Hunkers, Barnburners, Free Soilers, and “Old Rough and Ready” all entered the American political lexicon in the Campaign of 1848, a campaign that for the most part carried forward those practices and strategies that had been shaping electoral politics since the mid-1820s and that had taken firm root in the Whig’s “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” campaign of 1840. By and large, the Campaign of 1848 does not exhibit any remarkable changes in the way campaigns were undertaken, but certain aspects of this campaign are noteworthy. Notably, the campaign season opened without the participation of the incumbent, President James K. Polk. Even before Polk won his party’s nomination in the summer of 1844, he had formally declared his intent not to seek a second term. But even though he was a one-term president from the very beginning, he was hardly a lame duck. During his presidency, the United States annexed Texas, and it fought and won a sixteen-month war with Mexico. The victory led to the still further expansion of American territory. It include a vast territory, larger than Texas itself, that included what would eventually become California, Nevada, Utah, most of present-day Arizona, western New Mexico, the westernmost region of Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming. With the inclusion of Texas (which at that time contained not only present-day Texas but also a large region of territory in New Mexico as well as a significant section of Colorado and smaller portions of Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas), the total territorial expansion under the Polk administration exceeds even the Louisiana Purchase acquired diplomatically by President Jefferson four decades earlier. Polk also managed to finally resolve the dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory without going to war, this action further solidifying American expansion in the West and defusing a potentially disastrous situation in the Northwest.
Polk also, in working with Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker (who happened to be his brother in-law), directed the passage of tariff legislation that at least temporarily reduced sectional tension over this ongoing domestic controversy (with the exception of slavery, the most volatile issue in the first half of the nation’s history was the lingering argument over tariffs). Significantly, the immediate effects of Polk’s tariff policy helped to improve relations with Great Britain, further alleviating the strain caused by the quarrel over Oregon. Additionally, the Independent Treasury Act, a legacy of the Van Buren administration, was resuscitated under Polk, offering a replacement to the national bank that President Jackson had assiduously worked to destroy. Under this legislation, the federal government could more effectively regulate certain elements in the economy (such as unbridled land speculation) without having to rely on the older Hamiltonian system that Democrats regarded as excessively centralizing and unduly beneficial to the interests of the wealthy. In a word, Polk’s administration was widely viewed as a grand success, and yet the opportunity to retain Polk in the White House for another term was denied by a promise made four years earlier. No doubt Polk, who was actually a fallback choice for the Democrats in 1844, exceeded all contemporary expectations, and historians today rank him high, often among the ten best presidents in American history. To have such an accomplished president refuse to run for reelection after one term was unprecedented at the time and remains unique in the history of American presidential politics. (Later, incumbent president Theodore Roosevelt also did not stand for reelection in spite of his huge popularity and outstanding record, but owing to the assassination of President William McKinley, he had served out more than one term; as President McKinley died early in his second term, Roosevelt sat for nearly two terms, thus drawing a distinction from Polk in this regard.)
Polk’s triumphs, however, were accompanied by grave problems, namely the further intensification of the most morally critical and dangerous issue in American politics: slavery. With the new territory that Polk secured for the growing nation, the issue over the future of slavery in these territories and in the republic as a whole was rekindled. Polk, himself a slave owner, opposed the Wilmot Proviso’s prohibition against the expansion of slavery into what was called the “Mexican Cession.” He desired to simply extend the Mason-Dixon Line dividing free states from slave states straight to the Pacific coast in the spirit of the Missouri Compromise, which meant the creation of an American Southwest that would likely resemble the Old South, fortifying slavery as a bicoastal, fully southern institution (what is now Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Southern California and the southern tip of Nevada would have joined Texas as those slave territories west of the Mississippi, and eventually states, under this arrangement). But impassioned elements in the North and South opposed such measures for predictable reasons. Polk’s approach to the slavery issue did absolutely nothing to ease growing sectional animosities—a case can be made that the very success of his administration added fuel to the flames—and on this point, the Polk administration may have squandered an opportunity.
Furthermore, while the controversy over Oregon seemed from the perspective of many of Polk’s contemporaries to have been reasonably solved, Northern Democrats felt that the added territory in the Pacific Northwest was not sufficient to counterbalance territorial expansion in the Southwest, with all the political, economic, and cultural implications therein. The Walker tariff, which was fairly popular (as the popularity of tariffs goes), did not fully appease industrialists in the Northeast. Hence Polk’s administration, while commonly regarded as highly successful, even commendable in light of some of its significant accomplishments, was not without its limitations, mistakes, oversights, and critics. But for the most part, his contemporaries saw Polk as an accomplished president, a welcome surprise given his dark-horse status in 1844, thus further strengthening the Democratic Party’s claims to an accomplished record of presidential governance, built on a legacy running from Old Hickory to Young Hickory through Old Kinderhook. That aside, history’s conclusions about the management of the slavery crisis under Polk are difficult to ignore in the overall assessment of his administration’s considerable achievements.
Without the incumbent Polk in the mix, the party turned to Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, an experienced politician who had served in both the legislative and executive branches in a number of capacities as well as having distinguished himself as a war hero who had fought at the Battle of the Thames in the War of 1812 alongside William Henry Harrison (who had been elected the ninth president) and Richard M. Johnson (who had been elected the ninth vice president under President Van Buren). Lewis had been a candidate in the conflicted nominating convention of 1844 that produced candidate Polk, and thus he entered the convention in May 1848 as the principal contender. There was some competition against Cass during the convention from James Buchanan of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire’s Levi Woodbury, two other holdovers from the 1844 contest; but unlike that convention, the eventual nominee, Cass, was more easily selected on the fourth ballot. Polk’s vice president, George M. Dallas, was also available, but from the beginning, support for him was thin at best and, by the third ballot, had completely evaporated. Cass held a commanding lead from the first ballot, whereas in the convention of 1844, by contrast, the early front-runner, Van Buren, was unable to match his first-ballot support, and his standing declined with each ballot. Once the convention had decided for Cass, another veteran of the War of 1812 as well as the recent war against Mexico, Kentucky’s William O. Butler was tapped for the bottom of the ticket, the delegates needing just two ballots in this instance.
Regarding the issue of slavery, Cass was an early proponent of what would come to be known as “popular sovereignty,” or “squatter’s sovereignty,” the position holding that the states and territories were themselves responsible for deciding whether or not to allow or prohibit slavery. This position would later come to be more widely associated with Stephen Douglas of Illinois, but it was actually Cass’s “Nicholson Letter,” addressed to Tennessee’s A. P. O. Nicholson and published in late 1847 in the Washington Union, that was likely the first formal affirmation of the doctrine, although Cass’s friend Senator Daniel S. Dickerson of New York has also been credited as having originated the concept. In any event, this very letter may have led to his front-runner status as the convention approached in the spring of the following year. In the late 1840s, the Democratic Party was still divided over slavery, a division that mostly followed sectional lines. The Cass-Dickerson (and eventually Douglas) solution of “squatter’s sovereignty,” which would give all the authority (and responsibility) for the slavery issue to the states, seemed to many the most practical compromise at the time, although this position would later be utterly and forthrightly refuted by Douglas’s great rival, Abraham Lincoln.
With the formal establishment of a new party, the Free Soil Party, the specter of slavery was brought into the foreground of presidential politics. Slavery had long divided both parties, and, as one would expect, generally but not necessarily along sectional lines. Outside the slaveholding states, the issue would divide the major parties in places like New York and New England. In the Democratic Party, an influential New York faction known as the Barnburners (who looked to former president and Bucktail Martin Van Buren for leadership) were open critics of slavery (and thus opponents of Cass’s nomination), and they had been less than enthusiastic about President Polk. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats in the Empire State, known as the Hunkers, sympathized with the South and thus tended to evade or even repress the debate over slavery. Suffering the same intraparty divisions, the Whigs split into “Conscience Whigs” (eventually known as “Wooly Heads”) who joined their Barnburner counterparts in criticizing slavery and “Cotton Whigs” who, as with the Hunkers, did their best to suppress interest in a slavery debate. These two Whig factions were primarily associated with New England. Charles Francis Adams (son and grandson of two presidents, John Quincy Adams and John Adams, respectively) and Charles Sumner numbered among the more prominent Conscience Whigs. Cotton Whigs, led by, among others, Edward Everett and Speaker of the House Robert C. Winthrop (both from Massachusetts), were sensitive to the reliance of the textile industry—which was located primarily in the Northeast—on the cotton plantations of the South. Thus, while Northern Cotton Whigs were not pro-slavery apologists of the variety found south of the Mason-Dixon Line, they were loath to make an issue of slavery and preferred to simply push it out of political discussion. Hence the antislavery Free Soilers attracted those supporters from both major parties who were disaffected from the mainstream over the inability or unwillingness to properly address slavery.
Along with the Liberty Party that had been established earlier, the Free Soil Party offered another alternative to those who sought either abolition—that is, those who gravitated to the Liberty Party—or at the very least the restriction of slavery to its current geographical range, which was explicitly the immediate goal of the Free Soilers. The Free Soil principle was encapsulated in the slogan “Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men,” and while not demanding immediate or even gradual emancipation in the South, they insisted upon prohibiting the expansion of slavery, a policy that for many would eventually lead to slavery’s gradual, peaceful extinction. The Free Soil Party was particularly important in Ohio, attracting Conscience Whigs who had been increasingly alienated by their party’s lack of coherent principle regarding the issue of slavery. Ohio Whigs worked to overturn laws discriminating against free blacks in Ohio and managed to secure the election of Free Soiler Salmon Chase to the Senate. The Liberty Party was still active but had weakened considerably; hence the growing influence of the Free Soil Party gave antislavery voters some hope.
Among the complaints lodged by Ohio Free Soilers against the Whigs was their distaste over the Whig presidential candidate, General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, during the campaign of 1848. As a result of his military exploits in the recent Mexican-American War, General Taylor enjoyed a level of popularity unseen since Andrew Jackson. Nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready” owing to his reputation for living under the same hard conditions that were experienced by his troops, Taylor first came to the public’s attention for his meritorious record in the War of 1812 and then later as a renowned “Indian fighter,” one who was known for not simply protecting settlers from hostile Native Americans but also for protecting the Native Americans from land-hungry settlers. But his real fame was created by his achievements on the battlefield during the Mexican-American War, particularly at the Battle of Buena Vista, where his contingent of approximately 4,800 Americans triumphed over General Santa Ana’s much larger force of 22,000. Taylor’s refusal to surrender to a superior force, combined with his own battlefield daring—exhibited in personally leading a charge on the enemy position that turned the battle in favor of the Americans—won for him the adulation of the American people. The triumph of Buena Vista was all the more remarkable in the wake of President Polk’s wrath dealt against him in response to General Taylor negotiating, on his own authority, an eight-week armistice with Mexican forces at the resolution of the Battle of Monterey. As punishment, Polk reassigned all but five hundred of the professional soldiers under Taylor’s command, leaving but a thin remnant to strengthen the now mostly volunteer force that he led into battle against Santa Ana at Buena Vista.
Buena Vista, Monterey, and another remarkable victory at Palo Alto fueled Taylor’s legend; thus even as the war was under way, and much to Polk’s growing disquiet back in Washington, Taylor’s name was increasingly mentioned as a possible candidate for the White House. Hence this nonpolitical, lifelong soldier was suddenly in a position quite contrary to his habits, proclivities, and ambitions. Prior to the war against Mexico, he had never expressed any interest in politics, never affiliated himself with any party, and never held any political office of any kind at any level. Now he suddenly discovered that, based on his martial exploits alone, he was thrust onto the national political stage. He was a thoroughly apolitical figure; it is even said of him that at the time he ran for president, he had never voted in any election over the course of his life. He was intelligent but poorly educated, possessing enough charisma to lead men against long odds into deadly battle and yet incongruously cutting an unimposing, undistinguished figure under ordinary circumstances. In an age of eminent orators (e.g., Webster, Hayne, Clay, Everett, Calhoun, and Benton, among others), Taylor was an underwhelming public speaker. Yet he was a natural leader in spite of first impressions, and his military victories won for him the bona fide credentials of war hero. Many saw in Taylor the same qualities that were so appealing in Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison, a political type that seemed right for the moment animated by the enthusiasms of a war recently won.
Taylor fielded suggestions that he run for the White House with reticence. He was quick to admit that retirement was more appealing to him than presidential politics, and he mused that he would not refuse the office if the “good people were imprudent enough” to vote him into that position. Hardly an eager candidate, he waited for others to draft him into service rather than engage in typical campaigning. Whether this was a feature of his personality or coyly strategic is uncertain, but either way, it was clear that he had a loyal following. His lack of any real political allegiance proved to be an advantage; for two years prior to the campaign season of 1848, Whigs, Democrats, and Nativists at the local level forwarded to him their nominations for the presidency, which he willingly accepted without explicitly declaring his loyalty to any political party.
His ambiguous political principles aside, by the time of the opening of the Whig convention in Philadelphia, June 1948, Taylor was the party’s front-runner, and he was well positioned for the nomination. Henry Clay, the Whig elder statesman from Kentucky and nominee in the previous election, was still very much a presence in the party and a main contender, even though his support had waned somewhat in the intervening years since the last campaign. As early as 1840, Clay was hampered by a record of defeat, at least at the presidential campaign level, losing in the famous four-way race against John Quincy Adams in 1824 and then being soundly trounced by Jackson in 1832. In spite of this, he won nomination from the Whigs in 1844, only to lose again to the dark horse Polk. Thus, even though Clay was the Whig Party’s preeminent leader, he could not instill confidence among the delegates at Philadelphia. Another venerated Whig, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, enjoyed some small allegiance in the party, particularly in the Northeast; but his opposition to the annexation of Texas and the war against Mexico diminished his chances. Another hero of the recent war, General Winfield Scott, who led the invasion force that eventually captured Mexico City, was also noticed as an alternative; but his public image—he was saddled with the unflattering nickname of “Old Fuss and Feathers”—was, to say the least, less compelling than “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor. As with the Democrats, four ballots were needed to settle the issue, and Taylor led from the outset.
Taylor’s nomination, though fairly easy, was not without some controversy given that he owned over a hundred slaves. Northern Whigs in particular, who were naturally more inclined to support Clay or Webster, bristled at the sudden ascent of the slave-owning Taylor; but they conceded his national appeal given his war record and the association of his name with westward expansion. To allay this initial distaste for Taylor’s slave-owning, the convention, embracing the commonly used North-South strategy, sought with even greater urgency to nominate a Northern candidate for the vice presidency. Abbott Lawrence, a longtime Clay supporter and former congressman from Massachusetts, and Millard Fillmore, state comptroller of New York, were the favorites, with Fillmore managing the nomination on the second ballot. Fillmore, long a Clay loyalist, was seen as an olive branch to the disappointed and long-frustrated Clay faction. On principle, Fillmore detested slavery and, through at least his early political career, was on record as favoring abolition. With the promise of higher office before him, however, he softened his tone and now even supported its continued existence in the South and possible expansion into the West. In an 1850 correspondence with Daniel Webster, two years after his nomination for vice president, Fillmore wrote, “God knows I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.”
Between Fillmore and Taylor, the latter owning slaves in three states and who, quite typically, did not directly express any opinion regarding the expansion or containment of slavery as an issue, the Whig Party managed to strike a precarious balance between Northern and Southern Whigs. However, it should also be noted that Taylor did hint, somewhat unexpectedly, that he would not veto the Wilmot Proviso, an admission that raised some concern among Southern Whigs. If one looked closely enough, it could be observed that Taylor quietly favored the policy of limiting slavery to those states that presently allowed slavery. He saw no reason to institute slavery in areas where sugar and cotton were not major crops. Taylor’s official views on slavery were thus somewhat obscured, but not entirely. Yet during the campaign, most Southerners believed that Taylor fully supported, as it would seem that any slave owner naturally would, the expansion of slavery into the new western territories. The Whig Party as a whole, on the other hand, evasively remained opaque on the controversy, deciding not to issue any official position on slavery.
In 1848, in the wake of the Mexican Cession, the conflict over slavery became larger and more intense than either major party could manage, and thus serious fissures opened in both parties along sectional lines. Consequently, more voters turned to Free Soil, which had become a haven for New York Barnburners, New England abolitionists, and disenchanted Conscience Whigs, and others who were dissatisfied with the fresh opportunities for expansion now enjoyed by the proponents of slavery owing to the addition of the new western territories. Significantly, and to the astonishment of some, the Free Soil Party that very August nominated former president and erstwhile Democrat Martin Van Buren as its candidate for president, with Charles Francis Adams, a leading Conscience Whig, tapped for the vice presidency. Van Buren and Adams were an unlikely pairing: Van Buren ran for the position of Andrew Jackson’s vice president on the 1828 ticket that trounced the incumbent president, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams’s father. Van Buren was a major mover and shaker in Democratic politics, at first for the state of New York during his years as a Bucktail and then as leader of the Albany Regency machine, and then later on the national stage. Adams was a lifelong abolitionist and occasional outsider who had previously been critical of Van Buren’s reticence to address the Peculiar Institution. But Adams had also enjoyed some political success at the state level, and he brought with him to the ticket an impressive mind and one of the more distinguished American political lineages.
Like so many politicians at the time, Van Buren’s views of slavery were complicated and prone to change. It was clear that, as with Fillmore, he considered slavery immoral. But when he was president, he did not challenge the institution, and like others, he preferred to leave the issue to be resolved by the states. Yet with the addition of expansive territories in the West, the issue was transformed, often pushing politicians more unequivocally to one side or the other. Van Buren seems to have been pushed toward a more forthright antislavery position after the events of the mid-1840s, and he joined the Barnburners in abandoning the Democrats for Free Soil. It should be noted that not a few historians question Van Buren’s sincerity. Given his reputation for political maneuvering, assumptions are made, rightly or wrongly, about Van Buren’s willingness to take positions that open opportunities. Others suspect Van Buren of even darker motives, such as a desire to exact revenge on the Democratic leadership that had rejected him in 1844 in favor of the lesser-known Polk, as well as retaliation against allies of Polk for undercutting the New York gubernatorial reelection of his friend Silas Wright. While it is difficult if not impossible to confidently plumb a person’s interior motivations, these somewhat judgmental interpretations of Van Buren’s political moves seem flawed. Given his political savvy, it is unlikely that he would risk his best chance at regaining the White House—that is, his leadership in the Democratic Party, which was in a position of strength due to Polk’s success and wherein he still held some influence—without good reason, and a principled stand against slavery can be counted as one of them. The second interpretation of Van Buren’s motives, revenge, while appealing to some, seems even less likely, as such a clumsy effort would have been incongruent with his shrewd command of political tactics. Only if his reputation as a magician in the public arena was undeserved would either of these explanations make sense, and it is unlikely that his contemporaries would be so wrong in their assessment of him. Ultimately, Van Buren’s defection to the Free Soil Party is just as likely to be based on principle as it is to be evidence of cunning, and perhaps even more likely. At any rate, the election campaign was to assume a new shape with the entrance of a third-party candidate who brought considerable political loyalty, clout, experience, and expertise to the contest.
However, by today’s standards the campaign was low-key, and even compared to the previous campaigns, it was somewhat mild. None of the candidates toured the country in the fashion of politicians at the national level today. The balance of the campaigning was handled by local surrogates, all loosely organized by the national party. Rallies for candidates were usually led by local and regional politicians of note. For the Whigs, William Seward of New York and Thomas Corwin were prominent campaigners on behalf of General Taylor in the North, with John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Alexander H. Stephens as major figures working the South (Crittenden and Stephens were known in Whig circles as the “Young Indians”). For Cass, Democrats fielded the likes of Douglas of Illinois, William Allen of Ohio, and from the newly added state of Texas, Sam Houston. Van Buren’s son John (nicknamed “Prince John” for the sole reason of having once danced with Queen Victoria) was active on the campaign trail, particularly in the North and Midwest. Ohio was particularly important, as it was decided by fewer than six thousand votes, with eight thousand going to the Liberty Party. Hence the campaign surrogates were commonly found stumping hard in the Buckeye State. With growing sympathy for Free Soil principles in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, which had gone for Polk in 1844, was also seen as in play. But not only the slavery issue was on the minds of Pennsylvania voters; tariffs were also still a deep concern, and the industrial and mining strongholds of the Northeast, and especially Pennsylvania, were drawn to the Whigs in spite of doubts (real or imagined) about Taylor over slavery. In 1848, concerns over the effect of tariff policy over mining and manufacturing were strong enough to eclipse slavery in some corners such as Pittsburgh, and figures such as Thaddeus Stevens, who later would become an abolitionist firebrand, backed Taylor and the Whigs to protect their region’s economic interests. New Orleans, for another example, was singular among southern cities in favoring protective tariffs and thus was given further cause to back Taylor. In Illinois and Indiana, Whig projects directed at internal improvements, such as excavating canals, had resulted in unexpectedly high costs, thus throwing state finances into debt. In response, the Democrats grew in strength in these midwestern states out of economic dissatisfaction, while the Whigs struggled there for viability. Slavery was without doubt the elephant in the room, but numerous other large creatures also noticeably cluttered the policy arena.
Throughout the campaign, the numerous surrogates effectively spoke to the qualifications of the candidates they championed, the actual issues often being pushed to the background. In some cases, the success of the candidate relied heavily on the kind of connections he had in a particular part of any given state. It is not that the issues disappeared—slavery was certainly foremost in everyone’s mind, whether they admitted it or not—but rather that, in the case of Taylor, whose positions were unformed or unclear, character was uppermost in the minds of the voters. Examples of this include, in the case of Cass, his record of public service (both military and political), and for Van Buren, his familiarity as a former president. Taylor in particular went about his affairs as if there were hardly a campaign under way at all, casually attending the occasional ceremony as a featured speaker but scarcely even mentioning the race for the presidency. In spite of Taylor’s relaxed, almost nonchalant approach and the comparatively calmer atmosphere when compared to more heated battles such as those that had occurred in 1828 and 1840 (and even 1844), the campaign was not without its more dramatic moments. For example, Alexander Stephens, campaigning for Taylor in Georgia, was wounded by a knife-wielding Democrat. Allegations of financial misconduct were aimed at Taylor, who managed to brush them off with his dignity intact. The campaign was riddled with intraparty squabbles in various localities (usually dissatisfied with the candidate or disaffected because of positions, or lack thereof, regarding slavery), and anti-immigrant/anti-Catholic nativism, which had plagued the Campaign of 1844, surfaced in Pennsylvania.
When the votes were cast, Taylor won just under 1,400,000 popular votes or approximately 48.3 percent, which gave him 163 electoral votes, or 56 percent of the Electoral College total, thereby winning for him the presidency. Cass won just over 1,220,000 votes, taking 127 in the Electoral College. (South Carolina, alone among all the states, appointed its electors through the state legislature.) Van Buren’s Free Soil effort managed slightly over 291,000 votes, a full 10 percent of the electorate (quite high for a third-party candidate), but it won him no votes from the Electoral College. In his home state of New York, Van Buren did out-poll Cass (surpassing him by over 6,000 votes) as well as in both Massachusetts (beating Cass by a margin of almost 3,000 votes) and Vermont. He polled over 35,000 votes in Ohio, a state that Cass won by 16,000 votes, thus inadvertently helping the Democrats avoid another close call there. Without modern tracking techniques, it is hard to draw firm conclusions, but a third party gaining a percentage of the popular vote reaching into double digits, however so slightly, is usually a significant factor in any presidential campaign.
Taylor won the election despite personally investing little effort. And yet it was clear to anyone that governing the nation burdened by the slavery crisis would take a monumental effort if any peaceful, just, and enduring resolution was to be found and applied. Taylor’s administration was never fully tested in this regard, as the president passed away just sixteen months into his term. As it turned out, the only two Whigs ever to be elected to the presidency, Taylor and William Henry Harrison, died in office. With the death of Taylor, Millard Fillmore, born into a poor family at the turn of the century, was to become the thirteenth president, only to find himself fully immersed in those crises over the country’s principles and purposes that would continue to deepen cross-sectional mistrust and domestic animosities. And it would only continue to get worse.
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