Turnout 69.6% 3.1 pp 27 4 50.8% 43.9% | 254 42 1,607,510 1,386,942 Start date November 2, 1852 | |
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Winner Franklin Pierce Other Instances United States presidenti, United States presidenti, United States presidenti, United States presidenti, United States presidenti | ||
The United States presidential election of 1852 was the seventeenth quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. It bore important similarities to the election of 1844. Once again, the incumbent president was a Whig who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of his war-hero predecessor. In this case, it was Millard Fillmore who followed General Zachary Taylor. The Whig party passed over the incumbent for nomination, casting aside Fillmore in favor of General Winfield Scott. The Democrats nominated a “dark horse” candidate, this time Franklin Pierce. The Whigs again campaigned on the obscurity of the Democratic candidate, and again, the strategy failed.
Contents
- Nominations
- Democratic Party nomination
- Whig Party nomination
- Free Soil Party nomination
- Union Party nomination
- Native American Know Nothing Party nomination
- Southern Rights Party nomination
- Liberty Party nomination
- Fall campaign
- Results
- Results by state
- References
Pierce and his running mate William R. King went on to win what was at the time one of the nation’s largest electoral victories, defeating Scott and his running mate, William Alexander Graham of North Carolina, 254 electoral votes to 42. In the aftermath of this overwhelming defeat the Whig Party rapidly collapsed as a national political force as internal tensions regarding the issue of slavery caused mass abandonment of the party, resulting in the party’s failure to nominate a candidate for President in 1856, making 1852 the last presidential election in which the Whig Party participated.
Pierce’s substantial margin of victory did not signal the dawn of a new era of political dominance for the Democrats. The Whigs were soon replaced as the Democratic Party’s primary opposition by the new Republican Party, which became the dominant force in American Presidential politics for decades to come after the late 1850s. No presidential candidate from the Democratic party would again win a majority in both the popular and electoral vote until 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Herbert Hoover. Pierce himself would prove to be a largely ineffectual President and was denied his own party’s nomination in 1856 in favor of James Buchanan (who would also serve just one term in office).
Nominations
The 1852 presidential election conventions of the parties are considered below in order of the party’s popular vote.
Democratic Party nomination
As Democrats convened in Baltimore in June 1852, four major candidates vied for the nomination: Lewis Cass of Michigan, the nominee in 1848, who had the backing of northerners in support of the Compromise of 1850; James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, popular in the South as well as in his home state; Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, candidate of the expansionists and the railroad interests; and William L. Marcy of New York, whose strength was centered in his home state. Throughout the balloting, numerous favorite son candidates received a few votes.
Cass led on the first nineteen ballots, with Buchanan second, and Douglas and Marcy exchanging third and fourth places. Buchanan took the lead on the 20th ballot and retained it on each of the next nine tallies. Douglas managed a narrow lead on the 30th and 31st ballots. Cass then recaptured first place through the 44th ballot. Marcy carried the next four ballots. Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a former Congressman and Senator, did not get on the board until the 35th ballot, when the Virginia delegation brought him forward as a compromise choice. He consolidated his support in subsequent voting and was nominated nearly unanimously on the 49th ballot.
In a peace gesture to the Buchanan wing of the party, Pierce’s supporters allowed Buchanan’s allies to fill the second position, knowing that they would select Alabama Senator William R. King. On the second ballot, with only minor opposition, King finally obtained the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. During the ensuing campaign, King’s tuberculosis, which he believed he had contracted while in Paris, France, denied him the active behind-the-scenes role that he might otherwise have played, although he worked hard to assure his region’s voters that New Hampshire’s Pierce was a “northern man with southern principles.” King died shortly after his inauguration on April 18, 1853.
Whig Party nomination
The 1852 Whig National Convention, held in Baltimore, Maryland, was bitterly divided. Supporters of President Fillmore pointed to the successful Compromise of 1850 and the failure of a nascent secession movement in the Southern states in 1850–1851. The northern Whigs believed that the Compromise of 1850 favored the slaveholding South over the North. Northern Whigs favored heroic Mexican-American War General Winfield Scott of New Jersey. Scott had earned the nickname of “Old Fuss and Feathers” in the military due to his insistence on appearance and discipline, and while respected, was also seen by the people as somewhat foppish. A deadlock occurred because most New England delegates supported Daniel Webster. On the first ballot, Fillmore received all delegate votes from the South save four, but only received eighteen northern delegate votes. The vote was 133 for Fillmore, 131 for Scott, and 29 for Webster. Scott was nominated on the 53rd ballot by a margin of 159–112 (with 21 for Webster), again with a highly sectional vote; Scott won the North by a 142–11 vote (with 21 for Webster) while Fillmore won the South by a margin of 101–17.
William Alexander Graham was chosen as the vice-presidential nominee. 1852 would be the last time the Whig Party would nominate a candidate for president. Within the decade, the party fell apart and ceased to exist, principally due to regional divisions caused by the slavery issue.
Free Soil Party nomination
The Free Soil Party was still the strongest third party in 1852. However, following the Compromise of 1850, most of the “Barnburners” who supported it in 1848 had returned to the Democratic Party while most of the Conscience Whigs rejoined the Whig Party. The second Free Soil National Convention assembled in the Masonic Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale was nominated for president with 192 delegate votes (sixteen votes were cast for a smattering of candidates). George Washington Julian of Indiana was nominated for vice-president over Samuel Lewis of Ohio and Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio.
Union Party nomination
The Union party was formed in 1851, an offshoot of the Whig party in several Southern states, including Georgia. As the 1852 presidential election approached, Union party leaders decided to wait and see who was nominated by the two major parties. The movement to nominate Daniel Webster as a third-party candidate began in earnest following the Whig Convention, largely driven by those who had been strenuously opposed to Winfield Scott’s nomination, among them Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and George Curtis. While Webster was against what he perceived as a “revolt” from the Whig Party and preferred not to be nominated, he let Americans vote for him should the party choose to nominate him.
The Union Party held its Georgia state convention on August 7, 1852 and nominated Webster for president and Charles J. Jenkins of Georgia for vice-president. A formal convention was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts on September 15, affirming the nominations made at the state convention in Georgia and rejecting Winfield Scott as nothing more than a military figure. The Webster/Jenkins ticket received nationwide support, particularly among Southern Whigs, but also in Massachusetts and New York, but it was largely perceived by many as nothing more than getting voters who would, in different circumstances, support Scott.
Webster had no real chance of winning the election, but even the new Know-Nothing party endorsed Webster, nominating him without even his own permission. However, Webster died nine days before the election of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 24, 1852.
Native American (Know-Nothing) Party nomination
Around the mid-1840s, nativists were present in New York politics, under the aegis of the American Republican Party. The American Republican party was formed in 1843 in major opposition to immigration and Catholicism. In 1845, the party changed its name to the Native American Party. Their opponents nicknamed them the “Know Nothings” and the party liked the name and it became the nickname of the party after that until it collapsed in 1860. In 1852, the original candidate planned by the Native American Party was Daniel Webster, the nominee of the Union party as well as Secretary of State. They nominated Webster without his permission, with George C. Washington (grandnephew of George Washington) as his running mate. Webster died of natural causes nine days before the election, and the Know Nothings quickly replaced Webster by nominating Jacob Broom as president and replaced Washington with Reynell Coates. With Webster collecting a few thousand votes, Broom received too few, and lost the election. In the future, former president Millard Fillmore would be their candidate in 1856.
Southern Rights Party nomination
The Southern Rights Party was an offshoot of the Democratic party in several Southern states which advocated secession from the Union, electing a number of Congressmen and holding referendums on secession in a number of southern states, none of which were successful.
It was unclear in early 1852 if the Party would contest the presidential election. When the Alabama state convention was held in early March, only nine counties were represented. The party decided to see who was nominated by the two major national parties and support one of them if possible. When Georgia held its state convention, it acted as the state Democratic Party and sent delegates to the national convention.
After the Democratic National Convention, the Party was not sure that it wanted to support Franklin Pierce, the Democratic nominee. Alabama held a state convention from July 13–15 and discussed at length the options of running a separate ticket or supporting Pierce. The convention was unable to arrive at a decision, deciding to appoint a committee to review the positions of Scott and Pierce with the option of calling a “national” convention if the two major party candidates appeared deficient. The committee took its time reviewing the positions of Pierce and Scott, finally deciding on August 25 to call a convention for a Southern Rights Party ticket.
The convention assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, with 62 delegates present, a committee to recommend a ticket being appointed while the delegates listened to speeches in the interim. The committee eventually recommended former Senator George Troup of Georgia for President, and former Governor John Quitman of Mississippi for Vice-President; they were unanimously nominated.
The two nominees accepted their nominations soon after the convention, which was held rather late in the season. Troup stated in a letter, dated September 27 and printed in the New York Times on October 16, that he had planned to vote for Pierce and had always wholeheartedly supported William R.D. King. He indicated in the letter that he preferred to decline the honor, as he was rather ill at the time and feared that he would die before the election. The Party’s executive committee edited the letter to excise those portions which indicated that Troup preferred to decline, a fact which was revealed after the election.
Liberty Party nomination
The Liberty Party had ceased to become a significant political force after most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848. Nonetheless, some of those who rejected the fusion strategy held a Liberty Party National Convention in Buffalo, New York. There were few delegates present, so a ticket was recommended and a later convention called. The Convention recommended Gerrit Smith of New York for president and Charles Durkee of Wisconsin for vice-president. A second convention was held in Syracuse, New York, in early September 1852, but it too failed to draw enough delegates to select a nominee. Yet a third convention gathered in Syracuse later that month and nominated William Goodell of New York for president and S.M. Bell of Virginia for vice-president.
Fall campaign
The Whigs’ platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates. The lack of clearcut issues between the two parties helped drive voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. The decline was further exacerbated by Scott’s antislavery reputation, which decimated the Southern Whig vote at the same time as the pro-slavery Whig platform undermined the Northern Whig vote. After the Compromise of 1850 was passed, many of the southern Whig Party members broke with the party’s key figure, Henry Clay.
Finally, Scott’s status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce was himself a Mexican-American War brigadier general.
Just nine days before the election, Union Party candidate Daniel Webster died, causing many Union state parties to remove their slates of electors. The Union ticket appeared on the ballot in Georgia and Massachusetts, however.
Results
When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won in a landslide; Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont, while the Free Soil vote collapsed to less than half of what Martin Van Buren had earned in the previous election, with the party taking no states. The fact that Daniel Webster received a substantial share of the vote in Georgia and Massachusetts, even though he was dead, shows how disenchanted voters were with the two main candidates.
As a result of the devastating defeat and the growing tensions within the party between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the Whig Party quickly fell apart after the 1852 election and ceased to exist. Some Southern Whigs would join the Democratic Party, and many Northern Whigs would help to form the new Republican Party in 1854.
Some Whigs in both sections would support the so-called “Know-Nothing” party in the 1856 presidential election. Similarly, the Free Soil Party rapidly fell away into obscurity after the election, and the remaining members mostly opted to join the former Northern Whigs in forming the Republican Party.
The Southern Rights Party effectively collapsed following the election, attaining only five percent of the vote in Alabama, and a few hundred in its nominee’s home state of Georgia. It would elect a number of Congressmen in 1853, but they would shortly after rejoin the Democratic Party upon taking their seats in Congress.
This was the last election in which the Democrats won Michigan until 1932, the last in which the Democrats won Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio or Rhode Island until 1912, the last in which the Democrats won Wisconsin until 1892, the last in which the Democrats won Connecticut until 1876 and the last in which the Democrats won New York until 1868. It was, however, the last election in which the Democrats’ chief opponent won Kentucky until 1896, and indeed the last until 1928 in which the Democrats’ opponent obtained an absolute majority in the Bluegrass State.
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. "1852 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved July 27, 2005.
Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.
Results by state
Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.