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John Tyler Independent
James K. Polk Democratic
The United States presidential election of 1844 was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1, to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on the controversial issue of slavery expansion through the annexation of the Republic of Texas.[2][3][4]
The general election of 1844 took place in the midst of increasingly bitter congressional disputes over anti-slavery agitation, raising questions as to whether free-soil and slave-soil interests could coexist within a democratic republic.[5] The campaign themes arose in direct response to incumbent President John Tyler's pursuit of Texas annexation as a slave state so as to undermine the unity of the Whig and Democratic parties in his bid to retain the White House.[6]
The Whig Party nominee Henry Clay adopted an anti-annexation platform on the principle of preserving North-South sectional unity and to avoid war by respecting Mexico's claims to Texas.[7][8] Clay's attempts to finesse his anti-annexation position on Texas alienated many voters in the South and West where annexation support was strongest[9] while some Northern Whigs in swing states shifted support to the anti-slavery Liberty Party.[10]
Democrat Martin Van Buren, his party's presumptive presidential contender, was ousted at the Democratic National Convention, failing to meet the demands of southern Democrat expansionists for a leader favoring the immediate acquisition of Texas.[11]
Democrat James K. Polk emerged as America's first dark horse nominee[12] running on a platform that embraced America's popular commitment to territorial expansionism, referred to as Manifest Destiny.[13] Polk successfully linked the US-British boundary dispute over the partition of Oregon Territory, with the divisive Texas annexation debate. In doing so, the Democratic Party nominee united the anti-slavery Northern expansionists, who demanded Oregon as free-soil, with pro-slavery Southern expansionists, who insisted on acquiring Texas as a slave state. In doing so, Polk narrowly outpolled the Whig Party nominee Clay by thirty-eight thousand votes.[14] [15]
Party alliances were shaken by the Texas Controversy, but partisan loyalties among Congressional Democrats were rallied sufficiently in the aftermath of Polk's victory to pass a joint House-Senate resolution on Texas annexation.[16] Texas would enter the Union as the 28th state in 1846.[17]
This was the last presidential election to be held on different days in different states. Starting with the presidential election of 1848, all states held the election on the same date in November. It is also the only presidential election in which the winner, Polk, lost both his birth state of North Carolina and his state of residence, Tennessee, which he lost by only 123 votes.
Whigs and Democrats embarked upon their campaigns during the climax of the congressional
Polk's election confirmed the American public's desire for westward expansion. The annexation of Texas was formalized on March 1, 1845, before Polk even took office. As feared, Mexico refused to accept the annexation and the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846. With Polk's main issue of Texas settled, instead of demanding all of Oregon, he compromised and the United States and United Kingdom negotiated the Buchanan-Pakenham Treaty, which divided up the Oregon Territory between the two countries.
(a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1844 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005). Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).
Clay's "waffling" on Texas may have cost him the 41 electoral votes in both New York and Michigan. Here, the former slaveholder, now abolitionist, James G. Birney of the Liberty Party, received 15, 812 and 3,632, respectively, on the basis of his unwavering stand against Texas annexation. Polk won by a mere 5,106 out of 470,062 cast in New York, and only 3,422 out of 52,096 votes in Michigan.[156] Had either of these voting blocks cast their ballots for the anti-annexationist Clay, he would have defeated Polk.[157][158] Despite this, Clay's opposition to annexation and western slavery expansion served him well among Northern Whigs and nearly secured him the election.[159]
In the Deep South, Clay lost every state to Polk, a huge reversal from the 1840 race – but carried most of the Middle and Border South.[155]
The Democrats won Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, and nearly took Ohio, where Manifest Destiny was strongest.[154]
Polk's adoption of Manifest Destiny paid dividends at the polls. No longer identified with the Tyler-Calhoun "southern crusade for slavery", the western Democrats could embrace Texas annexation.[152] The Democrats enjoyed a huge upsurge in voter turnout – up to 20% - over the figures from 1840, especially in the Northwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. The Whigs showed only a 4% increase.[153]
Joseph Smith, Jr., mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois, and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, ran as an independent. He proposed the redemption of slaves by selling public lands and decreasing the size and salary of the United States Congress; the closure of prisons; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; and the re-establishment of a national bank.[150] The campaign ended when he was attacked and killed while in the Carthage, IL jail on June 27, 1844.[151]
James Birney ran as the anti-slavery Liberty Party candidate, garnering 2.3% of the popular vote, and over 8% of the vote in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. The votes he won were more than the difference in votes between Henry Clay and James K. Polk; some scholars have argued that Birney's support among anti-slavery Whigs in New York swung that decisive state in favor of Polk (see below).
Polk was receptive as long as Tyler could withdraw without raising suspicion of a secret bargain.[148] To solidify Tyler's cooperation, Polk enlisted Andrew Jackson to reassure Tyler that Texas annexation would be consummated under a Polk administration. On August 20, 1844, Tyler dropped out of the presidential race; Tylerites moved quickly to support the Democratic Party nominee.[149]
Democratic Party nominee James K. Polk was faced with the possibility that a Tyler ticket might shift votes away from the Democrats and provide Whig Henry Clay with the margin of victory in a close race. Tyler made clear in his convention acceptance speech that his overriding concern was the ratification of his Texas annexation treaty. Moreover, he hinted that he would drop out of the race when that end was assured, informing Polk, through Senator Robert J. Walker, that his campaign efforts were simply a vehicle to mobilize support for Texas annexation.[147] Tyler concentrated his resources in the states of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all highly contested states in the election. Securing enough Democratic support, his withdrawal might prove indispensable to Polk.
When the Senate closed session debates on the Tyler-Texas treaty were leaked to the public on April 27, 1844, Tyler's only hope of success in influencing passage of the his treaty was to intervene directly as candidate in the 1844 election as Kingmaker.[144] His "Democratic-Republican Party" – a recycling of Thomas Jefferson's party name[145] – held its convention on May 27, 1844 in Baltimore, Maryland, a short distance from the unfolding Democratic Party convention that would select James K. Polk as nominee. Tyler was nominated the same day without challenge, accepting the honor on May 30, 1844. He designated no vice-president as running mate.[146]
President John Tyler of Virginia[1]
Tyler and Calhoun, formerly staunch supporters of minority safeguards based on the supermajority requirements for national legislation, now altered their position to facilitate passage of the Tyler treaty.[141] Tyler's attempt to evade the Senate vote launched a spirited Congressional debate.[142]
Three days later, Tyler and his supporters in Congress began exploring means to bypass the supermajority requirement for Senate treaty approval. Substituting the constitutional protocols for admitting regions of the United States into the Union as states, Tyler proposed that alternative, yet constitutional, means be used to bring the Republic of Texas – a foreign country – into the Union.[140]
The Tyler-Texas annexation treaty, submitted to the Senate in April 1844, was defeated in the Whig controlled Senate, largely along partisan lines, 16 to 35 – a two-thirds majority against passage – on June 8, 1844.[137] Whigs voted 27-1 against the treaty: all northern Whig Senators voted nay, and fourteen of fifteen southern Whig Senators had joined them.[138] Democrats voted for the treaty 15-8, with a slight majority of Northern Democrats opposing. Southern Democrats affirmed the treaty 10-1, with only one slave state Senator, Thomas Hart Benton, voting against.[139]
In the South, Democrats played racist politics and smeared Clay as a dark skin lover -loving abolitionist, while in the North, they defamed him as a debauched, dueling, gambling, womanizing, irreligious hypocrite whose reversal on the bank issue proved he had no principles. They also pitched their nominees to particular local followings, having Polk hint preposterously, in a letter to a Philadelphian, that he favored "reasonable" tariff protection for domestic manufactures, while they attacked the pious humanitarian Frelinghuysen as an anti-Catholic bigot and crypto-nativist enemy of the separation of church and state. To ensure the success of their southern strategy, the Democrats also muffled John Tyler.[136]
Historian Sean Wilentz describes some the Democrat campaign tactics:
[135] The anti-annexationist
James K. Polk, a slaveholder, never enunciated a slavery expansionist position with respect to Texas annexation, as had John C. Calhoun and the southern extremists.[129] As a national imperialist, he exhibited an unwavering support for Manifest Destiny, perceived as a non-sectional devotion to expansionism, whether slave-soil Texas or free-soil Oregon Territory.[130] Polk's political reputation was expected to diffuse northern Democratic resentment towards the Slavepower, while delivering Texas to the Deep South. On May 29, 1844, Polk was confirmed unanimously on the ninth ballot as the Democratic Party presidential nominee.[131] Van Buren complied with his party's decision to unite under a pro-annexation candidate, and worked to win New York state for Polk.[132][133][134]
Despite Whig efforts to cast Polk as an unknown – "Who is James K. Polk" they asked rhetorically – he was respected as an effective political operator.[127] His sobriquet "The Young Hickory" contained a dual reference, one to his mentor Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson, and one to the term Young America, a reference to an international movements struggling to establish republican forms of government and the overthrow of monarchies and ascribed to Manifest Destiny Democrats.[128]
Southern Democrats benefited from the Tyler-Calhoun machinations in eliminating Martin Van Buren as a presidential candidate, and clearing the way for the pro-annexation nationalist Polk.[124] On the eighth ballot, Polk was offered to the convention as an acceptable alternative for all Democratic factions at odds over the Texas annexation crisis. Despite Polk's fervent advocacy for annexation, he had remained loyal to Van Buren throughout the Texas controversy, and anti-annexationist Van Burenites were willing to accept Polk, with reservations, having already recognized him as a suitable vice-presidential choice to have complimented a Van Buren ticket.[125][126]
Support for Van Buren dwindled in subsequent ballots from 146 to 99, at which point Van Burenites were reduced to blocking nominations of numerous candidates, among them James Buchanan, Lewis Cass of Michigan, John C. Calhoun and Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire.[119][120] Southern intransigence had succeeded in eliminating Van Buren and his principled stand on Texas annexation.[121] If the Democratic Party was to avoid dissolution at a national level, an acceptable nominee, fully committed to immediate annexation would be required, yet capable of unifying the party in the general election.[122][123]
In 1840, the Democratic Party Convention had adopted a simple majority principle for nominee selection. Northern Democrat Van Burenites arrived at the convention on May 27, 1844 with the expectation that, possessing a majority of the delegates, they would quickly secure the candidacy for their man.[115][116] Early in proceedings, Senator Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, in cooperation with Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, called for the reinstatement of the traditional 1832 and 1834 convention rule requiring a two-thirds majority for nomination (the rule would remain in place until it was revoked by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936).[117] Following a historical pattern in which a minority faction of Northern Democrats delivered votes to produce southern wing victories for pro-slavery legislation, the Van Burenite delegates split over the pivotal vote. Fully one-third of the pro-Van Buren delegates (52 of 154) voted to reinstate the two-thirds rule, along with 90 of 104 anti-Van Buren delegates, producing a final vote of 148 to 116.[118] Van Buren supporters persisted in spite of this setback, garnering 146 votes for their candidate on the first ballot, a 55% simple majority, but short of the now required 177 votes. Middle and Deep South pro-annexationists opposed Van Buren 75 to 3, depriving northern anti-annexationists the 31 votes needed for victory.
Former Governor James K. Polk of Tennessee
Former President Martin Van Buren of New York
Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan
Former Vice President Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky
Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania
Secretary of State John C. Calhoun of South Carolina
Democratic candidates
Texas was fracturing Van Buren's support among Democrats and would "derail" his bid for President of the United States[113][114]
The former military hero went further, urging all Jacksonian Democrats to block Martin Van Buren from the party ticket and seek a Democratic presidential candidate fully committed to the immediate annexation of Texas.[112] In doing so, Jackson abandoned the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian formula that had characterized his party since the 1820s which had required its Northern and Southern wings to compromise on constitutional slavery disputes.
Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, a political outsider like John Tyler, gained significant credibility when his former nemesis, ex-President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) publicly announced his support for immediate Texas annexation in May 1844.[109] "Old Hickory" had facilitated Tyler's Texas negotiations in February 1844 by reassuring President of the Texas Republic Sam Houston that the US Senate ratification of the Tyler treaty was likely.[110] As the Senate debated the Tyler treaty, Jackson declared that the popular support among Texans for annexation should be respected, and any delay would result in a British balkanized Texas Republic, promoting slave emancipation and posing a foreign military threat to the southwest United States.[111]
The extent to which Southern Democrat support for Martin Van Buren had eroded over Texas annexation crisis became evident when Van Buren's southern counterpart in the rise of the Democratic Party, Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer, terminated their 20-year political alliance in favor of immediate annexation.[107][108]
The Hammett Letter utterly failed to reassure Middle and Deep South extremists who had responded favorably to Calhoun's Pakenham Letter.[105][106] A minority phlanx of the southern Democrat leadership remained obdurate that Northern Democratic legislators would, when exposed to sufficient southern pressure, ignore their constituents opposition to slavery expansion and unite in support of Texas annexation.
With the publication of Clay's Raleigh Letter and Van Buren's Hammett Letter, Van Burenite Democrats hoped that their candidate's posture on Texas would leave southern pro-annexationists with exactly one choice for US president: Martin Van Buren. In this, they misapprehended the political situation.[103] Tyler and the southern pro-annexationists posed a potentially far greater threat then Clay, in that the Tyler-Calhoun treaty would put immense pressure on the northern Democrats to comply with southern Democrats demands for Texas.[104]
Van Buren realized that accommodating slavery expansionists in the South would open the Northern Democrats to withering charges of appeasement to the Slavepower from the strongly anti-annexation Northern Whigs and some Democrats.[94] He crafted an emphatically anti-Texas position that temporized with expansionist southern Democrats, laying out a highly conditional scenario that delayed Texas annexation indefinitely.[95][96] In the Hammett Letter, published April 27, 1844 (penned April 20),[97] he counseled his party to reject Texas under a Tyler administration. Furthermore, annexation of Texas as a territory would proceed, tentatively, under a Van Buren administration, only when the American public had been consulted on the matter and Mexico's cooperation had been pursued to avoid an unnecessary war.[98][99] A military option might be advanced if a groundswell of popular support arose for Texas, certified with a Congressional mandate.[100][101] In these respects, Martin Van Buren differed from Henry Clay, who would never tolerate annexation without Mexico's assent.[102]
Martin Van Buren, US President (1837-1841) and chief architect of the Jacksonian democracy[85][86] was presumptive Democratic presidential contender in the spring of 1844.[87][88] With Calhoun withdrawing his bid for the presidency in January 1844, the campaign was expected to focus on domestic issues. All this changed with the Tyler treaty.[89] Van Buren regarded the Tyler annexation measure as an attempt to sabotage his bid for the White House by exacerbating the already strained Democratic North-South alliance regarding slavery expansion.[90] Calhoun's Packenham Letter would serve to spur Democrats of the South to the task of forcing the Northern wing of the party to submit to Texas annexation,[91] despite the high risk of "aggressively injecting slavery into their political campaign over Texas."[92]
"The Whigs countered Democratic attacks by revving up the Log Cabin electioneering machinery and redeploying it on behalf of the man they now celebrated as 'Ol'Coon' Clay. They also attacked former House Speaker Polk as nobody who deep down was a dangerous Loco Foco radical...With greater success, the Whigs linked up with resurgent nativist anti-Catholic movement strongest in New York and Pennsylvannia, and planted stories that a president, Clay would tighten up immigration and naturalization laws. (Too late, Clay tried to distance himself from the nativists.)" "The Liberty Party added to the confusion...Clay became the object of nasty abolitionist attacks. One notorious handbill, widely reprinted, by an abolitionist minister Abel Brown, denounced Clay as a "Man Stealer, Slaveholder, and Murdurer," and accused him of "Selling Jesus Christ!" because he dealt in slaves. With the campaign to be decided at the electoral margins, Whig managers grew so concerned that, late in the campaign, they concocted a fraudulent letter that supposedly proved that James Birney was secretly working in league with the Democrats, and circulated it in New York and Ohio."[84]
Historian Sean Wilentz describes some the Whig campaign tactics:
Clay's central position, however, had not altered: no annexation without northern acquiescence. Clay's commitment brought Southern Whigs under extreme pressure in their home states and congressional districts, threatening to tarnish their "loyalty to slavery" credentials.[82][83]
On July 27, 1844, Henry Clay, in the midst of his campaign against James K. Polk, released a position statement, the so-called Alabama Letter. In it, he counseled his Whig constituency to regard Texas annexation and statehood as merely a short phase in the decline of slavery in the United States, rather than a long term advance for the Slavepower.[79] Clay qualified his stance on Texas annexation, declaring "no personal objection to the annexation" of the republic. He would move back to his original orientation in September 1844.[80] Northern Whigs expressed outrage at any détente with the Slavepower. Failing to evince single-mindedness, they accused him of eqivocating on Texas annexation.[81]
Whigs picked Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey – "the Christian Statesman" – as Clay's running mate. An advocate of colonization of emancipated slaves, he was acceptable to southern Whigs as an opponent of the abolitionists.[75] His pious reputation balanced Clay's image as a slave-holding, hard-drinking duelist.[76][77] Their party slogan was the bland "Hurray, Hurray, the Country's Risin' – Vote for Clay and Frelinghuysen!"[78]
The Whig party leadership was acutely aware that any proslavery legislation advanced by its southern wing would alienate its anti-slavery northern wing and cripple the party in the general election.[71] In order to preserve their party, Whigs would need to stand squarely against acquiring a new slave state. As such, Whigs were content to restrict their 1844 campaign platform to less divisive issues such as internal improvements and national finance.[72][73][74]
Two weeks before the Whig convention in Baltimore, in reaction to Calhoun's Packenham Letter, Clay issued a document known as the Raleigh Letter (issued April 17, 1844)[67] presenting his views on Texas to his fellow southern Whigs.[68] In it, he flatly denounced the Tyler annexation bill and predicted that its passage would provoke a war with Mexico, whose government had never recognized Texas independence.[69] Clay underlined his position, warning that even with Mexico's consent, he would block annexation in the event that substantial sectional opposition existed anywhere in the United States.[70]
Southern Whigs feared that, with the acquisition of Texas' fertile lands would produce a huge market for slave labor, inflating the price of slaves and deflating land values in their home states.[65] Northern Whigs feared that Texas statehood would initiate the opening of a vast "Empire for Slavery".[66]
Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, effectively the leader of the Whig Party since its inception in 1834[58] was selected as the Whig presidential nominee at the party's convention in Baltimore, Maryland on May 1, 1844.[59][60] Clay, a slaveholder, presided over a party in which its Southern wing was sufficiently committed to the national platform to put partisan loyalties above slavery expansionist proposals that might undermine its North-South alliance.[61][62] Whigs felt confident that Clay could duplicate Harrison's landslide victory of 1840 against any opposition candidate.[63][64]
Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky
Whig candidates
The 1844 presidential campaigns evolved within the context of this struggle over Texas annexation, explicitly tied to the question of slavery expansion and national security.[54][55] All candidates in 1844 presidential election had to declare a position on this explosive issue.[56][57]
Tyler submitted his Texas-US treaty for annexation to the US Senate, delivered April 22, 1844, where a two-thirds majority was required for ratification.[46][47] The newly appointed Secretary of State John C. Calhoun of South Carolina (assuming his post March 29, 1844)[48] included a document known as the Packenham Letter with the Tyler bill that was calculated to inject a sense of crisis in Southern Democrats of the Deep South.[49] In it, he characterized slavery as a social blessing and the acquisition of Texas as an emergency measure necessary to safeguard the "peculiar institution" in the United States.[50][51] In doing so, Tyler and Calhoun sought to unite the South in a crusade that would present the North with an ultimatum: support Texas annexation or lose the South.[52] Anti-slavery Whigs considered Texas annexation particularly egregious since Mexico had outlawed slavery in Coahuila y Tejas in 1829, before Texas independence had been declared. Historian William Lee Miller points out that "the significance of acquiring Texas – 'annexing' it now – became quite different after the Mexican government abolished slavery in 1829", after which "the expansionist impulse [included an] overt reference to slavery."[53]
Tyler became convinced that Great Britain had encouraged a Texas-Mexico rapprochement that might lead to slave emancipation in the Texas republic.[41][42] Accordingly, he directed Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur of Virginia to initiate, then relentlessly pursued, secret annexation talks[43][44] with Texas minister to the United States Isaac Van Zandt, beginning on October 16, 1843.[45]
The incumbent US President John Tyler of Virginia, formerly Vice-President, had ascended to the White House upon the death of William Henry Harrison in 1841. Tyler, a Whig in name only,[31] emerged as a states' rights advocate committed to slavery expansion in defiance to his party's principles.[32][33] Vetoing the Whig domestic legislative agenda, he was expelled from his own party on September 13, 1841.[34][35] Politically isolated but unencumbered by party restraints,[36] Tyler aligned himself with a small faction of Texas annexationists[37] in a bid for reelection in 1844.[38][39][40]
In 1836, a portion of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, declared its independence to form the Republic of Texas. Texans, mostly white immigrants from the Deep South, many of whom owned slaves, sought to bring their republic into the Union as a state. During the eight years since the Texas republic had declared its independence from Mexico, the subject of annexing Texas to the United States was shunned by both major American political parties.[25] Though recognizing Texas sovereignty, Presidents Andrew Jackson (1829 – 1837) and Martin Van Buren (1837 – 1841) would decline to pursue annexation.[26][27] The prospect of bringing another slave state into the Union was fraught with problems.[28] Both major parties – the Democrats and Whigs – viewed Texas statehood as "not worth a foreign war [with Mexico] or the "sectional combat" that annexation would provoke in the United States.[29][30]
[24][23] The question as to whether the institution of slavery and its aristocratic principles of social authority were compatible with democratic republicanism was becoming "a permanent issue in national politics".[22]
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