelligent presentation of the popular vote between Jefferson and Adams. In most of the States which chose electors by popular vote there was practically no contest, as the New England States voted solidly for Adams, and the Southern States south of Maryland voted as solidly for Jefferson, with the exception of North Carolina, where an electoral ticket seems to have been chosen on the original theory that electors should exercise sound discretion in the choice of a President, and in the exercise of that discretion 4 of the North Carolina electors voted for Adams and 8 for Jefferson. Had Pennsylvania been permitted to give expression either to the popular will or to the decided Republican majority of the Legislature, 7 of the Pennsylvania votes would have been taken from Adams and added to Jefferson, which would have made him 80 electoral votes to 58 for Adams.

Jefferson had won his election, and there should have been no question about according it to him. Under the electoral system of that day, by which each elector voted for two candidates for President, Jefferson and Burr each received 73 votes for the Presidency, and upon the face of the returns were equally entitled to claim the highest honor of the Republic. True, Burr had not been discussed or seriously thought of as a candidate for President. He was accepted by the Republicans distinctly as the candidate for Vice-President, and the whole battle was fought out on the issue between Jefferson and Adams. Had Burr been honest and manly, he would have ended the struggle at once by declaring that the people had elected Jefferson to the Presidency, and that Burr could not consent to be presented to the country and the world as seeking to wear the stolen honors of the Government; but Burr developed his true character as soon as he discovered that his vote was equal to that given to Jefferson. While he did not make any open or visible effort to elect himself over Jefferson, he silently assented to the use of his name, and thus made the Presidency hang in uncertainty from the time of the election in November until the 17th of February, when the contest was finally decided in favor of Jefferson, and Burr stamped with infamy. That he wished to be elected over Jefferson cannot be reasonably doubted. If he had not permitted the use of his name without protest as a candidate against Jefferson, there would have been no discussion and no uncertainty, as the House would have chosen Jefferson on the 1st ballot.

Jefferson could have accomplished his own election without a serious contest if he had accepted the proposition of the Federalists to give him the election, to which he was entitled by the vote of the people, if he would agree not to remove the Federalists who then filled all the offices of the Government. Under Washington and Adams, the Republicans were practically proscribed in national appointments, and Adams had been specially proscriptive in dispensing the patronage of his administration. One of the most discreditable acts of his administration was the creation, by his Federal Congress in the expiring hours of Federal rule, of a number of judges, to whom commissions were issued by Adams at midnight before his retirement from office. They were known in political discussions of that day as the “midnight judges,” and the measure was so odious that it speedily destroyed itself. Jefferson, while not specially proscriptive in political appointments, regarded it as inconsistent with his appreciation of executive duties to give any pledge to the opposition to retain their friends in office. They naturally assumed that Jefferson would be as proscriptive as Adams had been, and that their only safety was in making terms with Jefferson, whose election they could accomplish without difficulty.

It is quite probable that they could have made such terms with Burr, and it is possible that such conditions were proposed and accepted, but the Federalists knew that the defeat of Jefferson would be a monstrous perversion of the popular will; and Hamilton and Bayard, of Delaware, and other prominent Federalists earnestly opposed all affiliation with Burr. Burr having failed to announce that Jefferson had been elected President by the people, and should be elected by the House, and Jefferson having refused to make terms with the Federalists, the election went into the House under rules which had been adopted by Congress to meet the special case. Under the rules, the House was required to retire to its own chamber after the announcement of the electoral vote showing no choice, and proceed to ballot for President, and to continue to ballot without adjournment until a choice was effected. That session of the House continued for seven days. The balloting began on the 11th of February and ended on the 17th, as the House, instead of adjourning, simply took recesses from time to time. Each State could cast but one vote in the House, and that vote was determined by a majority of the delegation. Where the delegation was evenly divided the State had no vote. The following is the vote of the States on the 1st ballot, February 11, 1801:

Nineteen ballots were taken on the same day, then a recess was taken until the 12th, when 9 additional ballots were taken, and 1 ballot was taken on the 13th, 4 on the 14th, 1 on the 16th (the 15th being Sunday), and 1 on the 17th, making an aggregate of 35 ballots, all of which were precisely a repetition of the 1st ballot given in the foregoing table. Jefferson received the vote of 8 States, Burr of 6, and 2 were blank, because of divided delegations. The vote of 9 States was necessary to an election, and there was no choice.

On the 2d ballot cast on the 17th, being the 36th ballot in all, Jefferson was successful, receiving the votes of 10 States to 4 for Burr and 2 blank. The changes in favor of Jefferson were made by one Vermont member declining to vote, thus allowing his colleague to cast the vote of the State for President, and by four from Maryland also declining to vote, by which the tie in that State was broken in Jefferson’s favor.

In addition to these changes South Carolina and Delaware cast blank votes, but they did not help Jefferson, as he required the positive vote of 9 States to accomplish his election. It was James A. Bayard, of Delaware, a leading Federalist, who changed his vote on the last ballot from a vote for Burr to a blank ballot. Jefferson was thus declared elected President, and Burr became Vice-President by the mandate of the Constitution, he having received the highest electoral vote for President excepting that cast for Jefferson.

It can be readily understood that Burr’s permission of the use of his name to defeat the election of Jefferson in the House made an impassable gulf between them, and that contest dated the decline of Burr’s power in the land. He knew that there could be no future for him, and his restless genius sought new fields in which to gratify his ambition, ending in his arrest and trial for treason, and also staining his skirts with the murder of Hamilton. Hamilton was open in his hostility to Burr in the contest between Jefferson and Burr in the House, and it was Burr’s resentment of Hamilton’s hostility to his election that made him seize upon a trivial pretext to force Hamilton into a duel, in which Hamilton fell mortally wounded at the first fire. Burr’s public career was thus ended by the Jefferson-Burr contest, and although he lived many years thereafter, he drank the bitterest dregs of sorrow, and died in poverty and unlamented.

Adams accepted his defeat most ungracefully. He remained in the Executive Mansion until midnight of the 3d of March, 1801, when he and his family deserted it, leaving it vacant for Jefferson to enter, without a host to welcome him. It was the only instance in which the retiring President did not personally receive the incoming President in the Executive Mansion, with the single exception of President Johnson, who did not remain at the White House to receive Grant; but Johnson was excusable from the fact that Grant had expressed his purpose not to permit Johnson to accompany him in the inauguration ceremonies. Jefferson, in marked contrast with the pomp and ceremony of Federal inaugurations, appeared on the 4th of March clad in home-spun, and rode his own horse unattended to the Capitol, and after the inauguration ceremonies returned to the Executive Mansion in like manner. Both Jefferson and Adams lived for more than a quarter of a century after their great battle terminated in 1800, and time greatly mellowed the asperities of their desperate political conflicts. In the later years of their life, when both had lived long in retirement, they had friendly correspondence; and it is one of the most notable events in our political annals that Jefferson and Adams, who stood side by side in presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress, and who had fought the fiercest political battles of the nation as opposing leaders, both died on the same day—the natal day of the Republic—July 4, 1826.

THE JEFFERSON-PINCKNEY CONTEST

1804

The election of Jefferson in 1800 was a complete revolution in the political policy of the new Republic, and it maintained its supremacy for sixty years. The Republican party that triumphed with Jefferson never suffered a defeat until after the name of the party had been changed to Democracy under Jackson. John Quincy Adams, who was elected President in 1824, was nominated and supported as a Republican, as were Jackson, Crawford, and Clay, and the Whig triumphs of 1840 and 1848 stand in our history as accidental victories without changing the general policy of the Government in any material respect. It may be accepted as a fact that from 1800 until 1900, the full period of a century, there have been but two political policies established and maintained in the government of this country. The Democratic policy ruled from 1800 to 1860, and from 1860 to 1900 the Republican policy has maintained its supremacy, notwithstanding the two Democratic administrations of Cleveland. They were but temporary checks upon Republican mastery, as the Whig successes of 1840 and 1848 were mere temporary checks upon Democratic rule.

With Jefferson’s success in 1800 came, for the first time, the control of the Republicans in both branches of Congress, and Jefferson thus had the entire legislative power of the Government in thorough sympathy and harmony with himself. He was bitterly opposed by the Federalists at every step. They justly criticised his hostility to an American navy; they complained vehemently of his removals from office in partisan interests, and they specially assailed his ostentatious attempts to limit the authority and powers of the General Government to give the supreme sovereignty of the nation to the people.

The one act of his administration that was most violently assailed was his purchase of Louisiana in 1803. It was proclaimed by the Federalists as the most flagrant usurpation of authority, as an utter overthrow of the Constitution, and as the beginning of the end of the Union. There is not an argument made to-day against the acquisition of the Philippines and Puerto Rico that is not the echo of the earnest arguments made by the Federalists against the acquisition of Louisiana. The ablest of the Federalists proclaimed in the Senate and House that the Union was practically destroyed by the acquisition of a distant country, containing a people with no sympathy with our interests or institutions; who were generally strangers to our language and could never be educated to the proper standard of American citizenship. But the country then, as now, believed in expansion, and the acquisition of Louisiana stands out as one of the grandest achievements of statesmanship exhibited by any administration, from Washington to McKinley.

The contest between Jefferson and Burr for the Presidency, after one had been distinctly supported as a candidate for President and the other as distinctly as a candidate for Vice-President, taught the necessity of changing the method of choosing a President in the Electoral College, but the Federalists bitterly opposed the change, chiefly on the ground that it was desired solely to gratify the personal ambition and interests of Jefferson. The proposed amendment prevailed, however, and was ratified by thirteen of the sixteen States in ample time for the contest of 1804. The dissenting States in the ratification of the amendment were Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Under that amendment the electors voted for President and Vice-President as they do to-day, and the candidate for Vice-President must now have a majority of the electoral vote as well as the candidate for President to be successful.

The Congressional caucus that made Presidents for many years became an accepted institution in 1804, when the Republican or Jeffersonian members of Congress were publicly invited to meet on the 25th of February. They unanimously nominated Mr. Jefferson for re-election, and as Burr was unthought of for Vice-President, they nominated George Clinton, of New York, for that office. This was the first open political caucus or convention to nominate national candidates. The caucuses of 1800 were held in secret by both the Federalists and Republicans, and no record was preserved of their actions. Those who called the caucus, appreciating the prejudice that would likely be provoked by Congress attempting to dictate the candidates for President and Vice-President, distinctly declared that the caucus or conference was called solely as individuals, and not as official representatives of the Senate and House. If the Federalists held a caucus in 1804, there is no record of it that I have been able to find, but they united on Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, for President, and Rufus King, of New York, for Vice-President. Both of the parties gave the second place on their respective tickets to New York, clearly indicating that they regarded New York as one of the pivotal States of the conflict.

Ohio had been admitted into the Union in 1802, making 17 States to take part in the election of 1804, and the new apportionment, shaped by the census of 1800, enlarged the number of electoral votes. While the Federalists had greatly diminished in popular strength by the loss of power and the steadily gaining approval of Jefferson and his Republican policy, they did not abate in any degree the intensity of their hostility to Jefferson, and in a few States where contests were made, the campaigns were conducted on the old defamatory lines which marked the two great battles between Jefferson and Adams.

In most of the States there was practically no contest, but in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where Federalism had always maintained its supremacy, the Federalists fought with an earnestness and desperation such as might have been expected in a hopeful struggle. The fiercest battle was fought in Massachusetts, where for the first time the Republicans defeated the Federalists in the largest vote ever cast in the State. Jefferson electors received 29,310 votes to 25,777 for the Pinckney ticket, giving Jefferson a majority of 3533. This was a terrible blow to Adams, and it was aggravated by the fact that while Massachusetts faltered, Connecticut gave her electoral vote to the Federal ticket. Delaware, with her three electoral votes, was the only other State that maintained her devotion to the Federal cause, and the electoral votes of those 2 States, with 2 added from the 11 votes of Maryland, summed up the entire vote of the Federal candidate for President in the Electoral College, the vote being 162 for Jefferson to 14 for Pinckney, and a like vote for Clinton and King for Vice-President. The following table presents the official vote cast in the electoral colleges:

THE MADISON-PINCKNEY-CLINTON CONTESTS

1808–12

The election of Jefferson ended the line of the succession to the Presidency from the Vice-Presidency. Adams as Vice-President succeeded Washington as President, and Jefferson as Vice-President succeeded Adams, but the Burr fiasco made it impossible for the succession to be maintained, and for many years the line of succession to the Presidency was in the Premiers of the administration. Indeed during the entire century from 1800 to 1900 but one Vice-President has been elected to the Presidency. That single exception was Martin Van Buren, and he started under the Jackson administration as Premier. Madison, who was Secretary of State under Jefferson, succeeded Jefferson to the Presidency; Monroe, Secretary of State under Madison, succeeded Madison as President; John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State under Monroe, succeeded Monroe as President, and since that time Buchanan was the only Secretary of State who reached the Presidency, although Webster, Cass and Blaine, who were Premiers under several administrations, were defeated in Presidential contests.

Madison was generally regarded as the favorite of Jefferson for the succession, and Jefferson’s power at that time was second only to the power of Washington in dictating who should succeed him to the highest honor of the Republic. Irritating opposition to Madison came from his own State of Virginia, where the friends of Monroe were quite aggressive. Two caucuses had been held in the Virginia Legislature, one by the friends of Madison, and the other, much smaller in number, by the friends of Monroe, and both were thus formally presented to the country to succeed Jefferson.

A caucus of the Republican members of both branches of Congress was called to meet on the 23d of January, 1808. It was known that the friends of Madison largely outnumbered the friends of Monroe in Congress, and the active supporters of Monroe earnestly opposed a nomination by the Congressional caucus. The caucus was held, however, and was attended by a majority of the Senators and Representatives, and Madison was nominated on the 1st ballot, receiving 83 votes to 3 for Monroe and 3 for George Clinton. Monroe had a considerably larger strength in Congress, but the result was predetermined, and a number of them did not participate. George Clinton was nominated by substantially the same vote for Vice-President. The caucus system was under fire, and the caucus, in justification of its own act, adopted a resolution declaring that in making the nominations the members had “acted only in their individual characters as citizens,” and because it was “the most practical mode of consulting and respecting the interests and wishes of all upon a subject so truly interesting to the people of the United States.”

It was a considerable time before the friends of Monroe gave a cordial adhesion to the caucus nominations, but Jefferson, who was friendly to both Madison and Monroe, interposed and reconciled the friends of Monroe by the expectation that Monroe would succeed Madison; and as there was practically no serious opposition to Madison presented by the Federalists, the campaign drifted into the general acceptance of Madison’s election long before the election was held. The Federalists did not hold any caucus or formally present candidates, but accepted Pinckney and King, for whom they had voted in the last contest against Jefferson.

In the New England States vigorous contests were made by the Federalists to regain the supremacy they had lost, and New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which had voted for Jefferson, were regained by the Federalists, but the struggle was not made with any hope of defeating Madison for President. There had been no increase in the number of States nor in the vote of the electoral colleges. Madison won an easy and decisive victory, receiving 122 electoral votes to 47 for Pinckney and 6 for George Clinton, who was the regular nominee of the Republicans for Vice-President, and who was elected to that office by 113 electoral votes to 47 for King and 15 scattering. New York was obviously disaffected, as while the Republican caucus had accorded to Clinton of that State the second place on the ticket, and elected him Vice-President, the electoral vote of New York was divided, Madison receiving 13 to 6 cast for Clinton, and in the same electoral college Clinton received 13 votes for Vice-President to 3 for Madison and 3 for Monroe. The votes of North Carolina and Maryland were also divided, but that was not unusual, as after Washington retired the electoral votes of those States were divided, because their electors were chosen by Congressional districts.

There is no intelligent record of the popular vote, and it would be needless to attempt to present it, as outside of New England the States which were contested generally chose their electors by the Legislature. The following is the vote in detail as cast in the Electoral College:

The battle for Madison’s second election in 1812 began in the early period of our second war with Great Britain. Many complicated foreign questions excited earnest discussion and renewed the partisan bitterness of the earlier national contests, while the struggle for the renewal of the charter of the United States bank convulsed financial and business circles. The bill was lost by indefinite postponement in the House in 1811 by a single vote, and soon thereafter a like bill was rejected in the Senate by the casting vote of the Vice-President. Madison did not possess the breadth of statesmanship so grandly exhibited by Jefferson, and he lacked in the positive qualities needed to meet the grave issues which confronted him. He parried our foreign questions with almost endless diplomatic correspondence, and in the conduct of the war he lacked in the settled purpose and methods which are always necessary to sustain a government in such a crisis.

It was then that Clay came to the front as Commoner of the nation, and it was his able, eloquent, and inspiring utterances and actions, aided by Senator Crawford, of Georgia, that saved the administration when it was apparently threatened with defeat. Madison was unwilling to accept war with England until it became clearly evident that he must declare war or give the Federalists a restoration to power, and it was only after he had been very earnestly appealed to by the men upon whom he had most to depend, that he sent a message to Congress pointing out the necessity of a declaration of war, to which both branches in secret sessions gave their approval.

It was not until after Madison had decided upon an aggressive war policy with England that the Congressional caucus was called to nominate Republican candidates for President and Vice-President. The caucus met on the 12th of May apparently without objection, and Madison was renominated by a unanimous vote, only one member present declining to vote. Clinton had died in office, and a new nomination had to be made for Vice-President. John Langdon, of New Hampshire, who was the first Senator to be President pro tem. of the body, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 64 votes to 16 for Elbridge Gerry and 2 scattering. Langdon declined the nomination, and the second caucus was convened when Gerry was nominated by a vote of 74 to 3 scattering. While the proceedings of the caucus were apparently very harmonious, there was significance in the fact that some 50 Republican Senators and Representatives did not attend, only one being present from New York State.

The reason for the New York members declining to attend the caucus was soon developed by a counter movement, made in New York, to bring out DeWitt Clinton, who was the leader of the Republicans of that State, as the candidate in opposition to Madison. The Federalists had no part in making him the competitor of Madison, but they were quite willing, in their utter helplessness, to support any bolt against the omnipotence of the Republican caucus. Many of the Republicans thought that the administration was not sufficiently aggressive in its opposition to England, and many others opposed Madison and were ready to support Clinton or any other promising candidate who was entirely opposed to the war. Had Clinton acted in harmony with the Republicans and supported Madison, he would have been a very formidable competitor of Monroe for the succession, but in allowing himself to be made a candidate of the opposition, he entirely lost his position as a Republican leader.

Madison had been nominated by the Republican Congressional caucus on the 12th of May, and on the 29th of May a caucus of the Republican members of the New York Legislature was held, at which 91 of the 93 members were present, and they unanimously nominated Clinton as a candidate for President, and the Federalists gradually dropped into his support. The Federalists took no formal action for the selection of candidates until September, when a conference of the leaders of that party was held in New York, with representatives from 11 States, and that conference nominated Clinton for President with Jared Ingersoll for Vice-President.

The campaign logically drifted into a square issue between the war and the peace parties, and even with all the factional hostility to Madison in the Republican ranks, such an issue could result only in the success of the party that sustained the Government in its war with England. The Federalists carried a solid New England vote for Clinton with the exception of Vermont, that broke loose from her Federal moorings and cast her entire electoral vote for Madison. New York, with the largest electoral vote of any State, was carried chiefly by Clinton’s personal popularity, and New Jersey was lost to Madison in disregard of the popular vote of the State by a Federal Senate and House that was successful against a Republican majority by reason of the peculiar shaping of the legislative districts. The Legislature repealed the law for the choice of electors by a popular vote, and elected Federal electors by the Legislature. Had the popular vote of New Jersey prevailed, the vote between Madison and Clinton in the Electoral College would have been 136 for Madison to 81 for Clinton. The following is the vote as cast by the electoral colleges:

Louisiana was admitted into the Union on the 8th of April, 1812, and participated in the Presidential election, making 18 States. It will be seen that there was but one State that cast a divided electoral vote. Maryland continued to choose all but the electors at large by Congressional districts, and gave 6 votes to Madison and 5 to Clinton. North Carolina changed her method of electing by districts to the choice of electors by the Legislature, thus making her electoral vote solid. Gerry, the candidate for Vice-President on the ticket with Madison, received 3 more votes in the Electoral College than were given to Madison, one of which came from New Hampshire and two from Massachusetts.

THE MONROE ELECTIONS

1816–20

The election of James Monroe to the Presidency in 1816 and his re-election in 1820 did not rise to the dignity of political contests. The Federal party was practically overthrown by the success of the war with England, and after the close of the war Federalism never asserted itself as a political factor in national affairs. There were murmurings of discontent in the Republican organization, but the Federalists were then in the unenviable attitude of having sympathized with the enemy in a foreign war, and the prejudices of the patriotic people of the country were intensified against the action of the Hartford convention, for which the Federalists were held responsible.

Whether justly or unjustly, it was believed by the Republicans throughout the country that the Hartford conventionists had given “blue-light” signals to the enemy’s ships, and thereby hindered the escape of American vessels which were blockaded. The overthrow of Federalism was so complete that the party never again formally presented candidates for President and Vice-President, and the first Monroe election of 1816 would probably have been as unanimous in the Electoral College as was his second election but for the fact that the three Federal States which voted against Monroe did not hold popular elections for President at all, but chose their electors by the Legislature. Massachusetts, the home of Adams, that had always chosen Presidential electors by popular vote, repealed the law in 1816, so that there was not a single elector chosen by the people against Monroe.

While Monroe’s two elections and administrations are now pointed to as the “era of good feeling,” that has never been repeated in this country. Monroe himself did not reach the Presidency by the rosy path that would now be naturally accepted for him in his journey to the highest civil trust of the nation. The usual Congressional caucus was called on the 10th of March, 1816, asking the Republican Senators and Representatives to meet on the 12th for the purpose of nominating candidates for President and Vice-President. Only 58 of the 141 Republican members attended this meeting, and, instead of taking action, a resolution was passed calling a general caucus for the 16th, and at that caucus 118 members appeared. There were strong and widespread prejudices against the Congressional caucus system, and it was denounced by many prominent Republicans as “King Caucus” that sought to control the people in the selection of the highest officers.

Senator Crawford, of Georgia, who had been the leading Senator, as Clay was the leading Representative, in the support of the war during the Madison administration, was an aggressive candidate for President, and was more popular with the politicians generally throughout the country than was Monroe. Great anxiety was felt about the probable action of the caucus, as it was feared that Monroe might be overthrown, notwithstanding the fact that he was favored by both Jefferson and Madison. When the caucus met with twenty-three Republican absentees, the majority of whom absented themselves because they were positively opposed to the caucus system, Mr. Clay offered a resolution declaring it inexpedient to nominate candidates, but his proposition failed. He thus put himself on record as early as 1816 against the caucus system, and he rejected and took the field against it as a candidate in 1824.

The canvass between Monroe and Crawford was very animated, and Monroe succeeded by only 11 majority, the vote being 65 for Monroe and 54 for Crawford. Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, of New York, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 20 votes more than were given to Monroe. The Crawford sentiment was strong in New York and New Jersey, as well as in North Carolina, Kentucky, and his native State of Georgia, and public meetings were held in different sections of the country after the nominations had been made, denouncing the caucus system, at one of which Roger B. Taney, who later became Chief Justice, was one of the aggressive opponents.

Had there been a formidable Federal party, it is doubtful whether Monroe’s election might not have been seriously imperilled, but the war feeling was too fresh in the minds of the people to tolerate anything that was in sympathy with that expiring political organization. The Republicans who were opposed to Monroe had to choose between falling in with the caucus nomination, and giving Monroe a unanimous support, or making a square fight as a bolting Republican faction, without permitting the aid of the Federalists. As that was impracticable, the Republican discontent gradually subsided and the election of Monroe was conceded by all.

The Federalists made no nomination, but supported Rufus King, one of their old national candidates, and scattered their few votes for Vice-President, no two of the three States voting for the same candidate. Indiana had adopted a State Constitution in June, but was not formally admitted to the Union until the 11th of December, after the Presidential election had been held. The State, however, had voted for President, and elected three Republican electors for Monroe, but an animated dispute arose in Congress about counting the vote, because of the alleged ineligibility of Indiana to vote for President when not formally admitted into the Union, even though the people had adopted a State Constitution several months before the election. The two bodies separated, to enable the House to decide the issue, but finally the question was postponed by a nearly unanimous vote, and the Senate invited to return, when the vote was declared as follows:

Monroe’s re-election in 1820 presents the singular political spectacle of his success without having been formally nominated by any party, and without a single electoral vote being chosen against him. That had occurred in Washington’s two elections, but it was not believed possible that, with the bitter partisan disputes which immediately followed Washington’s retirement, any man could ever be chosen for the Presidency without more or less of a contest. Monroe’s administration had no serious political or diplomatic problem to confront it, and the country was rapidly recovering from the war and proud of the achievements of the American army and navy in the second contest with the English.

Monroe was naturally cautious and conservative. There was nothing aggressive in the policy of his administration, and really no occasion to invite aggression. The Federal Party was practically extinct, and the Republicans were in thorough accord with the Monroe administration. A feeble movement was made early in 1820 to supersede Monroe, but it never attained importance, and even those who attempted it denied responsibility for it. The usual Republican Congressional caucus was called, and very few members took the trouble to attend it, as there was really nothing to do; and it was deemed better for the party to accept Monroe and Tompkins for re-election than to have formal nominations made by a very few representatives of the party. Monroe and Tompkins were thus accepted without any formalities whatever as the Republican candidates for President and Vice-President, and no opposing candidates were presented in any way whatever of which I can find any record or tradition. Monroe thus ran in 1820, as Washington did at both his elections, without opposition, and every electoral vote of the nation was chosen for him.

Five new States had been admitted and participated in the election of 1820. Mississippi came in December, 1817; Illinois in December, 1818; Alabama in December, 1819; Maine in March, 1820, and Missouri had adopted a Constitution in July, 1820, and although not formally admitted into the Union until August, 1821, the vote of that State was counted, as was the vote of Indiana in 1816. The following is the official vote as announced by Congress:

It will be seen that a single electoral vote was cast against Monroe in the New Hampshire Electoral College. The whole 8 electors were chosen as Monroe men, and would have voted for him had it been necessary to elect him, but one of the New Hampshire electors gave as his reason for voting for John Quincy Adams for President and Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President, that he was unwilling that any other President than Washington should receive a unanimous electoral vote.

Monroe’s administrations were uneventful beyond the assertion of what has ever since been known as the Monroe Doctrine, that was evolved by Monroe and John Quincy Adams, his Secretary of State, and the first serious contest in Congress over the Slavery issue, growing out of the admission of Missouri as a State. After the admission of Louisiana as a State the remainder of the territory embracing the Louisiana purchase was organized as the Territory of Missouri, and in 1818 the portion of the territory now embraced in the State of Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a State. In 1819 the House passed a bill for the admission of Missouri, with a clause prohibiting slavery, but it was not accepted by the Senate.

In 1820 the Senate sent a bill to the House for the admission of Maine, and authorizing the organization of the State of Missouri. The House had already passed a bill for the admission of Maine, but it refused to accept the Senate’s provision relating to Missouri. There was very violent agitation on the Slavery question for some time, and many feared that it would end in the disruption of the Union; but Clay became the pacificator, and chiefly by his efforts what has ever since been known as the Missouri Compromise was accepted, admitting Missouri as a slave State, but prohibiting slavery in all of the Louisiana territory north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude. This compromise did not fully satisfy either side, but it was accepted, and on the 10th of August, 1821, President Monroe proclaimed the admission of Missouri into the Union.

Monroe had the most unruffled period of rule ever known in the history of the Republic. Washington, with all his omnipotence, was fearfully beset by factional strife and the wrangles of ambition on every side, and there was no period of his two administrations in which he was not greatly fretted by the persistent and often desperate disputes among those who should have been his friends; but Monroe had an entirely peaceful reign, with the single exception of the slavery dispute over the Missouri question, and at the close of his term he retired to his home in Virginia entirely exhausted in fortune. For several years he acted as a Justice of the Peace, but his severely straitened circumstances finally compelled him to make his home with his son-in-law in New York, where he died in 1831, and, like Jefferson and Adams, on the 4th of July.

THE ADAMS-JACKSON-CRAWFORD-CLAY CONTEST

1824

With the re-election of Monroe in 1820, the Federal party had perished as a political factor; “King Caucus,” as the Congressional caucus for nominating national candidates had been generally designated, had fulfilled its mission, and none pretended that it could be revived to name the successor of Monroe. As Federalism was unfelt and unfeared, and as the Congressional caucus had lost its prestige and power, the Presidential field of 1824 invited a free-for-all race, and the discussion of the succession began actively as early as 1822. It seems unaccountable that the Republicans, after having had the benefit of the Congressional caucus to concentrate their vote on national candidates, did not conceive the idea of a general conference of representative Republicans from the different States to unite them on candidates for President and Vice-President, but no national convention was ever held by any party until the anti-Masons inaugurated it in Philadelphia in 1830, two years before the Presidential election of 1832.

As there was practically no Federal party, none but Republicans were discussed for the succession to Monroe. It is a common but erroneous idea that John Quincy Adams was in harmony with the Federal sentiment of his State and New England generally. After having filled a number of important offices, principally in diplomatic circles, he was elected to the United States Senate as a Federalist by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1802, but he heartily supported the administration of Jefferson, resulting in instructions passed by the Legislature demanding that he should change his political policy. He refused to obey the Legislative instructions, but resigned his seat in the Senate, and thenceforth he acted uniformly with the Republicans, and was Secretary of State during the eight years of Monroe’s administration.

While very many candidates were discussed for the succession, when the time came for concentration only six names remained, and three of those were members of the Monroe Cabinet. They were John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War; William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Clay, of Kentucky, who had been Speaker of the House; Ex-Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, who was not then in official position, and General Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, who had been Senator, Representative, and Supreme Judge. Mr. Clay was presented to the people as a candidate for President by the Kentucky Legislature as early as the 18th of November, 1822, or two years before the election, and the Missouri Legislature also adopted a resolution about the same time recommending Mr. Clay. During the year 1823 the Legislatures of Illinois, Ohio, and Louisiana had also formally favored Clay.

General Jackson was first formally named for the Presidency by a mass-meeting in Blount County, Tenn., early in 1823, and that was followed up by various mass-meetings and local conventions in different parts of the Union. Mr. Adams, although not in sympathy with the Federalists, having earnestly supported the war with England against the Federal sentiment of his State, was presented as a candidate by the Legislature of Massachusetts, and it was seconded by most of the New England States during the early part of the year 1824.

Clinton was nominated by local mass-meetings in New York and Ohio. Calhoun was presented by the Legislature of South Carolina, and Crawford by the Legislature of Virginia. It is worthy of note that while Adams was the Premier of the administration, Crawford was obviously the favorite candidate of President Monroe, as the Legislature of Virginia recommended Crawford, and Virginia voted for him at the election.

All of these candidates were opposed to the Congressional caucus excepting Crawford, who had been the competitor of Monroe in the caucus in 1816. His friends made earnest effort to get the prestige of a caucus nomination, and 6 Senators and 5 Representatives from different States called a caucus to meet on the 14th of February, 1824, “to recommend candidates to the people of the United States for the office of President and Vice-President.” That call was met by a card signed by 24 Republican Senators and members declaring that of the 261 Senators and Representatives there were 81 who were opposed to the caucus. The caucus was held, however, but only 66 members appeared, a majority of whom were from 4 States, and 8 States were not represented at all. A motion to adjourn to meet some weeks later was opposed by Mr. Van Buren and rejected. A ballot was then had for President, when Crawford received 64, Adams 2, Jackson 1, and Macon 1. Albert Gallatin, of Pennsylvania, was also nominated for Vice-President.

The caucus nomination was certainly a hindrance rather than a help to Crawford, as it concentrated his opponents to a very large extent. The caucus system had become very odious, and with 5 of the 6 candidates openly hostile to the caucus, it placed Crawford at a decided disadvantage. Gallatin, who was of foreign birth, was bitterly assailed, and a month before the election he withdrew his name as a candidate, but no attempt was made to give formal nomination to a successor for him on the ticket.

Strange as it may appear, Pennsylvania, the home of Gallatin, did not cordially respond to his nomination, and there was a decided preference in that State in favor of Calhoun for Vice-President. Calhoun and Clinton, being without any large measure of support, gradually dropped out of the Presidential contest, leaving Adams, Jackson, Crawford, and Clay to make the scrub race. There were 24 States to participate in the election, and New York, Vermont, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana chose their electors by their Legislatures, while Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, and Kentucky chose electors by districts, and in the other States popular elections were held and electors chosen by general ticket.

An incident that occurred in the selection of electors by the Legislature of New York resulted in making Clay the fourth candidate in the Electoral College instead of the third. There were 3 of the electors chosen by the Legislature who were elected as Clay men by a combination between the Clay and Adams men, who in the Electoral College divided their votes between Adams, Crawford, and Jackson, and had they voted for Clay, as it was expected they would, Clay would have had 40 votes in the electoral colleges and Crawford only 38. As only the three highest candidates in the Electoral College could be returned to the House from which a choice had to be made, Crawford was thus returned instead of Clay, and if Clay had been returned, it is probable that Adams would not have been chosen President. The New York Legislature had a protracted contest in choosing electors. The combined strength of the candidates in the two Houses as shown by the 1st ballot was 60 for Crawford, 57 for Adams, and 39 for Clay. Finally a combination was made between the friends of Adams and Clay, and divided electors were chosen, by which Adams received 26 votes, Crawford 5, Clay 4, and Jackson 1. In Delaware the electors were divided by a like dispute in the Legislature.

The contest was not one of great bitterness, and in some States there was practically no contest at all. Massachusetts and Virginia, for instance, did not poll half their votes, as they were really not contested, one being conceded to Adams and the other to Crawford. The following is the popular vote of the States except where the electors were chosen by the Legislature, as nearly as it can be ascertained after the most exhaustive investigation of the records:

The popular vote as given in the foregoing table does not fully represent the relative strength of the opposition candidates to Jackson. There were what were called “Opposition” tickets, “People’s” tickets, and “Convention” tickets voted in different States. It will be seen that Jackson received no votes in New England excepting a few in New Hampshire, and in most of those States electoral tickets were known as “Opposition” designed to concentrate all the opposition to Adams, and in North Carolina the Jackson ticket was voted as the “People’s” ticket, but no more intelligent and satisfactory presentation of the popular vote can be gathered from the records than that presented.

The following is the vote of the Electoral College:

Jackson led the popular vote, as was generally expected, and next to him is Adams, with Clay third and Crawford fourth. While all of the 4 candidates were regarded as Republicans as between Federalism and Republicanism, the friends of Adams in a number of the States fought the battle under the title of National Republicans, and the supporters of Jackson, who represented the more Democratic element of the opponents of Federalism, entitled themselves in some States the Democratic Republicans. As was generally expected, there was no choice for President, as no one of the 4 candidates had a majority of either the popular or electoral votes, but Calhoun was elected Vice-President by a large majority, having received the support of the Adams men generally in New England, and of the Jackson men in Pennsylvania, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and indeed in all of the Southern States, excepting Georgia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Thus for the second time in the history of the Republic the Presidential election was remanded to the House for final decision, and the names of Jackson, Adams, and Crawford, the three highest in the Electoral College, were returned to that body from which a choice had to be made by a majority of the States. Although Clay had received less votes than Crawford, he was a very much more potent factor in deciding the contest between the three candidates than Crawford could have been, and it soon became evident that the friends of Clay were in much closer accord and sympathy with Adams than they were with the friends of either Crawford or Jackson. Clay certainly had no love for Jackson, as Jackson was not accredited with any great qualities of statesmanship, and it was the general apprehension that Clay would control the election in favor of Adams that made the friends of Jackson publish the accusation of “bargain and sale” between Adams and Clay, by which Clay was to make Adams President and receive the position of Premier under the administration. Although the Legislature of Kentucky had requested the Congressmen from that State to vote for Jackson, there were well-known reasons, both public and personal, why Clay could not favor Jackson, and on the first ballot in the House Adams received the votes of 13 States, with 7 for Jackson and 4 for Crawford. The majority of the delegation of each State decided how the vote should be cast, and the following table shows not only how the vote of each State was given, but the divisions in the different delegations in deciding between the three candidates:

The administration of John Quincy Adams will be regarded by the careful and dispassionate student of American history as the model government of the Republic. He was the most accomplished scholar who ever filled the position, and surpassed all others in general and accurate intelligence. He was a tireless student until the day of his death, and he had no taste and no fitness for political manipulation. He removed but two men from office during his four years in the Presidency, and they were dismissed for very good cause, and in the discharge of his official duties he looked solely to what he conceived to be the interests of the nation.

He made no efforts to popularize himself personally; was regarded as austere and unapproachable, but he was always courteous, and the arts of the demagogue had no place in the Executive Mansion. He was the real author of the Monroe Doctrine, and earnestly attempted to accomplish what Blaine struggled to accomplish three-quarters of a century later—that is, the unity of the South American governments in sympathy with our Government. His Cabinet was not in political harmony, but as he regarded politics as entirely outside of Cabinet duties, he never took note of political disagreements. He aimed to win a re-election solely by deserving the considerate approval of the American people. After his defeat he returned to his home in Massachusetts, but was soon elected to Congress, where he continued until his death in 1848.

As an illustration of the careful methods of his life my own experience in obtaining his autograph serves a good purpose. A few weeks before his death, when I was the editor of a village newspaper and ambitious to have the autographs of the celebrated men of the country, I wrote him asking for an autograph letter. I received no reply, and after his death was announced I assumed that the letter had gone into the waste basket; but three months after his death I received a letter franked by Louise Catharine Adams (widows of Presidents were then accorded the franking privilege), and the envelope contained only the autograph of John Quincy Adams, clipped from a public document that he had franked. The pressure of duties had prevented him from answering my letter, but the fact that it was answered by his wife so long after his death is evidence that many letters had accumulated, all of which were answered by Mrs. Adams. He fitly died in the Capitol of the nation. He was stricken with paralysis during a session of the House, and died on the following day, having written, as I believe, the most lustrous political record of any of our statesmen, with the single exception of Abraham Lincoln.

THE JACKSON-ADAMS-CLAY CONTESTS

1828–32

The election of Jackson to the Presidency in 1828 was not in any sense a revolution as to the general policy of the Government, but it was a decided revolution in the political methods of our national administrations. Madison, Monroe, and Adams were not confronted by the spoils system. They never entertained the question of removing men from office to reward political friends or to punish political enemies.

The civil service system of the Government under those administrations was an ideal system, but the Jackson leaders openly inspired the followers of their favorite to earnest political action by the declaration that “to the victors belong the spoils.” That slogan was first heard in the Jackson-Adams campaign of 1828, and when Jackson succeeded, for the first time Washington was overrun with a countless host of greedy spoilsmen, clamoring for the dismissal of every man who had not supported Jackson.

Jackson himself was thoroughly committed to the policy of political proscription, and from that day until the present time it has been generally accepted that a change of politics in the national administrations means a general change of the now enormous army of Federal officers, excepting as it is feebly restrained by all parties professing devotion to a civil service system with none honestly maintaining it.

When it is remembered that Jackson was defeated by Adams in 1824, although having more popular and electoral votes than Adams, it is not surprising that the friends of Jackson became intensely embittered, and they opened the campaign of 1828 immediately after the inauguration of Adams in 1825. In the Southwest, where Jackson lived and had his chief strength outside of Pennsylvania, the cockpit, the race-course and the gaming-table were favorite amusements, and the people were strongly prejudiced against what they regarded as the aristocratic power that had been maintained by the Virginia Presidents and continued by Adams. They had a candidate who enthused his followers to the uttermost, and the quiet citizens of Washington, long used to the delectable and cultivated official circles which had prevailed from Washington to the second Adams, were shocked at the mob of Democratic place-hunters who crowded into the Capitol when Jackson became President, and had access to the White House regardless of conventionality, where Jackson is reported to have smoked his corn-cob pipe during his greeting of visitors. With Jackson came the spoils system that has done so much to demoralize the politics of the Republic.

Jackson held a very strong position before the nation, not only because of his triumph over the British at New Orleans, but because of the high civil positions which he had filled with reasonable credit, but without displaying any high standard of statesmanship. He aided in framing the Tennessee Constitution in 1796, and was elected as the first Representative in Congress by the people after the admission of the State, then entitled to only one member.

He had been an ardent supporter of Jefferson in his first contest with the elder Adams, and in 1797 he was elected to the United States Senate, but he resigned a year later to become a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, where he served until 1804, and was again elected Senator in 1823. He had filled all those important civil positions before he had attained any military distinction. He had served in the last year of the war of the revolution as a boy, and the only thing notable that is preserved of his military record of that day is the tradition that after he had been captured by the British he was wounded by an English officer because he refused to clean the officer’s boots.

It is not likely that he ever would have been a prominent candidate for President but for the fact that he defeated the English in the battle of New Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815. Had there been steamships, cables, and telegraphs at that time Jackson could never have commanded the hero worship that twice elected him President and made him practically political dictator.

The treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Ghent on December 24, 1814, but it required nearly a month for the Government to receive information that the treaty had been signed and that the war was ended. On January 8, 1815, more than a fortnight after England and the United States were actually at peace by their own treaty, the battle of New Orleans was fought between Jackson and Packenham, and a victory achieved over the English that then electrified the country as thoroughly as did Dewey’s victory at Manila. That victory, and that victory alone, made Jackson President, and with his rugged and indomitable will, for nearly a generation he stamped his impress upon the policy of the Government with greater emphasis than any other living man since Washington.

The Presidential contest of 1828 formally began soon after the inauguration of Adams, when the Legislature of Tennessee presented Jackson as a candidate, and the criticisms of the Adams administration revived much of the political asperities and resentments of the violent discussions between the old Federalist and Republican parties in the days of Jefferson and the elder Adams. One of the reasons strongly urged against the re-election of Adams was that his administration had become recklessly extravagant, as the expenditures of the Government under him had reached the enormous sum of nearly $14,000,000 a year.

Adams was attacked also because of his liberal views on the questions of protection and public improvements, although Jackson had sustained nearly or quite the same views by his votes in Congress. Adams had no trained political leaders; his Cabinet was divided even on the question of supporting himself, and the ideal statesmanship that Adams worshipped was not calculated to school and equip great politicians. Chiefly through the efforts of Martin Van Buren the supporters of Crawford were brought into the support of Jackson, a feat that was probably not difficult from the fact that Clay, the Secretary of State under Adams, was not friendly with Crawford.

The Congressional caucus was not thought of, and Adams became a candidate to succeed himself by resolutions of Legislatures and mass-meetings. Calhoun, who was the Vice-President under Adams, was accepted by the friends of Jackson and received nearly as large an electoral vote as his chief. It was a contest between the dignified statesmanship of that day and the Democratic element of the country. Adams was accepted as the National Republican candidate and Jackson was supported under the flags of Republican Democracy, and in some sections of Democracy alone. It was this contest and the success of Jackson that crystallized the Republican party of Jefferson into the Democratic party that then had the ablest political leaders of the nation.

The friends of Adams seem to have been confident of his re-election, and a majority of the States chose their electors by popular vote. It was a battle between the Democratic hero of New Orleans, the friend of the people, and the aristocratic power of the Republic. With Jackson’s great prestige and Adams’s feebleness in resources to support himself in the great contest before the people, it is not surprising that Jackson was elected by a very large popular and electoral majority. The following is the popular vote where a direct vote was had in the several States between Jackson and Adams:

The majority for Jackson was so decisive both in popular and electoral votes that the verdict was accepted by the country, and the vote was counted and declared by Congress without any incident worthy of note. The following table presents the vote in detail for President and Vice-President in the Electoral College:

The campaign of 1832 resulting in the triumphant re-election of Jackson developed a more confused condition of politics in the nation than had ever been presented. The Federal party was dead, and did not even pretend to maintain its organization in any of the States. The Republican party was divided between the National Republicans and the Democratic Republicans, who followed Jackson, and finally adopted the flag of Democracy. Jackson’s first administration had been anything but a peaceful one. An open quarrel had broken out between Jackson and Vice-President Calhoun, and Jackson was not only a good hater, but a good fighter. He was largely influenced by Van Buren, who was his Secretary of State, and who was one of the most sagacious political managers of his day. He aimed to succeed Jackson as President by having the Jackson administration enlisted in his favor, and his first step toward that end was to overthrow Calhoun, and Jackson emphasized his hostility to Calhoun by dictating the nomination of Van Buren for Vice-President.

A considerable number of prominent old Republicans who had supported Jackson had become alienated from him because of the intensely partisan qualities of his administration and because of his aggressive interference in the Cabinet scandal resulting from Mrs. Eaton’s social ambition as the wife of a Cabinet minister. Scandals were multiplied in Washington about the Jackson Kitchen Cabinet, of which Amos Kendall was regarded as the chief, but with all the disturbance in the National Capitol, the people of the country were sturdy in their devotion to Jackson, as was proved by his large majority, both in popular and electoral votes, over Clay, who was confessedly the ablest leader of the opposition.

This contest brings us to the introduction of the National Convention. The first political national convention held in this country was called to meet in Philadelphia in September, 1830, by a number of prominent anti-Masonic leaders. The anti-Mason party had sprung up suddenly and attained great power in the North, as it was the only outlet for the old Federalists, most of whom were in sympathy with the opposition of the new party to Masonic and all other secret societies.

The death of William Morgan, who, it was claimed, had been murdered by the Masons for revealing the secrets of the order, was most dramatically presented in the political organs of the day, and the new party speedily absorbed most of the opposition elements to the Democracy in the Northern States. The anti-Masonic national convention that met in Philadelphia in 1830 was presided over by Francis Granger, of New York, and was composed of 96 delegates, representing New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, and the Territory of Michigan. This convention was held more than two years before the Presidential election, for which it was expected to nominate candidates for President, but instead of making nominations, it adjourned to meet in Baltimore in September, 1831, when it had 112 delegates, with Indiana and Ohio added to the States presented. John C. Spencer was its president, and William Wirt, of Maryland, was nominated for President, and Amos Ellmaker, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. Instead of passing a platform, as is now common, the convention issued an elaborate address to the people of the Union.

This action of the anti-Masons was followed by the National Republicans, who met in national convention at Baltimore, on December 12, 1831, with 17 States, represented by 157 delegates. Henry Clay was nominated for President and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. No platform was adopted by this convention, but it followed the anti-Masons by issuing an address to the people of the country in which it was stated that “the political history of the Union for the last three years exhibits a series of measures plainly dictated in all their principal features by blind cupidity or vindictive party spirit, marked throughout by a disregard of good policy, justice, and every high and generous sentiment, and terminating in a dissolution of the Cabinet under circumstances more discreditable than any of the kind to be met with in the annals of the civilized world.”

The Democrats followed the anti-Masons and National Republicans by calling a National Democratic convention, to meet in Baltimore in May, 1832, to nominate a candidate for Vice-President. Jackson was so universally accepted as the candidate of the Democrats for re-election that the convention was not allowed to make a nomination for the first office, but a resolution was passed declaring that the convention “cordially concurred in the repeated nominations that General Jackson had received in various parts of the country for re-election as President.” The convention adopted the two-thirds rule that has prevailed in every Democratic convention from that day until the present time, requiring that “two-thirds of the whole number of the votes in the convention shall be necessary to constitute a choice.”

Van Buren was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 208 votes to 26 for Richard M. Johnson and 49 for Philip P. Barbour. No platform of principles was adopted, nor was an address issued by the convention to the people, but a resolution was passed declaring that “in place of a general address from this body” the delegations should address their respective constituents on the political issues of the day.

Never were two candidates presented for the first office of the nation who so widely differed in their chief qualities. Jackson was a clear-headed man of rugged intellect, of inflexible purpose, a relentless opponent and a devoted friend, while Clay was the most magnetic of all the popular leaders this country has ever produced. No one before or since Clay’s time has approached him in that peculiar quality but James G. Blaine. The hero-worship of Jackson was earnest and always aggressive when summoned to battle, but Clay was beloved and idolized beyond that accorded to any leader of any party in the history of the Republic. He was a most brilliant orator, imposing in presence and gifted in every grace that attracted the multitude, and he was imperious as Cæsar in his leadership. His friends battled for him with matchless enthusiasm, but Jackson was so strongly entrenched in the confidence of the masses that he won an easy victory over the Sage of Ashland.

The contest was one of unusual violence and defamation, and it was doubtless aggravated by the personal enmity that existed between Jackson and Clay. The veto of the bill rechartering the Bank of the United States had greatly disturbed financial circles, and it was believed in the early part of the struggle that the financial and business interests of the country would endanger Jackson’s success, but the popular prejudice against banks in that day was so great that Jackson largely profited by the open opposition of his former supporters who were interested in maintaining a national financial institution. The anti-Masonic electoral ticket was adopted by the National Republicans in several of the States, and it is specially shown in the popular vote of Vermont, where Clay appears to have carried the State, and yet the electoral vote was given to William Wirt, the anti-Masonic candidate. Had it been possible for the electoral vote of that State to elect Clay President, it would have been cast for him.

The number of electors had been enlarged by the new apportionment, and Delaware had provided for the choice of electors by a popular vote, leaving South Carolina as the only State to appoint electors by the Legislature. That State continued the system of the legislative choice of electors without interruption until the civil war of 1861. Several of the States also abandoned the election of delegates by the district system, Maryland alone adhering to it. In Alabama there was no electoral ticket opposed to Jackson, and the popular vote is not attainable. Georgia was also without an anti-Jackson electoral ticket, while Missouri, that was friendly to Clay in 1824, seems to have made no battle for him against Jackson. The following is the popular vote, as nearly as it can be ascertained:

There was some ragged voting for President and much more for Vice-President. Jackson received 219 votes in the Electoral College to 49 for Clay, 11 for Floyd, and 7 for Wirt, given by Vermont, and which would have gone to Clay had they been needed. South Carolina, under the influence of Calhoun, refused to vote for either Jackson or Van Buren, but cast the electoral vote for John Floyd, of Virginia, for President, and for Henry Lee, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. Van Buren was not acceptable to all the friends of Jackson, as the Pennsylvania Democratic Convention positively instructed the electors to vote for William Wilkins for Vice-President, which instructions were obeyed in the Electoral College, and a convention of Jackson men had been held in June, in Charlottesville, Va., and nominated P. P. Barbour, of that State, for the Vice-Presidency, with Jackson for President. A like convention was held, composed of delegates from a number of counties in North Carolina, in which Jackson and Barbour were nominated, but Barbour did not reach the dignity of support in the Electoral College.

There were no disputes as to the return of the electoral colleges, and the vote was declared by Congress as follows:

Jackson’s second administration was even more tempestuous than the first. His nullification proclamation that convulsed the country from centre to circumference, and the first “pocket veto” in the history of the country by which he had killed the Land bill, were among the later acts of his first administration, and entered very largely into the bitterness of political dispute that continued during his second term. Both were denounced as violent usurpations, and it is doubtful whether any but Andrew Jackson could have made the record he left on both of those vital issues.

He had vetoed the recharter of the United States Bank during his first term, and supplemented that hostility to the institution early in his second term by the removal of the Government deposits from the bank. His Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Duane, resolutely opposed the removal of the deposits, but Jackson would not brook opposition, and in order to carry out his new financial policy, he accepted Duane’s resignation and appointed Roger B. Taney, who was in accord with the President, and who was finally rewarded by his promotion to the Chief Justiceship of the United States.

He had devoted followers in Congress; he was absolute master of Congressional action during his second term, and he was heartily supported by the great mass of the people, a very large portion of whom regarded him as the model patriot and the infallible political oracle of the nation. They loved his courage and his pugnacity, and as he always was the winner, they had every inspiration to rejoice over the triumphs of their devotedly worshipped leader.

Strange as it may seem, the first evidence of the weakness of Jackson’s popular strength was exhibited in his own State of Tennessee, where Hugh L. White, a Senator from that State, was nominated to succeed Jackson as President by the Tennessee Legislature. Jackson was much disturbed by it. When the question was before the Legislatures of Alabama and Tennessee, copies of the Washington Globe, the organ of the administration, containing severe assaults upon Senator White, were franked to the members of those Legislatures by the President himself; but notwithstanding all Jackson’s efforts to make Van Buren his successor, Tennessee voted for Judge White by 10,000 majority.

Upon his retirement from the Presidency in 1837, he imitated Washington by a farewell address to the American people, that was received by a large majority as second in reverence only to the farewell address of Washington. His health was feeble when his stormy eight years of Presidential rule were ended, and after the inauguration of Van Buren he retired to “The Hermitage,” his home, near Nashville, in Tennessee, where he died on the 8th of June, 1845.

THE VAN BUREN-HARRISON CONTEST

1836

The national contest of 1836 that made Martin Van Buren President gave birth to a new political organization known as the Whig party. The opposition to Jackson agreed only in opposing Jackson, but it was not possible to unite on any national policy. The strongest organized element of the opposition was the anti-Masonic party, that was very powerful in the North, but among the opponents of Jackson were many who, like Mr. Clay, were Masons of high degree, and they could not act with a political party that made anti-Masonry one of the cardinal principles of its faith.

The National Republican party practically perished with the defeat of Clay in 1832, and a very large majority of its members were not in sympathy with the anti-Masons. These conditions led to the organization of the Whig party in 1834, and it gradually absorbed all the old National Republicans, Federalists, anti-Masons, and all the other varied forms of opposition to Jackson. Its name and its declaration of principles were declared by a number of leading men in 1834, and it gradually developed in strength until it was the leading factor in the support of Harrison in 1836, and won the election of Harrison by an overwhelming majority of both the popular and electoral votes in 1840. The Whig party maintained itself as one of the ablest political organizations the country has ever had, but it was much more noted for its conservative restraints upon the Democrats than for the successful establishment of its policy in the administration of the Government. It elected two Presidents, Harrison and Taylor, but neither seriously impressed the policy of the Whig party upon the nation. It practically perished in 1852, when it made its last great battle for General Scott for President, and carried but four States.

As the contest of 1836 was approached the various elements of opposition to Jackson felt confident that they could poll a majority of the popular vote, but there was no possibility of their uniting upon any one candidate without suffering great loss in their popular following. It was decided, therefore, that instead of attempting to unite the opposition to Jackson on one candidate, they would support several candidates who were particularly strong in their respective localities, with the hope that a majority of the electors might thus be chosen who would unite in the election of the strongest of the opposition candidates.

The Democrats were very much disturbed, as signs of disintegration were visible to all. Jackson was the most potent of any of our retiring Presidents, with the exception of Washington, and he dictated Van Buren for the succession. Without the omnipotent power of Jackson, Van Buren could not have been nominated or elected. Jackson had the Democracy thoroughly organized, and he wielded all the official power of his administration relentlessly to carry out his political aims. There was much hesitation about the Democrats accepting a national convention, because of the opposition to Van Buren, but Jackson personally importuned the leading Democrats to summon a convention at an early period, and a convention was finally called, to be held in Baltimore on the 20th of May, 1835, nearly a year and a half before the Presidential election.

It was not a representative convention, as although over six hundred delegates attended, a majority of them were from Maryland alone, but each State was allowed to cast the vote corresponding with its representation in Congress. Van Buren was nominated unanimously on the 1st ballot, and Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was made the candidate for Vice-President, receiving 178 votes, with 87 cast for William C. Rives, of Virginia. The two-thirds rule was reaffirmed in the convention, and even after Johnson had been nominated under the rule Virginia refused to approve the action of the convention presenting him as the candidate for Vice-President. No platform was adopted and no address was issued by the body to the people of the country.

The prominent candidates presented in opposition to Van Buren were General William H. Harrison and Judge John McLean, of Ohio; Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, and Judge Hugh L. White, of Tennessee. Willie P. Mangum, who received the electoral vote of South Carolina chosen by the Legislature, was not a candidate before the people, and it is remarkable that South Carolina, at war with Jackson on the right of nullification, cast her electoral vote for Mangum, who was one of the leaders of the Whig party and afterward distinguished as a Whig United States Senator.

No attempt was made to bring these opposing opposition elements together. Harrison was first nominated at Harrisburg, Penn., by two State conventions, both meeting ostensibly as anti-Masons, the one being Democratic and the other inclining to the new Whig organization, and he was also presented by Legislatures and mass-meetings in other States. Webster was nominated by the Whig Legislature of Massachusetts, and Judge White was nominated by the Legislatures of Tennessee and Alabama, and by mass-meetings in different sections of the South. He was then a United States Senator from Tennessee, but at war with Jackson, and he was confessedly the strongest opponent of Jackson in the entire South. The fact that he could command a nomination from the Democratic Legislature of Tennessee while Jackson was President is the best evidence of his exceptional popularity with the people, and it was proved also by him carrying the electoral vote of the State over Van Buren by a decided majority. Judge McLean gradually dropped out of the fight, as he was from Harrison’s State, and Harrison soon developed as much the strongest candidate of the entire opposition competitors.

The contest was one of intense bitterness. There were no conflicting opposition tickets run against Van Buren. In States where White was strongest the opposition united on White electoral tickets, where Harrison was strongest they united on Harrison electoral tickets, and where Webster was strongest they united on Webster electoral tickets. The campaign was thus shrewdly managed by the opposition, and it gave some promise of success, as if a majority of the electoral votes had been chosen against Van Buren, they would doubtless have been united upon one candidate before the time for meeting of the electoral colleges. In Clay’s State the battle was made for Harrison with him in the forefront of the fight, and Harrison carried the State by a safe majority.

The defamation of the contest of 1836 was equal to any of the malignant contests of the early days of the Republic. Van Buren, Harrison, White, and Webster were most vindictively assailed, and their public and private lives criticised far beyond the lines of decent disputation. Van Buren was proclaimed the mere puppet of Jackson; Harrison was denounced as a failure in field and forum, where he had been General, Governor, and Senator; Webster was defamed as an old blue-light Federalist, and White was assailed in the South as an ingrate who had sacrificed his self-respect to ambition.

There were twenty-six States to participate in the election of 1836. Arkansas had come into the Union on the 15th of June, and Michigan, where electors were chosen before the admission of the State, was formally admitted into the Union on the 26th of January, 1837, before the electoral count took place in Congress, and the precedent in the Missouri case in 1821 settled the right of Michigan to participate in the election. In all of the States, with the single exception of South Carolina, the electors were chosen by popular vote and by general ticket. The following was the popular vote as returned for the several candidates, taking the vote of the opposition electors chosen as an indication of the choice of their respective States:

As Van Buren was successful, not only by a small popular majority, but by a clear majority of the electoral vote, no effort was necessary to unite the opposition electoral colleges, and they divided their votes between Harrison, White, and Webster, according to the preferences of the respective States. Virginia refused to give her electoral vote to Johnson for Vice-President, and that left him without an election, as he had not a majority of the whole Electoral College. He was, however, promptly elected by the Senate, receiving 33 votes to 16 for Francis Granger. He was the only Vice-President in the history of the Republic who was not elected by the Electoral College. When Adams, Jackson, Crawford, and Clay ran in 1824, and there was no choice for President in the Electoral College, John C. Calhoun received a decided majority in the college and was elected without an appeal to the Senate. The following is the vote as cast for President and Vice-President in the electoral colleges:

THE HARRISON-VAN BUREN CONTEST

1840

Memorable as was the campaign of 1840 that called General Harrison to the Presidency by a popular whirlwind, the thoughtful student of American politics will regard that campaign as even more memorable because it gave birth to a party, of the humblest pretensions at the start as a political power, that twenty years later saw its principles triumph in the election of Lincoln, and the mastery of the party that has controlled the policy of the Government for forty years. The Abolition party, that was the corner-stone upon which the modern Republican party is reared, was organized in December, 1839, at Warsaw, Genesee County, N. Y., when, at a mass convention, with but few States represented, it nominated James G. Birney, of New York, for President, and Francis G. Lemoyne, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President.

This party had but one vital principle that made up its political faith, and that was the abolition of slavery. It was looked upon as a movement of a few political cranks, and was not regarded as a possible factor in that or any future political contest. It cast a few votes in 1840, but in 1844 it diverted enough votes from Henry Clay in New York State to defeat him for the Presidency. Its total vote in 1840 aggregated only 7069, one-third of which was cast in New York and one-fourth in Massachusetts; but it was the party of destiny, and its origin can be studied with profit. Its few supporters of that day who braved the prejudices of all parties were actuated by a sincere conviction, and that conviction was made more and more acceptable from year to year as the aggressions of slavery multiplied, until it finally died a colossal suicide.

The divided opposition elements which had polled within 30,000 of the vote received by Van Buren in 1836 were coerced by supreme necessities to united action for the campaign of 1840. But three candidates were prominently discussed. They were General William H. Harrison of Ohio, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Winfield Scott of Virginia. Clay was much the ablest of them, and had the most enthusiastic and earnest friends, but the old anti-Masonic element crucified Clay in the Whig convention of 1839, just as Seward was crucified in the convention of 1860 by the American sentiment that was an indispensable factor to enable the Republicans to win. Clay was a Royal Arch Mason, and he would doubtless have lost largely in the rank and file of the anti-Masons, who had been educated in the fiercest strife of political contests to believe that Masonry was incompatible with patriotism.

Harrison had been Governor of the Indiana Territory, Senator in Congress and a successful general, having won a decisive victory over the English and the Indians at Tippecanoe. Scott was green with the laurels of Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane, and was regarded as the first soldier of the Republic. One thing strongly in Harrison’s favor was the fact that in the free-for-all race of 1836 he had largely outstripped his anti-Jackson associate candidates for President.

The Whig National Convention was called to meet at Harrisburg on the 4th of December, 1839, just one year before the Presidential election, and no national convention in the history of our politics ever moved with such extreme caution. It was three days after the convention was organized before a ballot was reached for President, the whole time having been occupied in formal conferences of committees appointed by each delegation to confer in the frankest way as to the best ticket to unite the incongruous opposition elements. Clay had made exhaustive effort to unite the opposition, even if necessary to sacrifice himself. On repeated occasions he publicly declared that his name should not be entertained if it was in any degree an obstacle to success, and in a Buffalo address delivered some time before the convention met, he said: “If my name creates any obstacle to union and harmony, away with it, and concentrate upon some individual more acceptable to all branches of the office.”

A Union Pennsylvania convention had been held in Harrisburg in September, embracing representatives of the old National Republicans, anti-Masons, and Whigs. It was largely planned and carried out by Thaddeus Stevens, whose violent anti-Masonic convictions made him the opponent of Clay, and that convention, while highly complimenting Clay, declared that General Harrison was the most available of all the candidates named for President. Governor Barbour, of Virginia, presided over the national convention, and instead of proceeding to ballot for candidates, the convention, after careful consideration, decided that the delegations from the different States should confer with each other, through sub-committees, and if possible reach a conclusion as to the best nomination and report to the convention.

While there is no official record of the action of these committees, it is known that at the start more favored Clay than any of the two other candidates, as one of the known facts relating to their action gave Clay 103 votes to 94 for Harrison and 57 for Scott. This vote is based on the assumption that the entire delegation of each State would vote in harmony with its committee, as the resolution under which the committees were appointed provided that “each State represented shall vote its full electoral vote by such delegation in the committee.” After three days of conference, the joint committees reported to the convention that they had decided in favor of Harrison by a vote of 148 to 90 for Clay and 16 for Scott.

On the following day the convention accepted the report of the committees by adopting a resolution declaring General Harrison the candidate of the convention, and it was unanimously approved amidst great enthusiasm. The friends of Clay gave very prompt and cordial support to the action of the convention, and the friends of Harrison proved their appreciation of the magnanimity of Clay’s friends by unanimously nominating John Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice-President, who was the leader of the Clay forces in the convention. No platform or expression of principles was given in any manner. Indeed, none of the political questions of the day diverted the convention at any time from the supreme purpose of uniting the opposition to Van Buren on a single ticket.

It was the vote of Virginia that finally decided the question of making Harrison the candidate of the convention. The three prominent candidates were all sons of Virginia, and had Clay been available he would doubtless have been preferred. A very earnest effort was made to force the nomination of General Scott when Clay was conceded to be unavailable, and the Virginia delegates long hesitated in making a choice between Harrison and Scott. Both were of Old Dominion birth, and the pride of the Mother of Presidents would have been gratified with the nomination of either.

It was at this stage of the contest that Thaddeus Stevens, who was the leading delegate from Pennsylvania, controlled the Virginia delegation by a scheme that was more effective than creditable. Scott, who was quite too fond of writing letters, had written a letter to Francis Granger, of New York, in which he evidently sought to conciliate the antislavery sentiment of that State. It was a private letter, but Granger exhibited it to Stevens and permitted Stevens to use it in his own way. As the headquarters of the Virginia delegation were the centre of attraction, they were always crowded, and Stevens called there along with many others. Before leaving he dropped the Scott letter on the floor, and it was soon discovered and its contents made known to the Virginians. That letter decided the Virginians to support Harrison and to reject Scott. Either could have been elected if nominated, as the Van Buren defeat of 1840 was one of the most sweeping political hurricanes in the history of the country.

My authority for this is Mr. Stevens himself. He disliked Scott on general principles through his great aversion to all men whose vanity was conspicuous, but he had a much stronger reason for nominating Harrison in his possession of an autograph letter from General Harrison, assuring Stevens that if he, Harrison, was elected President, Stevens would be a member of his Cabinet. After the election Stevens said nothing and made no movement to make himself prominent as a candidate for the Cabinet, as he felt entirely secure, while Josiah Randall, father of the late Samuel J. Randall, and then a prominent Whig, and Charles B. Penrose, grandfather of the present United States Senator Penrose, entered the field aggressively as candidates for a Cabinet portfolio. When the Cabinet was announced, Stevens was dumbfounded to find his name omitted. He never forgave Webster, who was made the head of the Cabinet, for the failure, and he believed until the day of his death that Webster had prevented his appointment.

There was much dissatisfaction with the Van Buren administration. The severe business and industrial depression which came upon the country about the middle of Van Buren’s term was very disastrous, and the financial troubles were largely charged to the arbitrary financial system introduced by Jackson and maintained by Van Buren. Labor was largely unemployed and business was paralyzed. So grave were the financial disturbances that several of the States were swept from their honest moorings by the cheap money craze, and irresponsible banks were created almost without limit or restraint, all of which brought speedy and fearful disaster to the people.

A large portion of the Democratic party had not at any time heartily favored Van Buren, and only their devotion to Jackson made them accept Van Buren as their candidate. The Democratic leaders of a number of the States openly declared that they would not participate in the national convention. A convention was finally called, and met in Baltimore on the 5th of May, 1840, with Connecticut, Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and Illinois not represented, while some of the other States had but one or two delegates. Governor William Carroll, of Tennessee, presided over the convention, and Van Buren was renominated by the adoption of a resolution declaring that as he was the unanimous choice of the party and the convention, “he should be presented as the Democratic candidate for the office of President.” Another resolution, offered at the same time and by the same man, Mr. Clay, of Alabama, was as follows: “That the convention deem it expedient at the present time not to choose between the individuals in nomination, but to leave the decision to their Republican Democratic fellow-citizens in the several States, trusting that before the election shall take place their opinions shall become so concentrated as to secure the choice of a Vice-President by the electoral colleges.”

There was positive opposition to the election of Vice-President Johnson in 1836, as was shown by his failure to command a majority of the electoral votes, while Van Buren was elected President, and that opposition seems to have increased rather than diminished. There was much discussion in the convention after it had unanimously adopted the first resolution declaring Van Buren the candidate for President as to what action the convention should take on the Vice-Presidency, and finally the resolution before quoted was unanimously adopted, leaving the party without a formally nominated candidate for the second place on the ticket.

This convention for the first time presented a national party platform as follows:

The campaign of 1840 was the most unique of our political history. The Democrats, in attempting to belittle General Harrison, declared that he lived in a “log cabin” and drank hard cider. Instead of resenting these expressions, intended to prejudice the public against the Whig candidate, the Whigs at once took up the log cabin as one of the great illustrative features of the contest, and when the battle reached its zenith, and the people gathered by thousands at the mass-meetings, the log cabin was always in the procession as the symbol of the simplicity of the party candidate for President. It was a campaign of speeches and songs, and it developed a new class of campaign orators, of which the then celebrated and long after well-known Buckeye Blacksmith was a type.

It was the first national campaign in which the masses of the people took intense interest, and alike in the cities of the East, the prairies of the West, and the savannas of the South the people were singing and shouting for “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” The Whig campaign culminated in a tempest against the Democrats, and resulted in the overwhelming defeat of Van Buren, and General Harrison certainly contributed largely to the result by taking the stump in Ohio in September and October, to vindicate himself against the accusations made that he was a mere puppet in the hands of political leaders and unable to speak for himself. The following was the popular vote for Harrison and Van Buren:

There was nothing to quibble about in declaring the count in Congress, as Harrison had nearly three-fourths of the electoral vote, with a very large popular majority. While the Democrats had not nominated any candidate for Vice-President, and as a division of the vote would be of little consequence, the Democratic electors generally voted for Vice-President Johnson for re-election. Virginia, that cast a solid vote against him four years before, gave him 22 of the 23 votes, and South Carolina, while voting for Van Buren, gave its 11 votes to L. W. Tazewell, of Virginia, for Vice-President, leaving Johnson with only 48 of the 294 electoral votes.

The following is the vote as cast in the electoral colleges:

Harrison was in feeble health when he was called from the clerkship of the Cincinnati courts, that he had held for many years, to the highest civil trust of the world, and the intense pressure upon him after his election so impaired his vitality that he died a little more than a month after his inauguration. Harrison’s death was the first break in the Presidency since the organization of the Government. John Tyler was Vice-President, and was living quietly on his farm on the Virginia Peninsula. He could not be reached by railways, and telegraphs were unknown. He had no knowledge that he had become President through the death of Harrison until late the next day, when Webster and another member of the Cabinet finally found their way to his home, partly by water and partly overland, and formally announced to him the death of the President and the new duties which devolved upon him. He hastened to Washington to find a very grave dispute among the leading statesmen of both parties as to whether he became President or simply Acting President. It was important to determine whether he was President with the full title. The question was brought up in Congress, and in the midst of a discussion on the subject a message was received from the Executive Mansion signed “John Tyler, President.” The dispute was at once ended, and the question settled for all time.

THE POLK-CLAY CONTEST

1844

President Tyler wrecked the Whig party and defeated Henry Clay for President in 1844. The Whigs had carried a majority in both Senate and House in the Harrison sweep of 1840, and they confidently expected that the Whig policy of a national bank to take the place of the bungling Sub-Treasury, of aid to public improvements, and of a protective tariff to stimulate our industries, would inaugurate a Whig political system that could be permanently maintained by the American people. President Harrison died only a little more than a month after he had been inaugurated. He was the oldest President at the time of his inauguration that the country has had, either before or since, and he was physically unequal to the severe exactions put upon him by the clamor for political positions. Civil service reform had then no part in the politics of the country, and as Jackson and Van Buren had been vindictively proscriptive in Federal appointments, it was logically expected that there would be a general removal of the Van Buren favorites. Harrison exhausted his vitality by trying to meet his friends and confer with them about political appointments, in addition to the important questions of State which demanded his attention, and he literally wore himself out and died from exhaustion.

John Tyler, who had been one of the most ardent of the Clay Whigs, was confidently expected to maintain the policy of Harrison. The public measures advocated by Clay were well understood by all, and it was reasonable to assume that Tyler, who had been long one of his most earnest supporters, was in entire accord with his chief. A special session of Congress was summoned to meet on the 31st of May, 1841, and the Whigs expected to carry all their political theories into practical effect by national statutes at an early day. To the surprise of some of the leaders, President Tyler exhibited some measure of unsoundness on the question of the United States Bank, but after repeated conferences with him they believed that they could frame a bill that would entirely meet his views and command his approval. The bill was passed by a decided majority in both branches, and the Whigs were dumbfounded by a prompt veto from the President. Other conferences followed, and a new bill was framed, to which the President assented, and although it was passed without amendment, another veto followed. The first veto of the Bank bill brought out very angry criticisms from a number of the Whig leaders, and one of the most earnest and aggressive of Tyler’s critics was John Minor Botts, then a Whig Congressman from Virginia, and one of the most brilliant and erratic of the Whig leaders of his day. It was believed that the irritation of the President, caused by the criticisms of leading Whigs, finally decided the President to veto the second Bank bill.

Thus the Whigs were defeated in one of the cardinal measures of their faith. The Whig Senators and Representatives met in caucus and published an address to the country, in which it was declared that “those who brought the President into power can no longer in any manner or degree be justly held responsible or blamed for the administration of the Executive branch of the Government.” Thus the Whig power was broken and demoralized at the very threshold of its existence, and the chasm between the Whig Senate and House, on the one side, and the President, on the other, steadily widened and deepened until it was admittedly impassable.

President Tyler’s political antecedents offer some excuse for his failure to approve the national bank. He opposed Jackson, as did many other able men in the South, because Jackson had violated the strict construction policy of Southern leaders, especially in his aggressive warfare against nullification, and one trained in the school of strict construction of the supreme law could readily find excuse for withholding his approval from the United States Bank. The same principle applied to internal improvements by the Government, and could have been applied to forbid a protective tariff. The only fruit the Whigs gathered from their great triumph of 1840 was the protective tariff of 1842, that became so popular, especially in the North, that many Democrats who supported Polk in 1844 declared that they favored the tariff of 1842, and that it could not be disturbed if Polk were elected. In Pennsylvania it was common to see in Democratic processions banners bearing the inscription of “Polk-Dallas-Shunk and the Tariff of 1842,” and a letter received by Judge Kane, of Philadelphia, from Mr. Polk during the campaign was interpreted, and plausibly interpreted, as meaning an approval of the then existing tariff. The Whigs, defeated in all their other important measures, were sadly crippled in the campaign for the succession, and even the tariff of 1842 was repealed for a moderate free-trade tariff in 1846.

President Tyler had provoked the earnest and generally vindictive hostility of the Whigs without having made friends with the Democrats. They loved and cheered his apostasy, but gave no love or individual support to the apostate. He confidently expected that they would make him the Democratic candidate for President in 1844, and that delusion was cherished by him until the Democratic National Convention met in Baltimore to nominate national candidates. It was attended by a very large number of office-holders and other friends of Tyler. Finding that they could not command any support for their favorite in the convention, they improvised a national convention of their own on the same day that the Democratic convention met, and unanimously nominated Tyler for President without naming any candidate for Vice-President. The movement had no vitality, as there was no response from either the press or the public, and on the 20th of August Tyler wrote an elaborate and reproachful letter, withdrawing his name from the list of Presidential candidates.

When his term ended he lived in retirement on his Virginia farm, unknown and unfelt as a political factor. He was among the almost forgotten men of the past when, half a generation later, he appeared in Washington as a member of the Peace Convention that was called in 1861 to devise some measures to prevent a civil war, that he did not live to see fulfil its bloody mission.

When Van Buren was defeated for re-election to the Presidency in 1840, his friends imitated the Jackson tactics of 1825 by at once renominating him by mass-meetings and through Democratic newspapers as the Democratic candidate for President in 1844, and a decided majority of the delegates to the national convention were either instructed for Van Buren or elected as his friends. Calhoun was favored by the Democrats of South Carolina and Georgia, and ex-Vice-President Johnson was an energetic candidate for the nomination, with General Cass, of Michigan, as the man who was looked to as most likely to concentrate the opposition to Van Buren. Van Buren was in the attitude before the Democratic National Convention of 1844 that Seward was before the Chicago Republican Convention of 1860. A decided majority of the delegates desired his nomination, but many of them believed that Clay would defeat him, and they were quite willing to reaffirm the two-thirds rule, even against the earnest protest of Van Buren’s most faithful leaders, because it was well known that he never could attain the two-thirds vote of the convention.

Van Buren was regarded as a most accomplished and rather an unscrupulous politician. He was certainly a brilliant political leader, a very sagacious counsellor, and believed in shaping the policy of the party chiefly or wholly with the view of success; but a short time before the meeting of the national convention he made one of the boldest political deliverances of his life against the annexation of Texas, and he did it with the knowledge that the Democrats of the South were practically united in the support of annexation, with a very large proportion of the Northern Democrats in harmony with it. In the month of May letters were given to the public from both Van Buren and Clay, opposing the annexation of Texas at that time as inexpedient, because it would mean war with Mexico, unless annexed with the consent of that nation. Clay’s letter did not strengthen him in the South, but certainly strengthened him in the North, and should have prevented the Abolition vote in New York from sacrificing Clay and electing an ardent supporter of the annexation of Texas with its slave Constitution, and under a treaty that permitted its subdivision into four new States, each of which would increase the slave power in the Senate.

Van Buren’s letter was made public just about one month before the meeting of the Democratic National Convention, and it was severely criticised by Southern newspapers and Democratic leaders generally, and with great severity by those who desired his defeat. The Richmond Enquirer, then one of the ablest and most influential of the Democratic organs of the country, edited by Mr. Ritchie, demanded that the instructions which had been given to the Virginia delegates to support Van Buren should be rescinded. In some instances delegates did disobey Van Buren instructions and others resigned rather than support him.

The convention met in Baltimore on the 27th of May, South Carolina being the only State not represented. The first important movement made in the body after its organization was the readoption of the two-thirds rule, which all understood meant the defeat of Van Buren, notwithstanding that a majority of the delegates would vote for him. The sincere and earnest friends of Van Buren battled earnestly against the adoption of the rule, but it finally prevailed by a vote of 148 to 118, and a large majority of the votes in favor of the rule were cast by Southern delegates. It was claimed by his friends, and I doubt not with reason, that had the delegates in the convention voted as they had been instructed to vote, Van Buren would have received within a very few votes of the necessary two-thirds to make a nomination on the 1st ballot.

The convention was anything but harmonious, and stormy debates were common from the beginning to the end of the proceedings of the convention. Finally the convention reached the ballot for President, and Van Buren received on the 1st ballot 146 votes to 120 for all others, giving him a clear majority of 26 of the whole convention, but under the two-thirds rule it required 178 to nominate him. The following table shows the nine ballots in detail, the last resulting in the nomination of James K. Polk, of Tennessee:

Mr. Polk was the first “dark-horse” candidate ever nominated by any hopeful party for the Presidency. He had not been discussed as a candidate for President, but had been pressed by some of his political friends as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. He had been long in Congress, was distinguished for his ability and impartiality as Speaker of the House, and had been elected Governor of his State in 1841, but had been defeated in the contest for re-election in 1843, only one year before his nomination for President. Although his nomination for President seemed to be a spontaneous movement of the convention to rescue the party from its bitter factional feuds and the wrangling ambitions of its leaders, there is little doubt that the slavery managers of the South would be satisfied with none other than a positive Texas annexationist, and secretly but systematically prepared a number of the delegates to accept Polk as a compromise when the convention should come to a deadlock on the other candidates. Polk was heralded as the special friend and protégé of Jackson, who was yet living, and those who paved the way for his nomination had very plausible arguments to offer, especially to Southern men, with whom the slavery issue had become vital. However the nomination of Polk may have been organized, it had all the appearance of a spontaneous stampede in the convention. He had only 44 votes on the 8th ballot, the first in which his name appears. While the 9th ballot was in progress the delegates began to change their votes to Polk, and the result was that before its close the chairmen of delegations were jostling each other to get their votes recorded early for the successful candidate. The Morse experimental telegraph line had just been completed between Washington and Baltimore, and the Democratic leaders at Washington were advised by telegraph of Polk’s nomination, to which a congratulatory response was promptly given.

Although the Van Buren men had finally voted for Polk, preferring him to any of the candidates who had aggressively opposed the success of Van Buren, they were profoundly grieved at Van Buren’s defeat. They believed that slavery had crucified Van Buren, and it was their purpose, during the flush of their anger, to allow Polk to suffer a humiliating disaster. The friends of Polk well understood the deep disaffection that would confront them among the friends of Van Buren, and they adopted the very shrewd policy of taking Van Buren’s ablest lieutenant as the candidate for Vice-President. Silas Wright, of New York, Van Buren’s own State, was then one of the ablest of the Democratic Senators of that day, and a most zealous supporter of Van Buren. He was nominated for Vice-President by practically a unanimous vote, only eight of the Georgia delegates preferring Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire. Mr. Wright, being in the Senate at Washington, was at once informed by telegraph of his nomination, but smarting under what he believed to be the betrayal of Van Buren, he promptly sent a curt and peremptory declination back on the wire. Had there been no electric telegraph, Mr. Wright would have accepted the nomination for Vice-President and been elected to that position, but the success of Morse’s great invention, that had been completed between Washington and Baltimore only a few days before the convention met, changed his political destiny.

After mature reflection the friends of Van Buren were brought to terms by the Democratic leaders in the interest of Polk, and they decided to give a cordial support to the national ticket, but New York was regarded as certain to vote against Polk unless some extraordinary measures were adopted to save it. It was finally decided that only by nominating Senator Wright for Governor could the vote of the State be assured to Polk, and the man who had declined the Vice-Presidency that was within his reach, because he expected and really desired the ticket to be defeated, was compelled to resign his seat in the Senate to accept the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York. He was admittedly the strongest man in the party, and it was that nomination that saved the Democrats of New York from demoralization and made Mr. Polk President.

Two years later Wright suffered a humiliating defeat in a contest for re-election, and thus ended a political career that should have been rounded out in the second office of the Government. Jackson was made President because there were no steamers, cables, or telegraphs to advise him on the 8th of January, 1815, when he fought and won the battle of New Orleans, that peace had been declared between the two nations a fortnight before, and Silas Wright lost the Vice-Presidency and ended his political career in disaster because the telegraph had just been invented and put into operation between Washington and Baltimore.

The convention then proceeded to a second nomination for Vice-President, with the following result:

The nomination of Dallas was made unanimous.

In constructing the Democratic platform for 1844 the Democrats threw out a political drag-net. The first Democratic national platform that had been adopted by the convention of 1840 was embodied in its entirety in the platform of this convention, and the following new resolutions added:

The Whigs had nominated their national ticket in advance of the Democrats, the convention having been held at Baltimore on the 1st of May, with every State fully represented. It was a national assembly of unusual ability, and was most heartily and enthusiastically united in the support of Clay for the Presidency. It did not require the formality of a ballot to present him as the Whig candidate, and his nomination was made by acclamation. It required three ballots to nominate a candidate for Vice-President, as follows:

The platform adopted by the Whigs was brief but expressive. The Whig faith was tersely given in a single resolution. The other resolutions were simply eloquent tributes to Clay and Frelinghuysen, and the convention adjourned, making the welkin ring with cheers for “Harry Clay of the West” and for the “Mill Boy of the Slashes,” and absolutely confident of the triumphant election of their great leader to the highest honors of the Republic. The first Whig national platform was as follows:

The third national convention that presented candidates for the campaign of 1844 was that of the Abolitionists. They had grown since 1840, when they first nominated Mr. Birney as their candidate, and their platform, elaborate as it is, is well worthy of careful study. It met at Buffalo, in August, 1843, and nominated James G. Birney, of New York, for President, and Thomas Morris, of Ohio, for Vice-President, and it increased its vote up to 62,300, all of which were cast in the Northern States, including 15,812 for Birney in New York. As nearly all of them were of Whig antecedents, they would have preferred Clay to Polk if they had not presented a ticket of their own to divert their votes, and it was their support of Birney that gave Polk the majority over Clay in the Empire State, whose electoral vote decided the contest. The following is the full text of the first platform presented by an Abolition national convention:

Mr. Clay enjoyed a much larger measure of personal popularity than any other man in the nation, and he was universally accepted as the most gifted political orator of his day. He was to the Whigs of that time what Blaine was to the Republicans during his several unsuccessful battles for the Presidency. It is a notable fact in political history that no pre-eminent political orator ever succeeded in reaching the Presidency. Garfield was the nearest approach to it, but he was a contemporary of Blaine, and Blaine far outstripped him either on the hustings or in parliamentary debate. Clay had entered both the House and Senate when little more than eligible by age, and he was admittedly the most accomplished presiding officer the House ever had. He was the Commoner of the war of 1812, and rendered most conspicuous service to his country. His speeches in the House did more than the persuasion of any other dozen men to force the young Republic into a second contest with England on the right of search on the high seas. He was always strong in argument, was often impassioned and superbly eloquent, and in every great emergency of the country during the first half of the present century he was the pacificator. President Madison was most reluctant to declare war against England, and he yielded to it only when it became a supreme necessity to obey the general demand of the country for an appeal to arms.

When Clay was nominated for President in 1844, it was generally believed that he would have an easy victory over Van Buren, and when Polk, of Tennessee, was made the compromise candidate against him, the Whigs at first believed that the nomination of a comparatively obscure man against the great chieftain of the Whigs would give them a walk-over. The campaign had made little progress, however, until the Whigs discovered that the Democrats were going to be thoroughly united on Polk, and that he was probably the strongest candidate who could have been nominated against Clay. His chief strength was in his negative qualities. He had not been involved in any of the conflicts of ambition among the Democratic leaders. He was regarded as the favorite of Jackson, and while his nomination had been made without any previous discussion or suggestion of his claims to the Presidency, he had filled high State and national positions with credit, and he could not be accused of incompetency. I doubt indeed whether any other Democrat could have been nominated by the Democratic convention to make a successful battle against Clay.

The Whigs entered the contest defiant in confidence and enthusiastic to a degree that had never before been exhibited in the support of any candidate. The devotion of the Whigs to Clay was little less than idolatry, and strong men shed scalding tears over his defeat. He was largely handicapped in his battle by the complications put upon the Whig party by President Tyler. The Cabinet was wholly Democratic and bitterly against Clay. Under the demoralization caused by Tyler’s betrayal of the party the Whigs had lost the House in 1842, but they retained their mastery in the Senate, and a new peril to Clay was soon developed in the growth of the Abolition sentiment of Western New York. Neither Clay nor Polk made campaign speeches, and both maintained themselves with scrupulous dignity throughout the long and exceptionally desperate contest.

Pennsylvania was then, as in 1860, the pivotal State of the struggle, and the death of the Democratic candidate for Governor during the midsummer deprived the Whigs of a source of strength that most likely would have given them the State in October. The Democrats had a violent factional dispute in choosing a candidate for Governor. Mr. Muhlenberg, who had been a bolting candidate against Governor Wolfe in 1835, thereby electing Ritner, the anti-Masonic candidate, was finally nominated for Governor over Francis R. Shunk, the candidate of the opposing faction. Muhlenberg was weakened by his aggressive factional record, and the Democrats were hardly hopeful of his election, but he died just when the struggle was at its zenith, and Shunk was then unanimously and cordially accepted as the Democratic leader.

The Whigs had nominated General Markle, of Westmoreland, who was unquestionably the strongest man they could have presented. The Presidential battle was practically fought in that contest for Governor, and when Shunk was elected by 4397 majority, there were few who cherished much hope of Clay’s election. Pennsylvania lost in October could not be regained in November, but the Whigs did not in any measure relax their efforts, and Polk carried the State over Clay by 6332.

When Pennsylvania faltered the greatly impaired hopes of the Whigs centred in New York, as it was believed that New York might decide the contest in favor of Clay, even with Pennsylvania certain to vote against him. The nomination of Silas Wright for Governor had thoroughly united the Van Buren followers in support of Polk, and while Clay stood against the annexation of Texas and the extension of the slave power, the antislavery sentiment of New York was greatly strengthened by the fact that both Clay and Polk were Southerners and slaveholders. Birney, the Abolition candidate, received 15,812 votes, while Polk’s majority in the State was 5106. Mr. Greeley, who was one of the leaders in the antislavery movement, and much more practical than the organized Abolitionists, bitterly denounced that party for defeating Clay. In his Whig Almanac for 1845 he had an elaborate review of the contest, in which he said:

“The year 1844 just ended has witnessed one of the most extraordinary political contests that has ever occurred. So nice and equal a balance of parties; so universal and intense an interest; so desperate and protracted a struggle, are entirely without parallel.... James K. Polk owes his election to the Birney or Liberty party. Had there been no such party drawing its votes nine-tenths from the Whig ranks, Mr. Clay would have received at least the votes of New York and Michigan, in addition to those actually cast for him, giving him 146 electoral votes to Polk’s 129. To Birney & Co., therefore, is the country indebted for the election of Polk and the annexation and anti-tariff ascendency in the Federal Government.”

The number of States voting was 26, the same as in 1840. The new Congressional apportionment had reduced the Representatives from 242 to 223, making the total number of electors 275. The following table exhibits the popular and electoral vote:

The Whigs, in keen despair over the defeat of their ablest and most beloved champion, charged fraud as the controlling factor in giving the Democrats their victory, but the battle had been fought and lost, and there was nothing left for them but submission. The electoral count was uneventful, and Polk and Dallas were formally declared elected President and Vice-President without objection.

The most desperate contests outside of New York and Pennsylvania were made in Tennessee and Delaware. Tennessee was the home of Polk, and the “Old Hero of New Orleans” threw himself into the contest for Polk with tireless energy. He inspired his veteran followers not only because he wanted Polk elected, but because he much more wanted Clay defeated. Clay had defeated him for President in the House in 1825, and Jackson never forgot a friend and rarely forgave an enemy. It was many days after the election before the vote of Tennessee could be ascertained, and it was claimed by both parties until the official vote was declared. It was finally announced that Clay had carried the State by 113, and the success of Clay in that State was the only silver lining the Whigs had to the dark cloud of their defeat.

Another memorable battle, though not in any sense an important contest as affecting the result, was fought in Delaware. The States did not then vote for President on the same day as now. All of them voted for Presidential electors in the month of November, although at that time nearly all the States elected their State officers and Congressmen earlier in the year. Delaware, with only 3 electoral votes, held both her State and her Presidential elections on the second Tuesday of November, and when her election day came around it was known to all that Clay was absolutely defeated for President.

New York and Pennsylvania had voted for Polk a week before, and on the second Tuesday of November only Massachusetts and Delaware were left among the States that had not yet chosen electors. Massachusetts was Whig and hardly contested, but Delaware made a most heroic battle for Clay, even when it was known that a victory in the little Diamond State could not aid the election of their favorite. The Democrats, inspired by their positively assured success in the national contest, exhausted their resources and efforts to win, but in the largest vote ever cast in the State, Clay won by 287 majority, receiving a larger vote than was cast for the Whig candidates for Governor or for Congress, both of whom were successful, the first by 45 majority and the last by 173.

The Kentucky electors met at their Capitol on the day appointed for the electoral colleges to cast their votes for President, and in sorrowing devotion to their chief cast the vote of the State for Clay for President. After their official duties had been performed a committee was appointed to prepare an address to be delivered to Mr. Clay at Ashland. All the members of the college, with many other citizens, accompanied the committee, and Clay met them at his hospitable door to hear the address delivered by Mr. Underwood, the chairman. Clay’s reply was one of the most beautiful of his very many exquisite illustrations of oratory. He said he would not “affect indifference to the personal concern which I had in the political contest just terminated, but unless I am greatly self-deceived, the principal attraction to me of the office of President of the United States arose out of the cherished hope that I might be an humble instrument, in the hands of Providence, to accomplish public good,” and in conclusion he said: “I heartily thank you, sir, for your friendly wishes for my happiness in the retirement which henceforth best becomes me.” Thus closed the memorable Polk-Clay contest of 1844.

THE TAYLOR-CASS-VAN BUREN CONTEST

1848

President Polk was not blessed with a tranquil administration. The annexation of Texas had been approved by Tyler several days before Polk was inaugurated as President, and that at once made strained relations between this country and Mexico. It was an open secret then, and is now a part of the undisputed history of the country, that the election of Polk and the annexation of Texas were regarded by the friends of slavery extension as most important achievements, and that period dated the aggressive action of the South, first to extend and next to nationalize slavery. The annexation of Texas brought in a Slave State and two United States Senators, with the treaty right to add eight new Senators by the subdivision of the State.

This met Calhoun’s complaint that the South could not maintain its equilibrium in the Senate because of the growing West. The purposes of the Southern extensionists, however, went far beyond the annexation of Texas. They meant to have part of Mexico, peaceably if possible, by war if necessary; and the war was deliberately planned and precipitated upon Mexico by the action of the administration. The territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers was claimed by both Texas and Mexico, but Mexico had exercised uniform jurisdiction. Texas had never served a writ or collected a dollar of revenue on the Rio Grande, and the United States army of occupation, commanded by General Taylor, had not gone south of the Nueces. There was much violent discussion in Mexico over the annexation of Texas, whose independence Mexico disputed, and threats of war were freely made.

The President, without the authority or knowledge of Congress, ordered General Taylor to march to the Rio Grande and maintain it as the southern line of Texas. This precipitated the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, in which Taylor defeated the Mexicans. The Democratic Congress then prefaced a bill providing for the national defence by declaring that “we are at war by the act of Mexico.” The purpose of the Mexican war was very freely and severely criticised by a large portion of the people and by many of the ablest men of the nation. The Whigs in Congress were willing to vote for all needed appropriations for the support of the army, but a few members of the House, with the late John Strohm, of Pennsylvania, as the leader, after unsuccessfully struggling to strike out the declaration that “we were at war by the act of Mexico,” refused to vote for the army appropriation; and Corwin, of Ohio, made the ablest speech that ever was delivered in the Senate, with the single exception of Webster’s reply to Hayne, against the Mexican war and against appropriating money for its prosecution.

The certainty that the administration would acquire a large portion of Mexican territory for the purpose of creating new Slave States gave dignity and importance to the slavery agitation that it never before attained, and in the fall elections of 1846 the Whigs carried the popular branch of Congress by a decided majority. The repeal of the protective tariff of 1842 and the substitution of the revenue tariff of 1846 contributed considerably to the Democratic disaster, and the war was finally prosecuted by the administration with an adverse House, although willing to furnish all appropriations necessary to support the armies in the field.

After Taylor’s early victories over the Mexicans he invaded Mexican territory and captured Monterey, and these victories made his name a household word throughout the country. Instead of permitting Taylor to proceed with the war that he had so successfully conducted up to that time, the administration decided to practically retire him. General Scott was called to plan an independent campaign from Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico. It was openly charged that the administration feared the popularity of “Old Zach,” as Taylor was generally called by the people, and that it had little fear of Scott as a Presidential candidate. Scott planned his campaign; was furnished with an independent army, and when he arrived at Vera Cruz he stripped General Taylor of nearly all his regulars, leaving him an army of but little over 4000, most of them volunteers. Santa Anna, whose return to Mexico had been sanctioned by our Government, made himself Military Dictator. He gathered an army of 22,000 of the best Mexican troops and made a rapid movement to strike and crush General Taylor at Buena Vista. The history of that battle is well known. Taylor not only defeated but routed the Mexicans, and thereby made himself the next President of the United States.

General Scott made a most brilliant campaign, fighting repeated battles, and finally captured the City of Mexico, when the administration involved him in bitter controversy, as was easily done with General Scott, and had him tried by a court of his inferiors in the Capitol of the enemy he had conquered. Brilliant as was his military campaign he returned home with little if any increased prestige, and every schoolboy in the land was huzzaing for “Old Zach,” or for “Old Rough and Ready.”

There seems to be poetic justice in the marvellous historical fact that with the large amount of territory conquered from Mexico, and the additional territory afterward purchased by the Gadsden treaty, the South did not gain a single Slave State, and it quickened the issue of slavery that greatly hastened its destruction just when it hoped to attain omnipotence.

It was uncertain after the war of Mexico was inaugurated and the certainty of the acquisition of Mexican territory accepted just when and in what shape the issue of the extension of slavery would be presented. To the surprise of the friends of the administration it came much sooner and in much graver form than they had anticipated. On the 8th of August, 1846, President Polk sent a message to Congress asking for an appropriation to be placed at the President’s disposal to enable him to negotiate an advantageous treaty of peace with the Mexican Government, and a bill was promptly presented to the House appropriating $32,000,000 for immediate use in negotiations with Mexico. There were a number of able and earnest antislavery Democrats in the House, and among them David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania. When the bill, making the large appropriation to obtain peace with Mexico, that obviously meant the acquisition of Southern territory, was presented to the House, repeated conferences were had between the antislavery Democratic leaders, and what has since been known as the “Wilmot Proviso” was originally drawn by Judge Brinkerhoff, then a Democratic Congressman from Ohio, and finally revised and agreed upon, to be offered as an amendment to the Mexican Appropriation bill.

The Speaker was adverse to the antislavery Democrats, and it was uncertain whether any of them could obtain the floor to offer the amendment. The result was that a copy of the proviso was furnished to some half a dozen, with the understanding that each should take advantage of any opportunity to obtain the floor during the consideration of the bill and offer the amendment. The opportunity happened to come to Mr. Wilmot, and he offered the following amendment, that is the original of what is now known as the “Wilmot Proviso.”

This proviso came like a bombshell into the ranks of the administrationists, and they were unable to defeat it. It was carried in Committee of the Whole by a vote of 83 to 64, with only 3 Democrats from the Free States opposing it. When the measure was reported to the House, Mr. Tibbatts, of Kentucky, moved that it do lie on the table, and the motion was defeated by 93 to 79. The bill was engrossed for third reading by 85 to 80, and passed finally without further division, with a motion to reconsider laid on the table by vote of 83 to 73. Thus what is now known as the Wilmot Proviso was embodied by the House in the Appropriation bill for negotiating peace with Mexico.

The Wilmot Proviso raised the slavery issue in the most direct form, and it played an important part in the Presidential contest of 1848. It was simply a repetition of the clause prohibiting slavery that was put in the ordinance of 1787 by Thomas Jefferson, when the Northwestern Territory was ceded by Virginia to the United States. It was a very embarrassing issue to many Northern Democrats, and to a few Southern Whigs who inclined to prevent slavery extension. General Cass, who was made the candidate for President in 1848, originally declared himself in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, but he learned a year later that no man could maintain his fellowship with the Democratic party under the Polk administration and support the prohibition of slavery in the Territories.

When the discussion of candidates for the Presidential contest of 1848 became active, General Cass was addressed on the subject of slavery by A. O. P. Nicholson, of Nashville, Tenn., in which he inquired of Cass whether he was in favor of the acquisition of Mexican territory, and what his views were as to the Wilmot Proviso. General Cass answered, December 24, 1847, in which he declared himself in favor of the acquisition of Mexican territory and against the Wilmot Proviso, on which point he said: “I am strongly impressed with the opinion that a great change has been going on in the public mind upon this subject, in my own as well as others, and that doubts are resolving themselves into convictions that the principle it involves should be kept out of the national Legislature and left to the people of the Confederacy in their respective local governments.” But for this declaration Cass would not have been the Democratic candidate for President in 1848, and that declaration also opened the door for the Van Buren bolt that defeated Cass in the great ambition of his life.

In addition to the serious political complications which confronted the Polk administration and threatened the defeat of the Democratic party at its close, the Oregon dispute with England, that had been made one of the chief features of the Polk campaign of 1844, was sensibly adjusted by Secretary of State Buchanan, but in utter disregard of the Democratic declarations and ostentatious professions of the campaign. In that contest the Democrats from every stump declared that the boundary line between Oregon and England must be “54° 40´, or fight”; but when the issue became a question of statesmanship and diplomacy, a treaty was made fixing 49° as the boundary, and thus confessing that the claim of the Democrats in the campaign was made either in ignorance or insincerity.

Another of the troubles that confronted the Democracy was the intense factional dispute in New York between what were known as the Hunkers and the Barnburners. The Hunkers were so called in derision by their enemies as men who always hunkered after office, and the Barnburners were so called by their opponents because it was charged that to correct evils in the party, they were ready to follow the foolish farmer who burnt his barn to rid it of rats.

Silas Wright, who had lost the Vice-Presidency in 1844 by his devotion to Van Buren, and was finally compelled to run for Governor to save the State, suffered a severe defeat in 1846 when a candidate for re-election. That defeat was charged by Van Buren and his friends to the perfidy of the Hunkers. So intense was the bitterness between these factions that they could not agree on delegations to the national convention, and two opposing delegations were chosen, the Barnburners being antislavery Democrats and the Hunkers the regular or pro-slavery Democrats. The national convention met at Baltimore on the 22d of May, 1848, with every State represented, and New York with a double delegation. Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, was made President, and the two-thirds rule was adopted by a vote of 175 to 78. For two days the convention wrangled over the disputing delegations from New York, and after protracted and angry debate a motion was finally passed by 126 to 124 admitting both delegations, each to cast half the vote of the State.

While this was a comparative victory for the Barnburners, they withdrew from the convention, and the Hunker delegation refused to participate in the proceedings. The prominent candidates before the convention for President were Cass and Buchanan, with Cass immensely in the lead and reasonably certain to be nominated before the convention met. He had a large plurality on the 1st ballot, but did not reach the requisite two-thirds vote until the 4th, as is shown by the following table, giving the ballots in detail:

The convention adjourned after the nomination of Cass to meet in evening session to select a candidate for Vice-President, and without any preliminaries the ballot was had as follows:

A 2d ballot was had and ended in the unanimous nomination of Butler.

The platform of the party was not reported until the fifth and final day of the convention, and it was altogether the most elaborate declaration of principles ever made by a political party in national convention. Immediately after the first resolution as we give it followed the full text of the Democratic platforms adopted in 1840 and 1844, and to the fifth resolution of the platform of 1844 the following sentence was added: “And for the gradual but certain extinction of the debt created by the prosecution of a just and necessary war after peaceful relations shall have been restored.” The Democratic platform of 1848, therefore, included the platforms of 1840 and 1844, with the following new declarations of faith:

After the platform had been reported, Mr. Yancey, of Alabama, offered an additional resolution providing, “That the doctrine of non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the people of this Confederacy, be it in the States or Territories thereof, by any other than the parties interested in them, is the true Republican doctrine recognized by this body,” but it was rejected by a vote of 216 to 36. Yancey’s resolution stated just what the convention believed, but what it did not dare express.

Notwithstanding the serious complications which confronted the Democrats at the opening of the campaign of 1848, they started out with every prospect of electing their national ticket. Cass was accepted as the ablest of the Democratic leaders of that day, and his nomination seemed to inspire the Democrats to earnest effort for his election. There was then no apprehension of the Van Buren bolt that grew to such immense proportions before the campaign closed, and made the defeat of Cass inevitable.

The Whigs were in an unfortunate position to go before the country. They had opposed the Mexican war vehemently, had protested against the acquisition of Mexican territory, and were certain to be divided on sectional lines arising from the additional Territories and future States our expansion was sure to give us. They were in the same position in which they found themselves in 1839, when they had to unite discordant elements of opposition to Van Buren to win the victory. The idolatry for Clay was yet cherished in all its intensity, and although enfeebled by age, he yielded to the earnest importunities of his friends, and announced himself as candidate for the nomination, though all intelligent and dispassionate Whig leaders knew that he was not available.

General Scott had been clouded by serious differences with the administration, in which his volubility had served his enemies a good purpose, and Webster never had a large popular following as a Presidential candidate. It was the first national convention that I ever witnessed, being then a boy editor in the interior and not old enough to vote for the men I supported. It was held in Chinese Hall, in Philadelphia, where the Continental Hotel now stands, and was dominated by the wonderfully able political leaders and statesmen which the South produced in ante-bellum days. They knew that they could not meet the slavery issue in the new Territories, and they presented General Taylor to the convention, and, without a pledge from Taylor himself, they formally pledged themselves to the convention that if not nominated he would not be the candidate of any other party, and would support the ticket.

The Whig National Convention convened at Philadelphia on the 7th of June, with a full representation from every State excepting Texas. Ex-Governor John M. Morehead, of North Carolina, presided. The conferences of the Whig leaders were anything but harmonious, and there were indications at times of an open and very serious rupture. Clay’s friends knew that it was the last battle that ever could be made for him. Their idolatry for Clay made them earnest, enthusiastic, even desperate, although most of them could not but foresee that his nomination was impossible, and that his election, if nominated, would be quite improbable.

The friends of Clay and Scott did not take kindly to General Taylor. He had been nominated some time before by a Native American National Convention that then represented but an inconsiderable following principally in the Eastern cities, and he had never distinctly declared his devotion to the Whig policy. Congressman L. D. Campbell, of Ohio, offered a resolution just before the balloting began, declaring that the convention should not entertain the candidacy of any man for President or Vice-President “who had not given assurances that he would abide by the action of the convention; that he would accept the nomination and that he would consider himself the candidate of the Whig party.” An angry debate was avoided by the President ruling the resolution out of order. Mr. Campbell appealed, but the appeal was lost. Mr. Fuller, of New York, then offered a resolution declaring that no man should be nominated for President unless “he stands pledged to support in good faith the nominees and to be the exponent of Whig principles.” This was also ruled out of order, and an appeal was tabled.

Even after Taylor had been nominated, Mr. Allen, of Massachusetts, who afterward bolted the party and supported Van Buren as a Free Soiler, offered a resolution declaring that the Whig party would abide by the nomination of Taylor on condition that he would accept the nomination as the candidate of the Whig party, and adhere to its great fundamental principles of no extension of slavery territory, no acquisition of foreign territory by conquest, protection to American industry, and opposition to Executive usurpation.” That was ruled out of order, as were several other resolutions aiming at some expression on the question of slavery.

The Southern Whig leaders saw that the only possible way to save the Whigs in the South was to nominate a Southern man; General Taylor was the only Southern man whom they believed could command favor in the North, and they wanted no expression from the convention on any of the delicate and perilous issues which confronted them. A number of leading Southern delegates, headed by Balie Peyton, of Tennessee, gave their formal pledge to the convention that General Taylor would accept the nomination and would abide by the decision of the party, and that he could safely be trusted as an exponent of the Whig policy. The convention had three ballots before a choice was reached for President, as follows:

The nomination of Taylor was not made unanimous, as a number of the New England delegates and some from Ohio had decided not to support him under any circumstances, and they were later welcomed into the Free Soil Democracy that nominated Van Buren on the distinct antislavery extension platform. Among the most disgruntled of those who attended the convention was Horace Greeley. I met him then for the first time, and saw as much of him as I could, as he was my ideal fellow-editor. As soon as Taylor was nominated he started for New York, and I met him just as he was departing. He was evidently in great haste to make the Camden & Amboy train, and he was hurrying down Chestnut Street. His low-crowned, broad-brimmed, fuzzy fur hat set at an angle of 45 degrees on the back of his head, his profusion of shirt collar protected from wandering over his shoulders by an immense black silk handkerchief he used as a necktie, with the awkward knot serenely resting under his left ear, and his immense baggy black swallowtail coat, and the literal carpetbag he held by one handle, while the other lay down on the side of the bag, did not contribute much toward his genteel appearance. It was evident that he was mad clear through. In answer to my question as to how he liked the nomination of Taylor, he curtly answered, “Can’t say that I admire it,” and shuffled along toward the ferry, but the Tribune of the next morning had a terrific leader against Taylor, the title of which was “The Philadelphia Slaughterhouse,” and Greeley long hesitated about coming into the support of Taylor. He could not follow Van Buren, in whom he had no faith and against whom he had made his first great battle as an editor in 1840. Finally, seeing that the choice was between Cass and Taylor, Greeley decided to support the Whig candidate, and the Whigs of New York showed their appreciation of his action by nominating him to fill an unexpired term in Congress, to which he was elected by a large majority.

The contest for Vice-President had been very animated, and for some time before the meeting of the convention it seemed probable that Abbott Lawrence, a New England millionaire, might win it. He made the first attempt that had been ventured to gain a national nomination by the money-in-politics system, but after Taylor had been nominated for President his friends naturally looked to some representative supporter of Clay to be placed second on the ticket, and Fillmore led Lawrence on the 1st ballot and was nominated on the 2d. The ballots were as follows:

George Evans, of Maine, and T. M. T. McKennen, Andrew Stewart, and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, all received a few votes. The nomination of Fillmore was made unanimous by the delegates who remained in the convention. The convention adopted no platform.

After the nomination of General Taylor for President an interesting, and what would now be regarded as a most ludicrous, incident occurred relating to the letter written by Governor Morehead, President of the Convention, to General Taylor advising him of his nomination for the Presidency. At that time the prepayment of postage was not compulsory, and unpaid letters were charged from five to ten times the present rate of letter postage. President Morehead promptly mailed a letter to General Taylor at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, notifying him of his nomination, but several weeks elapsed without any response. The telegraph was then in its infancy, and unthought of as an agent except in the most urgent emergency, and Governor Morehead finally sent a trusted friend to visit General Taylor and inquire why his letter of acceptance had not been given. Every political crank, as well as many others in the country, had been writing letters to General Taylor on the subject of the Presidency, very few of whom prepaid their letter postage. Old “Rough and Ready” became vexed beyond endurance at the tax imposed upon him, and he gave peremptory orders to the postmaster to send to the dead-letter office all letters addressed to him which were unpaid. Governor Morehead, assuming that a letter advising a man of his nomination for the Presidency, that carried with it a reasonably certain election, was a matter of quite as much interest to Taylor as to himself, had not prepaid the postage on his letter, and it had gone to the dead-letter office in accordance with Taylor’s general orders. When the mistake was discovered, the error was corrected by the sending of a second letter—postage prepaid—to General Taylor, to which he promptly responded, and the explanation given that the original letter had miscarried in the mails.

One of the interesting episodes of the convention was the arrival in Philadelphia, while the Whig convention was in session, of General Cass and his suite of Democratic leaders of national fame. Cass was on his way home from Washington, and the short time that he remained here he liberally divided public attention with the Whigs. An immense crowd welcomed Cass at the Jones Hotel, on Chestnut, above Sixth, and I there for the first time saw and heard General Cass, Senator Houston, Senator Allen, Senator Benton, and Representative Stevenson, all of whom spoke from the balcony of the hotel, and were cheered to the echo. I recall Houston as one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, with perfect physique, of heroic form, and a superbly chiselled face, portraying all the strength of the best type of the Roman. Cass was heavy and ponderous, but an able and attractive speaker, and I remember Benton well because his speech made him remembered as a colossal, perpendicular I. Allen was then notable as the “fog-horn,” and he could be heard a square beyond any of the others. A facetious delegate in the Whig convention, with admirable mock gravity, suggested that as the Democratic funeral train was in this city taking Cass’s body home by the lakes, the convention should adjourn.

As might have been expected, and as was greatly feared by both the leading parties, the slavery issue was at once made the vital one of the contest. The Democrats hoped that as the contest warmed up the Van Buren followers would acquiesce as they did in 1844, but what at first seemed to be a cloud on the Democratic horizon no bigger than a man’s hand soon after developed into a promised tempest. The Barnburners, who had withdrawn from the Democratic National Convention, called a State convention, to meet at Utica, N. Y., on the 22d of June, and invited delegates from other States for conference. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and Wisconsin were represented, and after devoting two days to the discussion of the best policy to adopt, Van Buren was formally nominated for President, and Henry Dodge, of Wisconsin, for Vice-President, who declined, and supported Cass. Van Buren’s formal acceptance of the nomination followed soon thereafter, and it was the first definite notice to the regular Democrats that the Free-Soil Democracy was going to be earnestly arrayed against Democratic success.

Although Van Buren had accepted the first nomination, it was deemed wise as the campaign progressed to have a much more representative national body to make him the candidate, and a largely attended mass convention met at Buffalo on the 9th of August, over which Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, presided, and which had representatives from seventeen States. On the formal ballot for President, Van Buren had 159 votes to 129 for John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, who had already been nominated by the Abolitionists, and Charles Francis Adams was nominated by acclamation for Vice-President. After this convention had made its nominations and declared its platform, Mr. Hale, the Abolition candidate, retired from the contest, and he and his followers gave a cordial support to Van Buren. The following was the Van Buren platform as declared by the Buffalo convention:

The Presidential contest of 1848 for the first time presented the Native American party in the field with national candidates. It had its origin chiefly from the Philadelphia riots of 1844, resulting from a bitter feud between the Catholics and Protestants in the uptown river districts of Philadelphia. The organization of the Native American party immediately followed in Philadelphia, with opposition to Catholics and foreigners as its faith, and for nearly a decade it held the balance of power between the Whigs and Democrats in that city, and several times elected members of Congress. A like party was organized in New York, and attained some local success in that city. The national convention of the Native Americans was held in Philadelphia in September, 1847, and while it did not make a formal nomination, it recommended General Taylor for President and chose Henry A. S. Dearborn, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. The party was unknown and unfelt in the contest, although it aided somewhat in giving the electoral vote of Pennsylvania to Taylor.

In November, 1847, the Liberty party, that had twice nominated and ran Birney as its candidate for President, met at New York and nominated John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, for President, and Leicester King, of Ohio, for Vice-President. When the Free-Soil Democracy developed huge proportions and nominated Van Buren, the old Abolition party was entirely absorbed in the Free-Soil organization. The Liberty League, made up of a small number of the more radical Abolitionists, held a meeting at Rochester on the 2d of June, 1848, and nominated Gerrit Smith, of New York, for President, and Rev. Charles E. Foote, of Michigan, for Vice-President; and what was called the Industrial Congress, made up of a handful of labor agitators, met at Philadelphia on the 13th of June, 1848, and nominated Gerrit Smith for President and William S. Waitt, of Illinois, for Vice-President. Neither the Hale Abolition party, the Liberty League Abolition party, nor the Industrial Congress party presented any electoral tickets of which I have been able to find any record. The canvass was a very earnest one, and the Whigs steadily grew in confidence as it progressed, while the Democrats were threatened on every side with disaster.

Pennsylvania broke from her Democratic moorings at the October election, when William F. Johnson, Whig, was elected Governor by 305 majority, and generally the preliminary elections were favorable to the Whigs. There were then thirty States, as Florida had come in March 3, 1845; Texas, December 29, 1845; Iowa, December 28, 1846, and Wisconsin, May 29, 1848, and the Presidential electors were then for the first time all chosen on the same day, with the single exception of Massachusetts. Van Buren did not carry a State, but he gave Taylor an easy triumph by the large Democratic defection he caused in the pivotal States. The following table exhibits the popular and electoral votes as declared by Congress:

All parties made earnest efforts to control the popular branch of Congress, and national interest naturally centred in the Wilmot district of Pennsylvania, as he was the author of the Wilmot Proviso, that was the fountain of the slavery dispute. He had been twice elected to Congress in what was then a strong Democratic district, composed of Bradford, Susquehanna, and Tioga, but which have been among the strongest Republican counties in the State since the organization of that party. The district had given over 2000 majority for Polk against Clay, and although Wilmot was the only member of Congress from Pennsylvania who voted for the tariff of 1846, he was re-elected in the fall of that year by a decided majority.

When Van Buren was nominated, Wilmot openly declared himself as a Free-Soil Democrat, but he received the regular Democratic nomination for Congress in his district. The Cass pro-slavery Democrats bolted and nominated Jonah Brewster as a Simon-pure Democrat, and the Whigs nominated Henry W. Tracy, confidently expecting to elect him. Wilmot was triumphantly elected, receiving 8597 votes to 4795 for Tracy, Whig, and 922 for Brewster, Cass Democrat. He also nearly evenly divided the Democratic vote of Bradford and Tioga between Cass and Van Buren, giving Taylor a large plurality over Cass in the district.

While the Wilmot Free-Soil Democrats bolted on the Democratic national ticket, they generally supported Morris Longstreth, the Democratic candidate for Governor, who was defeated by Johnson in October by 305 majority. The re-election of Wilmot in one of the strong Democratic districts of Pennsylvania greatly strengthened the antislavery cause throughout the country. He and his followers fell back into the regular Democratic line in 1852 in support of Pierce, and they finally severed their relations with the Democratic party in 1854, provoked by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and in 1856 they carried the Northern counties of the State by large majorities for Fremont.

Cass carried every State west of the Pennsylvania line, including Ohio, where the antislavery sentiment of the Western Reserve was unwilling to accept a large slaveholder as a candidate for President. Corwin, the most brilliant and impressive of the stump-speakers of that day, made desperate efforts to save the State, but Van Buren received over 35,000 votes, and Cass won the electors by a plurality of over 16,000. I once heard Corwin in his inimitable way tell the story of that campaign. The people of Ohio in that day were taught their politics by mass-meetings, and any one of the audience was entirely at liberty to interrogate the speaker. Corwin, in his plausible and fascinating way, was trying to explain how the antislavery cause would be best served by electing a slaveholder President, when a tall, lank countryman, sitting on the fence, put a very pointed question to him, that he felt unable to answer. He tried to meet it in a humorous way, but only aroused his interrogator to make a more pointed inquiry of him, that Corwin could not answer. He was one of the few orators who could convulse an audience with his superb humor, and his facial expression was at times even more mirth provoking than his language. The question involved the negro issue, and Corwin had an unusually swarthy complexion, and he unhorsed his inquirer by saying to his audience with an expression that powerfully accentuated his remark: “I submit, fellow-citizens, whether it is proper to put such a question to a man of my complexion,” and the dispute ended in boisterous laughter and cheers for Corwin. The Whigs won easy victories in all the debatable States of the South; and General Taylor came to the Presidency knowing less about how his election had been accomplished than any man who had ever been called to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. Thus was Martin Van Buren avenged for the Southern betrayal of 1844.

THE PIERCE-SCOTT CONTEST

1852

While the Whigs were apprehensive as to General Taylor’s fidelity to an aggressive Whig policy both before and after his election, when he came to the selection of his Cabinet he quieted all doubts by appointing a positive Whig Cabinet, with John M. Clayton, one of the ablest of the Whig leaders of that day and an eminently practical politician, to the Premiership. Taylor had little fitness for responsible civil duties, and charged his Cabinet, that was made up of eminently able men, with the administration of their different departments. The slavery question was uppermost in the politics of the day, and the Taylor Cabinet finally decided upon a policy to solve the delicate problem by admitting none of the newly acquired Mexican possessions as Territories, but leaving the question of slavery to be determined by themselves when they came to admission as States.

This policy was antagonized by the ultra antislavery people, who wanted the distinct prohibition of slavery in Territorial organizations, and also by the extreme slavery Whigs, who desired them admitted as Territories without any expression on slavery, believing that slaves could be taken into any Territory south of the Missouri Compromise line unless prohibited by the organic law. Clay had returned to the Senate, and being neither more nor less than human, he had little inclination to harmonize with an accidental Whig President who filled the position to which Clay felt he was justly entitled. As opposed to the policy of the President, Clay came in as pacificator and proposed what then became known, and what have since been known as the Compromise Measures of 1850. It is doubtful whether either the administration or the Clay Compromise policy could have been successful had the President lived. Certainly the Compromise bill would have failed, but it is uncertain whether the administration could have wielded sufficient power to carry its policy through Congress. Its policy was a negative one, postponing the slave issue in the new acquisitions until the people could act in their sovereign capacity in the creation of States.

President Taylor died July 9, 1850, and Millard Fillmore became President by virtue of his office as Vice-President. Taylor’s death changed the political purposes of the administration in the earnest struggle then in Congress to meet the question of slavery in the newly acquired territory. Fillmore, like nearly all Vice-Presidents, was not in harmony with the President, and when he became President himself he reversed the policy of the administration.

It was on this issue that Webster wrecked himself. He was in the confidence of the Taylor administration, and was chosen to be the champion of its policy for meeting the slavery issue in the Territories. He personally conferred with the Cabinet forty-eight hours before he delivered his memorable seventh-of-March speech, in which he cast his lot with Clay and the pro-slavery wing of the party, and neither the President nor any Cabinet officer had any notice of his purpose to change until they were astounded by hearing the views he expressed in his speech. William M. Meredith, of Philadelphia, was then Secretary of the Treasury, and he was so much offended by what he regarded as Webster’s perfidy that he never spoke to him thereafter.

Fillmore was the second Vice-President who had succeeded to the Presidency by the death of the President, and, like Tyler, he reversed the policy of the party, and estranged the Whigs of the North very generally from him. After he became President the Compromise Measures were revived, and Clay made the last great battle of his life as pacificator. With the power of the administration added, the Clay Compromise Measures passed both branches of Congress, and were promptly approved by the President. They declared, first, against the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; second, in favor of the admission of California as a Free State; third, in favor of a severely stringent Fugitive Slave law; fourth, for the payment to Texas of $10,000,000 for yielding her claims to New Mexico, and fifth, in favor of the admission of Utah and New Mexico as Territories without restrictions as to slavery.

The passage of the Compromise Measures practically united the Democratic party, as the friends of slavery extension had won a substantial triumph, and the Democrats of the North were generally in harmony with that policy, but it greatly weakened the Whigs in the North without strengthening them in the South, and Fillmore, and Webster, then Secretary of State, became rival candidates for the Whig nomination, while the anti-Compromise or antislavery element of the Whigs united on General Scott.

When the Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore, June 1, 1852, the leaders were entirely confident of electing their candidates. John W. Davis, of Indiana, was made President, and the two-thirds rule reaffirmed. The sessions of the convention were protracted, lasting six days, but there was little angry dispute as to either candidates or measures. There were 49 ballots for President, Cass and Buchanan being the leading competitors at the start. The Virginia delegation, that was always potential in Democratic conventions, had become weary of the hopeless contest between the candidates, and on the 35th ballot cast a solid vote for Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, whose name had not up to that time been before the convention. The friends of Cass made an earnest rally, but were unable to concentrate sufficient strength to approach the two-thirds vote, and Marcy finally loomed up as the leading competitor of Pierce. The following table gives the detail vote on each ballot:

Two ballots were had for Vice-President, the first resulting as follows:

The 2d ballot ended with the unanimous nomination of Mr. King.

The party platform was precisely that of 1848, all embodied in full text, with two new resolutions added on the subject of slavery and additional resolutions relating to other national issues. The Democratic platform of 1852, therefore, embraced all the previous Democratic platforms with the following added:

Then follow the resolutions in former platforms respecting the distribution of the proceeds of land sales, that respecting the veto power, and these additions:

The nomination of Pierce was received very generally by the Democrats with great enthusiasm. The spirit of young Democracy had grown up in the party and become very formidable. The Democratic Review, the monthly organ of Democracy, had been reorganized with an able and most aggressive staff devoted to the overthrow of “old fogyism” in the party, and when Pierce was nominated the boys who do the shouting were almost wholly in sympathy with the young Democracy, and the old-timers had to fall in the rear of the procession. With the Democratic party united on candidates who were free from factional complication, and with the Compromise Measures, on which they could unite both the North and South, they started in the contest with every advantage and maintained it until election day, when the Whig party suffered its Waterloo.

The Whig convention met in Baltimore on the 16th of June with every State represented, and John G. Chapman, of Maryland, was made the presiding officer. The Southern delegates fortified themselves before the meeting of the convention by a caucus declaration of the party platform, and it was an open secret that if the convention accepted the platform, enough Southern men would support Scott to give him the nomination. They knew that Fillmore could not be elected, and that Webster was even weaker than Fillmore, and they were willing to accept Scott, who was the candidate of the antislavery element of the party, if the Compromise Measures were squarely affirmed by the party convention, while Scott was willing to accept the nomination with any platform the convention might formulate. Fillmore had carried the Compromise Measures and forced the Whigs to accept them in the party platform, but the insincerity of that expression was manifested by the refusal to nominate Fillmore, and by the nomination of Scott, who represented the anti-Compromise Whigs of the country. There were 53 ballots for President, but during the long struggle there was little exhibition of ill-temper. Scott started with 131 to 133 for Fillmore and 29 for Webster, and ended with 159 for Scott to 112 for Fillmore and 21 for Webster. The following table presents the ballots in detail:

The nomination of Scott was made unanimous, and William A. Graham, of North Carolina, who was Secretary of the Navy under the Fillmore administration, was given a unanimous nomination for Vice-President on the 2d ballot. The following platform was adopted without opposition, excepting as to the eighth and last, affirming the new and stringent Fugitive Slave law. After an earnest debate it was adopted by a vote of 212 to 70. Many of the friends of General Scott voted for that resolution from considerations of expediency. General Scott in his letter of acceptance broadly affirmed the platform in its entirety.

The Compromise Measures were pressed upon the country as a finality, and the Democrats, with all of the Southern Whigs and many Northern Whigs, accepted them as such. Had the Pierce administration permitted the slave issue to rest on the Compromise Measures, it is probable that the birth of the Republican party would have been long postponed, but the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave fresh vitality to the slavery dispute and quickened the antislavery sentiment of the country to the aggressive battle that culminated in the election of Lincoln in 1860.

The Free-Soil Democrats called a national convention to meet at Pittsburg on the 11th of August, over which Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, presided. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, was nominated for President, and George W. Julian, of Indiana, for Vice-President without the formality of a ballot. The following platform was adopted:

The contest of 1852 was a hopeless one for the Whigs from the start. General Scott had great faith in his own election, but he stood almost entirely alone in that confidence. After the disastrous October elections he took the stump against the advice of his more discreet friends, and delivered a number of campaign speeches, which are now remembered chiefly because of his flattery to the foreign vote, complimenting the “rich Irish brogue” and “the sweet German accent” of many of his supporters. The result was that Pierce, a man who had never been discussed for the Presidency, but had been brought out as the “dark horse” at the national convention, carried every State in the Union but four—Massachusetts and Vermont, in the North, and Kentucky and Tennessee, in the South. The following is the popular and electoral vote:

President Pierce could have had a tranquil administration and generally maintained sectional peace if he had not wantonly reopened the slavery issue by assenting to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and making it a Democratic measure. Kansas and Nebraska, which were north of the Missouri line, whose territory had been solemnly dedicated to freedom by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, that admitted Missouri as a Slave State, were coveted by the slavery extensionists, and they decided not only against the solemnly plighted faith of the nation, but, in disregard of climatic objections, to force slavery in both of those Territories and make them Slave States. The slavery propagandists had failed to gather any substantial fruits for slavery from our Mexican acquisitions, and in the desperation of the suicide they resolved to force slavery into Kansas and Nebraska by a system of violence that was generally described at that time as “border ruffianism,” and that made the name of John Brown immortal.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the beginning of the end of slavery. It was noticed that there could be no peace with Northern industry and progress advancing rapidly and hastening the formation of new States, while the South was standing still. A number of new and very able men had been called into the political arena by the slavery agitation. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, and Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, were both elected to the Senate by a solid Democratic vote, united with the Free Soilers of their respective Legislatures. Henry Wilson, the “Natick Cobbler,” had become more potent in Massachusetts than was Webster at the time of his death; and the antislavery sentiment was visibly and speedily growing toward immense proportions.

The Whig party made its final battle in 1852, although it was nominally in the field in 1856, and a new party was created out of the odds and ends of the old Native American party. Opposition to Catholics had been intensified by Pierce appointing Judge Campbell, of Philadelphia, Postmaster-General. He was a very able and faithful Cabinet officer, and there was no pretence that his religious views in any way influenced his official appointments, but it revived the embers of Native Americanism, and the great mass of the Whigs, who knew that the Whig party had practically perished, and the antislavery Democrats were without political vocations. They were like the Federalists who first found refuge in anti-Masonry, and with anti-Masonry afterward found refuge in the Whig party. The result was the very rapid spread of the new American, or what was commonly called the Know-Nothing party, with secret lodges and its members all sworn not to divulge the movements of the organization and to vote for its nominated candidates. It exhibited wonderful strength in many localities early in 1854, and it was not uncommon in local elections, when the vote was counted, to find that all the officers elected were unknown to the public as candidates. Its first important triumph was in the municipal election of Philadelphia in May, 1854, when Judge Conrad, candidate of the Whigs and secret candidate of the Know-Nothings, was elected Mayor by an overwhelming majority.

The Democrats lost a large number of their ablest men on the slavery issue, provoked to defection by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and it was evident that the party would be divided in the next national campaign; but the various elements of opposition were even more incongruous and had little prospect of anything approaching the unity necessary to succeed. Pierce, like Fillmore, Polk, and Tyler, was a candidate for re-election, but failed disastrously in his own convention after wielding the power of his position to the uttermost, and his administration ended with the country rent by sectional feuds and gravely threatened with fraternal war.

THE BUCHANAN-FREMONT-FILLMORE CONTEST

1856

The Presidential battle of 1856, that gave Pennsylvania her only President in James Buchanan, is memorable chiefly because it dated the birth of the Republican party as a national organization, that was destined to conduct the greatest civil war of modern history, to abolish slavery, maintain its power uninterruptedly for a quarter of a century, and to write the most lustrous chapters in the annals of the Republic.

The Democrats were greatly demoralized by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and they suffered the aggressive defection of a number of Democratic leaders with large popular following, but the various shades of opposition to the Democracy were even more hopelessly divided. The Democrats had the advantage of being able to command a solid vote from the South on a square slavery issue, and they reasonably hoped that they could hold enough States in the North to give them success. Buchanan had been abroad as Minister during the troublesome times of the Pierce administration, and he returned just in good time to make the most out of the disturbed situation that confronted him. The renomination and re-election of Pierce were hopeless. Cass had been defeated by the people and suffered repeated defeats in national conventions. Buchanan thus had a strong lead for the Presidential nomination, and he was most fortunate in having the accomplished, devoted, and tireless Colonel Forney to manage his campaign, not only for the nomination, but to direct the national contest in the few Northern States which could be held to the Democratic flag.

The Southern leaders had absolute confidence in Buchanan, and they were entirely justified in their faith. He had been a Federal member of Congress in early days, and later entered the Democratic party with all the strict construction ideas of Federalism, which were then in harmony with the Democratic policy as applied to the slavery issue. He was the logical Democratic candidate for President in 1856; and President Pierce, an utterly impossible candidate, as it was known that he never could command the necessary two-thirds vote in the convention, was his only serious competitor when the balloting began.

The Democratic National Convention met in Cincinnati on the 2d of June, with full delegations from every State, and two contesting delegations from New York and Missouri. The quarrel between the factions in both States was intensely bitter. The opposing factions of New York were known as the “Hards,” who were a spawn of the old Hunkers, and the “Softs,” who took the place of the Barnburners. The Missouri delegations were known as the Bentonites and the Regulars, the Bentonites having lost the control of the party organization in the State. The convention solved the problem by admitting both delegations from each State, and giving each delegate only half a vote. John E. Ward, of Georgia, was made the permanent president, and the two-thirds rule was reaffirmed without a contest.

It was at this convention that Stephen A. Douglas first developed as an aggressive candidate for President, and as he had led the battle for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he was in harmony with the Pierce administration. As will be seen by the ballots, his strength was almost wholly given to Pierce until Pierce’s unavailability was clearly established, when the Pierce vote was mostly transferred to Douglas. The following table presents the 17 ballots in detail, resulting in the nomination of Buchanan:

As Buchanan was from the North, the Vice-Presidency was conceded to the South, and 10 candidates were placed in nomination. The 1st ballot resulted as follows:

When the 2d ballot was called, a number of the candidates had their names withdrawn, and Mr. Breckenridge was given a unanimous nomination. He was the idol of the young Democracy of the South, having won his spurs by two of the most remarkable Congressional campaigns in the history of Kentucky, in which he had defeated Governor Letcher and Leslie Combs, two of the ablest of the old Clay leaders in the Ashland district. His success was due entirely to his own personal popularity. He was not only one of the ablest of all the Breckenridges, but he was a most accomplished, genial, and delightful companion, and his nomination greatly strengthened the Democratic ticket in all sections of the country.

The platform was finally adopted without a contest. It recited first the preamble adopted in 1844, followed by ten resolutions from other previous platforms, embracing the first five of 1840, and others embracing the Democratic views on the proceeds of the public land; in opposition to a national bank; in favor of the subtreasury system; in support of the veto power, and opposing any new limitations upon naturalization. To these the following new resolutions were added:

When Buchanan was nominated for President everything indicated his election by a very large majority and without a serious struggle. It was evident to all that the antislavery sentiment was making rapid strides in the North. The Democrats felt certain of a solid vote in the South, and they did not regard it as possible for the Republican party to unite the American and conservative Whig elements to sufficient extent to enable it to make a hopeful contest in Pennsylvania, New York, and the Western Democratic States; but very soon after the meeting of the first Republican National Convention the new party grew with such rapidity that the Democratic leaders finally looked the fact in the face that they had a very desperate and doubtful contest before them.

The Republican party first appeared in the political arena in 1854. It had then a small organization in New York State, and cast a sufficient number of votes to elect Clark, the Whig candidate, for Governor, over Seymour, the Democratic candidate, who lost the Governorship by 309 majority. I was at the cradle of the Republican party; was a delegate to its first State convention, held in Pittsburg, Penn., in 1855. It was a mass convention, composed of a loose aggregation of political free-thinkers, but a number of very able men, including Giddings and Bingham, of Ohio, and Allison, of Pennsylvania, who presided, delivered addresses. There was but one State office to fill in Pennsylvania, that of Canal Commissioner. The convention was made up very largely of the aggressive Abolition element of the State, small in number, but bold and assertive in action, as was shown by the spontaneous nomination of Passmore Williamson, who was then in prison for contempt of court in a fugitive slave case. The nomination was resented by all the conservative Whigs and by the Americans, and without the votes of those parties the Republican organization could not carry a township in the State. Williamson was finally persuaded to retire, and the Whig, American, and Republican committees united on Thomas Nicholson, of Beaver, but the elements were too discordant, and the State was lost by some 12,000.

I was a delegate to the first Republican National Convention, that met in Philadelphia on the 17th of June, 1856. It was also a mass convention, as the party had no organization, and States sent large or small delegations as was most convenient. I went to the convention, hoping to aid in the nomination of Judge McLean for President, who was sufficiently conservative to command both the Whig and American votes, and I had no faith whatever in the success of a distinctive Republican candidate and party. I was surprised to find the Republicans of New England and of New York who were attending the convention in favor of a radical Republican policy, and I was so much dissatisfied with the evident outcome of the convention that, although I attended its first session, I did not enroll as a delegate, and did not participate in any of its important proceedings. I well remember meeting Mr. Greeley among the first of those who came to the convention, and wondered how he had lost all his political cunning when he told me, in the most enthusiastic way, that Fremont would carry New York by 50,000 majority, and that the Republican party would be sufficiently strong to win the battle without any concessions whatever to the other elements opposed to the Democratic party. I had no faith in Fremont, either as a candidate or as a President. I shared the general conservative Whig sentiment of Pennsylvania that the Republican convention in nominating Fremont on a square-toed Republican platform was altogether too “wild and woolley” in flavor to win at the election. Greeley was mistaken as to New York only in making the Republican majority one-third less than it turned up on election night, when Fremont had nearly as many votes as Buchanan and Fillmore combined.

The nomination of Fremont was engineered by some of the shrewdest of the old Democratic leaders, most conspicuous of whom was the elder Francis P. Blair, who had been one of the most sagacious of the Democratic politicians during the administrations of Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk. They believed it best to take a candidate for the Presidency who had no political record whatever to antagonize the conflicting political views which must be united to give the party success; and Fremont was young, had served in the army with credit, had made what then were regarded as wonderful explorations in the Rocky Mountains, and had the distinction of having been forced to retire from the army for what was claimed to have been conspicuously heroic and patriotic action on his part. He had never said anything or done anything to offend any political prejudice. It turned out that he was strongest where he was least known. The old California Forty-niners, who were back in Pennsylvania, and some of them prominent in politics, did not enthuse over Fremont’s nomination. I distinctly recollect the trite summing up of Fremont’s qualities by one who had been with him in California by saying: “Fremont is a millionaire without a dollar, a soldier who never fought a battle, and a statesman who never made a speech;” but that his nomination was altogether the strongest that could have been made in the Philadelphia convention cannot be doubted by any who study the history of that contest and the marvellous political revolution it wrought. Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, presided over the convention, and a single ballot was had for President, as follows:

The nomination of Fremont was made unanimous with great enthusiasm, and there was only one ballot for Vice-President, resulting as follows:

Mr. Dayton was then declared the nominee of the convention by a unanimous vote, and the following platform was adopted:

The American or Know-Nothing party had become the leading factor of the opposition elements to Democracy in the elections of 1854–55. In some sections the Whig party was entirely obliterated, and in the South there was no organization opposed to Democracy but the American. The cardinal principle of its faith was that “Americans must rule America,” and its opposition to the Catholic Church was positive and pronounced. It had gravitated from the original Native Americans of 1844 into the Order of United Americans, and it coalesced with the remnants of the Whig party and with the antiadministration Democrats in most of the Northern States. It had reached about its highest measure of strength in 1855, chiefly because of its strong hold in the South. In New England and the far Western States the Americans had been very generally absorbed in the Republican organization when the battle opened for the Presidency in 1856.

The American National Council was called to meet in Philadelphia on the 19th of February, 1856, and nearly all the States were represented. The Council was a secret body, in accordance with the usages of the party. After three days of animated discussion it adopted a party platform, and on the 22d of February the Council adjourned and organized the American National Nominating Convention. Ephraim Marsh, of New Jersey, was made president. An earnest effort was made in the convention to antagonize the right of the National Council to make the platform for the party. Mr. Killinger, of Pennsylvania, offered a resolution, declaring that the Council had no authority to prescribe a platform of principles, and that the convention should nominate no man for President or Vice-President “who is not in favor of interdicting the introduction of slavery into territory North 36° 30´ by Congressional action,” but his proposition failed by a vote of 141 to 59. The failure of this resolution led to the retirement from the convention of the more pronounced antislavery delegates or North Americans, as they were called. The convention then proceeded to ballot for President as follows:

After the 2d ballot, Mr. Fillmore was unanimously declared the nominee, and on the 1st ballot Andrew Jackson Donelson, of Tennessee, who was the adopted son of General Jackson, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 181 votes to 8 for Governor Gardner, of Massachusetts, 8 for Percy Walker, of Alabama, and 8 for Kenneth Raynor, of North Carolina. The following platform was then unanimously adopted:

The seceding delegates, consisting of the antislavery wing of the party and small in number, organized a convention of their own, and without the formality of a ballot, nominated John C. Fremont, of California, for President, and Ex-Governor William F. Johnston, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President, but they finally supported Fremont and Dayton.

The fragments of the old Whig party met in national convention at Baltimore on the 17th of September, in which 26 States were raggedly represented. Edward Bates, of Missouri, presided over the convention, and the proceedings were uneventful. Fillmore and Donelson, the candidates nominated by the American party, were unanimously nominated for President and Vice-President by resolution, and the following platform adopted:

The campaign of 1856 was one of the most desperately fought conflicts in the history of American politics. In some of the Northern States, and particularly in Pennsylvania, that had to be carried against Buchanan in October to give promise of his defeat, the American party, or the supporters of Fillmore and Donelson, were nearly or quite as strong as the distinctive Republicans. Both were opposed to the election of Buchanan, but they were wide apart not only on the slavery issue, but on the questions of citizenship and religious proscription. As the contest warmed up the necessity for some sort of union between these elements was accepted on both sides, and in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and some other States the Americans, Republicans, and old Whigs united on State tickets. Illinois, while it gave its electoral vote to Buchanan, elected Colonel Bissell, an antislavery and anti-Buchanan Democrat, Governor, and in Pennsylvania the Democratic ticket was successful in October only by a very small majority.

In several of the States they harmonized on an electoral ticket. They did it by printing two electoral tickets for the two wings of the opposition. On one ticket the first candidate for elector was John C. Fremont, and on the other ticket was the name of Millard Fillmore. The understanding was that if the Union electoral ticket succeeded, the entire vote, less the one lost by using the names of Fillmore and Fremont, should be cast for either candidate if thereby he could be elected, and if such united vote would not elect either candidate the vote was to be divided between Fillmore and Fremont, as the voters indicated by the first name at the head of the ticket.

In common with the great mass of conservative Whigs who were at first greatly disappointed in the nomination of Fremont and the radical attitude of the new Republican party, I gradually drifted into the contest because of the offensive deliverances on slavery made by the Cincinnati platform. I knew Mr. Buchanan personally, and if I could have obeyed my individual preferences as to a candidate, would have voted for him. The slavery issue soon became so sharply defined that the great mass of the Whigs of the North fell in to the support of Fremont. There was considerable defection of prominent Whigs in Buchanan’s State, embracing the Reeds, the Ingersolls, the Whartons, the Randalls, and others of Philadelphia, whose conservative Whig views, with their great personal respect for Buchanan, influenced them to support him. Buchanan was not a magnetic man, not a popular man in the common acceptation of the term, but he was respected by all not only for his ability, but for his integrity and generally blameless reputation. He was a very courteous gentleman, but the multitude did not rush into his arms as it did into the arms of Clay and Blaine, and it is quite probable that his bachelor life, a destiny given him by a devotion with tragic end, doubtless made him less genial than he might have been.

Pennsylvania was the pivotal State in the contest, and Colonel Forney was chairman of the Democratic State Committee. He was thoroughly familiar with the political situation, and greatly impaired his health by his exhaustive efforts to save Buchanan in his home State. His relations with Buchanan were of the closest and most confidential nature, and each implicitly trusted the other. Buchanan knew Forney’s ability in the management of a great political battle, and there was no concealment between them as to the reward Forney should receive if Buchanan succeeded. Forney’s ambition was to continue in journalism, and it was not only understood, but the assurance voluntarily given to Forney by Buchanan, that if Buchanan became President, Forney should conduct the national organ in Washington and receive the Senate printing. What was then known as the Senate printing was an abuse that had grown up from small to large proportions until it became a fortune to any man who received it during the period of an administration. Gales and Seaton, of the National Intelligencer, had enjoyed it for many years, and when Democratic administrations became more distinctly partisan the favoritism was continued and the profits magnified. It was deemed a necessity for each administration to have an organ, and it was accepted in those days as the Democratic oracle of the nation. By making Forney the editor of the administration organ at Washington with the Senate printing, his highest ambition in his journalistic career would have been gratified, with ample fortune added. So intimate were Buchanan and Forney, that Forney’s family spent part of the summer at Wheatland, where Forney would occasionally tarry for a day’s rest and to consult with his chief.

Both parties were very confident of carrying the State in October, but Forney outgeneralled the leaders of the Union ticket by his masterful manipulation of Philadelphia, and the Buchanan State ticket was successful in October by 3500 majority. Had the Buchanan State ticket been defeated, Buchanan’s defeat for President would have been clearly foreshadowed, as it would doubtless have made a successful union on the electoral tickets in New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois, as had already been done in Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding the loss of Pennsylvania in October, the friends of Fremont and Fillmore made desperate efforts to carry the State in November, and so well did they fight their battle that Buchanan’s majority in the State over the combined vote of Fremont and Fillmore was only 1025. The Fremont and Fillmore people believed that they had been defrauded out of the October election in Pennsylvania, and Forney was denounced with extreme bitterness that had lost none of its intensity in the Senatorial fight of 1857, when the resentments of the opposition made Forney’s defeat for Senator possible in a Democratic Legislature.

Buchanan, Fremont, and Fillmore each bore themselves with great dignity during the campaign. Fillmore was not in sympathy with Buchanan, but he had even less sympathy for Fremont and the radical Republican policy he represented. Fremont made his home during the contest in New York, under the strictest orders not to discuss any political question, either orally or by letter, with any outside of those in charge of his campaign. Along with several others, I called upon him at his home some time before the election, simply to pay our respects to the man we were supporting for President, and he was so extremely cautious that he evaded the most ordinary expressions relating to the conduct and prospects of the battle. He impressed me as possessing a stronger individuality than I had credited him with, and his enforced policy of silence made him appear as a severely dignified gentleman with strong intellectual possibilities. But considering the record he made in the early part of the war, when he had, for the first time, opportunity to display his abilities, there are few who will not feel that his election to the Presidency might have been equally disastrous to himself and to the country.

The battle ended by the election of Buchanan, although Fremont carried the New England States and New York and the Northwestern Democratic States with the whirl of the tempest. The following table exhibits the popular and electoral vote:

A quarrel between Buchanan and Forney was more far-reaching in its results than can well be estimated by those not entirely familiar with the beginning and the end of the dispute. During the campaign, Buchanan, greatly pressed with the increased correspondence that came to him, asked Forney to send him a competent and trustworthy secretary, and Buchanan, for the first time, abandoned his uniform policy of writing all his own letters in clear, beautiful copper-plate style. Forney sent one of his own assistants to aid Buchanan, and having charge of Buchanan’s correspondence he became cognizant of the fact that the Southern leaders were very generally and earnestly demanding of Buchanan the pledge that Forney should not be made editor of the administration organ.

Buchanan parried the appeals of the Southern friends for some time, but finally, knowing that his election depended upon a united South, they became mandatory, and Buchanan, without advising Forney of the fact, finally gave his pledge that Forney should not be chosen. The secretary was indignant at this betrayal of his friend, and quietly sought Forney, advised him of the fact and expressed his purpose not to return. Forney required the secretary to go back and perform his duties and take no note of what had happened. He was greatly disappointed, as it denied him what was the great ambition of his life, involving editorial distinction and fortune, but he believed that Buchanan had yielded to imperious necessity and that he would not be allowed to suffer from the change.

It was not until after the election that Buchanan informed Forney of the necessity of making a change in his reward, and Forney proposed to accept a position in the Cabinet, to which Buchanan would have willingly consented, but the same intense opposition to Forney as a Cabinet officer surged against him from the South. It was next proposed by Buchanan that Forney should take the Berlin mission with a liberal commercial salary added, but Mrs. Forney peremptorily refused to entertain it. It was finally agreed that Forney should be elected to the Senate. The Democrats had a majority of three on joint ballot, and it was not doubted that any Democrat nominated by the caucus would be chosen. Henry D. Foster, a very prominent Democrat, who had been in Congress and who was the Democratic candidate for Governor in 1860, was a member of the House. He was a candidate for Senator, and doubtless would have been chosen had Forney not been suddenly injected into the field. It was not until the Legislature was about to meet that Forney’s candidacy was decided upon. It required very prompt and positive action to secure the nomination of Forney, and Buchanan, with all his extreme caution under ordinary circumstances, wrote a letter to Senator Mott urging the election of Forney. That letter became public and greatly exasperated the friends of the other candidates, but a new Democratic administration with the President from the State and just on the threshold of great political power was able to command the nomination for Forney, and it was accomplished, but leaving many open sores.

The Republicans and Americans of the Legislature were smarting under what they regarded as the fraud that Forney engineered to give the State to Buchanan, and they were quite willing to join any movement to defeat him. General Cameron had come into the Republican party in 1856, and was at the head of the electoral ticket, and he had a very strong hold upon some old Democratic friends. He proposed to the Republicans and Americans of the Legislature that if they would give him a united vote he could command three Democratic votes and be elected. The Union caucus, as it was called, appointed a committee to whom three Democrats must be shown and give their pledges to vote for Cameron, and if such report was made back to the caucus by the committee, without giving the names of the Democrats who were to vote for Cameron, the Republicans were pledged to vote unitedly for Cameron on the 1st ballot. The committee saw Representatives Lebo, Maneer, and Wagonseller, Democrats, who pledged themselves to vote for Cameron if they could elect him, and to the surprise of all parties except the very few who understood the arrangement, Cameron was elected Senator and Forney suffered a most humiliating defeat.

After Forney’s defeat for Senator, it became much more difficult than even before for Buchanan to reward him, as he doubtless felt should be done. Efforts were made to give him a liberal share of the post-office printing, but Forney and Buchanan were gradually becoming estranged, and finally Forney decided that he could not harmonize with Buchanan and his friends, and that he would renew his journalistic career on independent lines. The result was the establishment of the Philadelphia Press.

The slavery issue speedily divided Douglas and Buchanan, and Forney had his opportunity. He had suffered much from the proscriptive hatred of the South, and he became Douglas’s ablest and most enthusiastic supporter in the North, which brought him into direct antagonism with Buchanan. From the time that battle began, Forney and Buchanan were strangers during the remainder of their lives, and no one man did more to educate the North up to the election of Abraham Lincoln than John W. Forney.

We are told that the political methods of the present age are greatly degenerate as compared with the political methods of the old-school leaders, of which Buchanan was about the last representative in the White House. It will surprise many of the present day to be told that Buchanan gave personal attention not only to organize county leaders in his support for the Presidency, but wrote elaborate letters even to township leaders. I have in my possession a number of Mr. Buchanan’s anti-Presidential letters, and I think it due to the truth of history to give one of them as a foot-note to illustrate the politics of half a century ago.[16] Perry County, to which the letter refers, is a small county adjoining Franklin, the birthplace of Buchanan. It had only a single delegate to the Democratic State Convention, and, considering Buchanan’s location, he should have been able to command its support without special effort. The friend to whom he wrote was an Associate Judge of the county and active in politics, and when it is remembered that this letter is only one of very many written to a single small county to gain a single delegate for Buchanan against General Cass, who lived in a distant State, the political methods employed to reach the Presidency in that day will be generally accepted as no improvement on the methods now employed to gain the highest honors of the Republic.

Buchanan entered the Presidency earnestly determined to end the slavery agitation, but unfortunately he hoped to end it by the unqualified success of slavery in all of the new Territories and the right of transit through the free States of slaves as servants. The Dred Scott decision was foreshadowed in his inaugural address, and he and the pro-slavery statesmen of that time were confident that the Republican ebullition of 1856 was a mere tidal wave that would speedily perish, and that the South would be so strongly entrenched for the defence of slavery that it could not be successfully assailed. He was elected by the South; he was the strictest of strict constructionists on all Constitutional questions, and he naturally sustained the South in going far beyond what his judgment approved in the efforts to force slavery into Kansas and Nebraska.

The strength of the slavery sentiment steadily grew under the aggravations of the pro-slavery men who sought to force slavery into the new Territories of the West, and it was this continued discussion and the outrages perpetrated on the people of Kansas and Nebraska that made the election of a Republican President possible in 1860, and that finally precipitated the Civil War. Buchanan adhered to the South until open rebellion was organized by the capture of forts and arsenals and the organization of a Confederate government, but when he found himself powerless to restrain the South from armed rebellion, he reorganized his Cabinet and exhausted his then wasted powers to bring the South into submission to the Government. He had an aggressively loyal Cabinet during the last few months of his administration, and when he retired, generally denounced by the loyal sentiment of the country as a faithless Executive, he earnestly supported the Government in every measure necessary to suppress the rebellion and prevent the dismemberment of the Republic. He died soon after the close of the war, a thoroughly honest and patriotic public servant, but widely misunderstood. His revolutionary Kansas-Nebraska policy made the Republican revolution of 1860 inevitable, and made Abraham Lincoln President.

THE LINCOLN-BRECKENRIDGE-DOUGLAS-BELL CONTEST

1860

In 1860 the nation proclaimed the third great political epoch of its history by an aggressive departure from Democracy to the Republicanism that has since ruled without material interruption. There have been two Democratic administrations since the Republican epoch of 1860, but though they, for the time, halted and modified the Republican policy, they never had the power to make a decisive reversal of Republican mastery. Thus an epoch of twelve years of Federalism, another of sixty years of Democracy, and another of forty years of Republicanism tell the story of the political revolutions of the Republic during a period of one hundred and twelve years.

When Fremont made his brilliant campaign of 1856 and narrowly escaped election to the Presidency, it was generally accepted by all the varied phases of politics opposed to radical Republicanism that the Republican movement was like a bee—biggest at its birth—and that it never could win a national victory; but all the chief events affecting the political sentiment of the country from 1856 until 1860 tended to strengthen Republican sentiment and to alienate a large portion of the intelligent elements of Democracy. The significant elections of 1858 and 1859, with the Kansas-Nebraska war convulsing the country from centre to circumference, steadily strengthened Republican lines, and when the leaders of the party came to face the great battle of 1860 they well understood that success was within their reach, and never did a party exhibit greater sagacity in leadership than was displayed in the convention that nominated Lincoln.

William H. Seward was the confessed Republican leader of the nation. He was admittedly its ablest champion and was among its earliest supporters. He had been long in the Senate, and was the peer of any in the discussion of all the grave questions which then agitated our national Legislature. He was not only the ablest of his party, but he was one of the most exemplary and courteous of men. Two-thirds of all the delegates elected to that convention were friends of Seward and expected to vote for him, and his nomination would have been inevitable on the 1st ballot had not the convention been restrained by considerations of expediency which were most reluctantly accepted. Lincoln’s own delegation from Illinois embraced one-third of positive Seward men. They were instructed for Lincoln without hope of his nomination at the time, and most of them expected to perform a mere perfunctory duty by voting for him on one or more ballots.

Horace Greeley had sounded the first note of warning against the nomination of Seward, and his paper, the New York Tribune, was then the most influential journal ever published in this country. It was the Republican Bible, and its weekly edition was more read in the West than all other Eastern papers combined. He startled the party by a series of dignified and masterly articles in favor of Edward Bates, of Missouri, for President, on the ground that Seward was not available, and that a man of the great ability and conservative attitude of Bates alone could win in that contest. But though the conservative element of the opposition to the Democracy was not enthusiastic for Seward and his “irrepressible conflict,” the true reason of Seward’s defeat was not presented either by Mr. Greeley or by any public discussion before the meeting of the convention.

I have read many romances about how, why and by whom Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President at Chicago, but the explanation is very simple, and when presented must be accepted by all as conclusive. Henry S. Lane had been nominated as the Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana, and Andrew G. Curtin had been nominated by the Republicans for Governor of Pennsylvania. These States voted for Governor and other State officers on the second Tuesday of October, and they were the pivotal States of the national contest. It was an absolute necessity to carry them in October to assure the election of a Republican President, and the first inquiry of the Republican leaders at Chicago, outside of those who were blindly devoted to Seward, was “Who can carry Indiana and Pennsylvania?”

Lane and Curtin were there solely for the purpose of getting the strongest possible national ticket nominated to aid them in their State contests. With Lane was John D. Defrees, as Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Indiana, and I was with Curtin, as he had charged me with the same responsible duty in Pennsylvania. Curtin and Lane decided that they could not be elected if Seward were nominated for President. They were not personally or politically hostile to him; they had but one thing in view, and that was their own election, which was essential to elect a Republican President.

Prior to 1860 the Republican party had never carried either Pennsylvania or Indiana. Opposition to the pro-slavery policy of the Buchanan administration had crystallized antislavery Democrats, Whigs, and Americans into the support of Union State tickets, and had elected them; but in Pennsylvania the Republican name was omitted from necessity, and the organization was entitled the People’s party. In both of these States there was an organized and powerful American party yet in existence, without which the Republicans could not succeed. It was the remnant of the American or Know-Nothing revolution of 1854, and they cherished their own faith with great fidelity and would not support any candidate who was friendly to the Catholics.

When Seward was elected Governor of New York in 1838 it was largely by the influence of Archbishop Hughes, one of the ablest Catholic prelates this country has ever had; and Seward, not only because of his gratitude to his Catholic friends, but because of his broad and liberal views generally, in a message to the Legislature urged a division of the school fund between the Catholics and Protestants. That was the rock on which Seward was wrecked. Had he been nominated, the entire American element of the opposition would have been aggressively against him, and Pennsylvania and Indiana would have been lost not only by the defeat of Curtin and Lane in October, but by the defeat of Seward in November.

The situation was earnestly presented by Curtin and Lane, and Mr. Defrees and I accompanied them in their conferences with various delegations which were devoted to Seward, but were willing to abandon him—not because they loved Seward less, but because they loved Republican success more. I saw several rural delegates from New England States shed tears as they confessed that they must abandon Seward because he could not carry Pennsylvania and Indiana, and certainly more than one-third of all the delegates who voted for Lincoln in that convention did it in sincerest sorrow because compelled to abandon their great leader for the sake of victory.

Under such conditions the Seward lines were steadily weakening, but never was a movement so ably led as was the Seward movement at Chicago. It was literally a battle of giants. Thurlow Weed, the master of masters in politics, led the fight for Seward, and he had around him Governor Morgan, Chairman of the National Committee; Raymond, of the Times, and many others of distinguished ability in such struggles. Weed invited Lane to drive with him, and, in the course of their conversation, assured him that if his delegation would support Seward all the money needed to carry his election in Indiana would be generously furnished; but Lane knew that no amount of money could give him victory in October with Seward as the national candidate.

The convention met on Wednesday, May 16, and George Ashman, of Massachusetts, was made permanent president. The first day was devoted to routine duties, and the second to the adoption of a platform and rules to govern the convention. The convention adjourned on Thursday evening profoundly impressed with the great battle that was to be fought on the following day, and both sides exhausted political strategy to gain the advantage. Weed organized a most imposing street parade of the Seward people. They had thousands of Seward spectators outside of the delegates, and it was one of the most impressive public displays I have ever witnessed. They paraded the streets for an hour or more before the meeting of the convention.

The friends of Lincoln had been tireless in their efforts, and they displayed wonderful ability in handling their forces. The leaders in immediate charge of the Lincoln people were Colonel Medill, of the Chicago Tribune; David Davis, afterward Judge of the Supreme Court; Norman B. Judd, Chairman of the Republican State Committee, and Leonard Swett, who was almost a copy of Lincoln physically, and who was Lincoln’s closest friend until the day of his death. When they found that the Seward parade was to come off, they counselled how to meet it, and they finally decided that while the Seward men were parading they would fill the immense temporary wigwam—erected for the convention, and capable of holding five thousand spectators—with men who should go there solely for the purpose of hurrahing for Lincoln. They carried this plan into very successful operation, and when the Seward procession attempted to march into the convention hall they found it filled to overflowing, and very few Seward men outside the delegation could obtain admission.

Just before the convention opened I saw the New York delegation file in and fill the only vacant place in the immense building. They were appalled when they saw how they had been outgeneralled. Almost immediately behind the New York men, who were under the lead of Evarts as Chairman of the delegation, sat Horace Greeley at the head of the Oregon delegation. That new State, just admitted into the Union, was so far from civilization, as the iron horse had not yet been heard in either the Rockies or the Sierra Nevadas, that the Republican convention selected a number of prominent men in the East, including Greeley, to represent the State. I never saw a more benignant face than that of Greeley’s when the nomination of Lincoln was declared. It was known by the supporters of Seward that Pennsylvania and Indiana had both decided to support Lincoln, the Pennsylvanians having declared for Lincoln by four majority over Bates, after giving a complimentary ballot to Cameron.

With very little preliminary movement the ballot began, and Seward’s two-thirds vote of the convention dwindled down to 173¹⁄₂ when 234 were necessary to a choice. Lincoln, with Pennsylvania and Ohio giving complimentary ballots to Cameron and Chase, had 102 votes. As the ballots were announced, every vote for Lincoln was cheered to the echo, while there were but few cheers for Seward except from the delegates themselves. When the 2d ballot was called the Seward people felt that they must largely increase their strength or fall in the race. As Lincoln gained most of the vote of Pennsylvania, with important gains from other States, the wildest cheering greeted the announcements, and when the ballot was given with only 10 votes gained by Seward and 75 votes gained by Lincoln, it became evident to all that Seward’s strength was exhausted and that Lincoln was the coming man. The next and last ballot soon showed Lincoln as leading Seward, and from that time on it was difficult to announce the votes of the States because of the frenzied cheers for “Abe Lincoln.”

When the last State was called it was known that Lincoln was either nominated or very close to it. The vote as recorded was 231¹⁄₂ for Lincoln, being 2¹⁄₂ votes short of a majority, and 180 for Seward, with some 50 scattering. Before the result was announced Chairman Carter, of Ohio, got up on his chair to assure the attention of the President, and said:

“I rise to announce the change of four votes from Ohio from Mr. Chase to Abraham Lincoln.”

It was known then that this gave Lincoln the majority, and I have never before nor since witnessed such a scene as was made by the great mass of the Lincoln people who were in the hall. A large charcoal picture of Lincoln was presented in the gallery at the rear of the hall, and the whole vast audience, with few exceptions outside of the New York delegation, rose to indulge in the wildest enthusiasm for some minutes.

When order was finally restored, Maine, Massachusetts, and Missouri changed a number of votes to Lincoln, giving him a total of 354, being 120 odd votes more than he needed. When the vote was announced by the President cheers broke out afresh, but they soon quieted down to await the action of the New York delegation that was expected to move the unanimous nomination. There was certainly fully five minutes of dead silence in the body, as the New York delegates were mortified beyond expression at their discomfiture; but after a long wait that seemed to be vastly longer than it was, the tall form of William M. Evarts arose, and with reluctance that was unconcealed said:

“Mr. President, I move that the nomination of Abraham Lincoln be made unanimous.”

Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, rose as soon as he saw Evarts rise, and when Evarts’s motion was made Andrew seconded it, and with the unanimous vote of the convention and the heartiest huzzas from the many thousands who witnessed the proceedings, Abraham Lincoln was declared the Republican candidate for President. The convention adjourned to meet again in the evening to nominate a candidate for Vice-President.

As there will be general interest felt in the proceedings of the Republican National Convention that gave the country the first Republican President in Abraham Lincoln, I give the detailed vote of each State represented in the convention on the three ballots for President, as follows: