8
The Election of 1848
The exact point at which Zachary Taylor made a final decision to run for the office of president of the United States is a matter of conjecture. The decision was a big one, for in so doing he was laying his reputation on the line to enter a field in which he was a newcomer. A general knows the men he is working with, some of them very well and a few of them intimately. But when he enters the political arena, he is likely to know few of his future associates, even fewer of them intimately.
There have been, of course, some military men whose egos were such that they contemplated running for the presidency even before achieving the victories that made a political career realistic. Douglas MacArthur and Winfield Scott come to mind in that category. 1 But it is also noteworthy that neither of these men attained his goal, although Scott was nominated by the Whigs in 1852, only to be trounced in the general election.
Though Taylor held strong resentments against both Polk and Scott, his animosity did not at first mean that he was developing any political ambitions. In a letter written in late January 1847, he expressed concern only for his own military reputation and the campaign ahead. The letter denied any political aspirations and gives every impression of being sincere. Later, just before the Battle of Buena Vista, he wrote,

On the subject of the Presidency, I am free to say, under no circumstances have I any aspirations for the office nor do I have the vanity to consider myself qualified for the station … . 2

Taylor had every reason to be reticent about politics. Generals, even those uniformly successful up to the moment, do not dare think of anything, including politics, until they are sure that they have won their last battle. In addition, Taylor’s letters were written before the aura of the victory at Buena Vista transformed a military hero into a political contender.



Kentucky senator John Crittenden was the man with whom Taylor did most of his corresponding. He was one of the most colorful and influential politicians of the mid-nineteenth century. Born in 1787, he was almost Taylor’s age and, like Taylor, served in the War of 1812 as a major. Except when in Washington, Crittenden lived all his life in Frankfort, Kentucky. In the Senate, he was courted by politicians of all stripes, but especially by the Whigs. In person he was of moderate height, slight of build, with a full head of gray hair and a facial expression which in repose seemed dour, beclouding the genial nature that lay underneath.
Crittenden first entered the Senate in 1819, at age thirty-two, but he stayed only a short time. He could not, he claimed, afford to raise his large family on a senator’s pay, and he immediately resigned. He spent the next sixteen years in Frankfort practicing law and serving in local positions. Then, having amassed enough of an estate to be able to survive on a paltry governmental salary, he returned to the Senate in 1835 and remained there until 1848, when he was drafted by the Whigs to run for governor of Kentucky. He was engaged in that campaign at the same time that Taylor was running for president.
Crittenden was always regarded as a kingmaker. A whiskey-drinking, gambling man, he was also a shrewd politician. His reputation for discretion and loyalty won him many friends, who knew that they could express themselves freely to him without fear of his violating their confidences. He put that reputation to good avail politically, because as the staunchest of Whigs he was able to form political judgments based on an intimate knowledge of the political participants.
Crittenden was also a realist, keenly aware that the Whigs had always been a minority party. He regarded their dismal electoral record with a cold eye. As of 1848, he was aware, the party had won only one presidential election since its founding in 1834 as a protest against the policies of Andrew Jackson. And in that single victory, which had come in 1840, their candidate, Senator William Henry Harrison, had marched under the banner of his questionable military victory at Tippecanoe nearly thirty years earlier. In planning for 1848, therefore, Crittenden forsook the man he had consistently supported, his fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay. He began looking at both Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor as possible candidates from the moment the Mexican War erupted in early 1846.
Both Scott and Taylor had responded with enthusiasm to the proffered friendship of the Kentucky senator. Both developed the habit of baring their feelings to him by letter, nearly always at least including some protests against real or supposed slights at the hands of the Democratic administration of James Polk. Scott wrote far more often than Taylor, and sometimes his missives were so full of self-pity that Crittenden must have found him a bore.
In early 1846, however, Crittenden’s problem of choosing between the two military heroes appeared to be solved. Scott’s worst enemy had always been his pen, and once war had broken out, he sought to replace Taylor in the field by writing letters, not only to Crittenden but also to Secretary of War William Marcy, who was no friend. Marcy happily aired a couple of his letters, and the public found Scott’s self-pitying tone a subject for ridicule. For the time being, Scott’s political prospects appeared dead. Crittenden thus became Taylor’s supporter, even in the days before Taylor developed any desire for that support.



Political chaos is not uncommon in a free society, and the year 1848 was more chaotic than most because of the virulence of the growing disagreement over the prospect of the expansion of slavery into the territories gained by force from Mexico and by negotiation with Britain. For years, ever since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the issue of slavery had lain relatively quiet on the national scene, though always bubbling beneath the surface on the local level. By 1848 Texas’s annexation to the Union had threatened to upset the balance between slave and free states, especially in the United States Senate. But the controversy extended far beyond Texas alone. The question of the disposition of the new territories of California, New Mexico, and Utah was equally important. Should they come into the Union as slave or free if and when admitted?
The two major political parties had avoided taking sides on the issue. In general, northern Democrats were less hostile to slavery than northern Whigs. In the border South, where the Whigs were strong, they tended to be less supportive of slavery than Democrats. The same attitude, though more pronounced, prevailed in the Deep South.
As a result of these shades of intensity, the voting in the 1844 presidential election had been checkered. States in the North could go Democratic and southern states could go Whig. For example, Andrew Jackson’s Democratic stronghold Tennessee had gone Whig, even though the Democratic nominee, James K. Polk, was from Tennessee. But in 1848, both parties, or portions thereof, saw a military hero as a potential winner. The situation even before Monterrey has been described thus by Taylor’s biographer Holman Hamilton.

Taylor’s admirers in 1846 and 1847 were an odd assortment of political allies. Whigs predominated on his bandwagon, but almost every party was represented. There were Northern Whigs like Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrats like Jefferson Davis, Southern Whigs like Alexander H. Stephens, Northern Democrats like Simon Cameron, and Native Americans like Lewis C. Levin … . Spoils-hungry Whigs, looking for a winner; dissonant Democrats on the outs with Polk; Calhounites, looking for a Southerner in the White House—all eyed Zachary Taylor with interest.3

There were numerous other potential candidates, of course, but only three were to be taken seriously. One was Henry Clay, who still, despite his advanced age of seventy-one and the fact that he had been defeated in presidential bids three times, still seemed to harbor some hope.4 That ambition caused Crittenden some embarrassment when he felt obliged to tell Clay of his own transfer of support to Taylor.
The second candidate was Winfield Scott, general-in-chief of the army. Scott’s victories in Mexico had by now erased his earlier follies in the public mind, but President Polk scuttled his ambitions by ordering him to face a court of inquiry as to the conduct of the recent campaign in Mexico. Though the court totally approved of Scott’s handling of the war, the proceeding had taken so much time that Scott was seriously handicapped in organizing for a presidential race. Besides, Taylor was a more appealing candidate. Better to carry a nickname of “Old Rough and Ready” than “Old Fuss and Feathers.”
Not all Whigs were favorable to Taylor, of course. Many Northern antislavery men could not abide the thought of a slaveholder in the White House. Foremost among them was Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune. These militants, however, were shouted down by the bulk of the northern Whigs, who, while averse to slavery, were more realistic. These men saw in Taylor a moderate—a moderate who could be elected.
The most prominent of these Taylor supporters was Thurlow Weed, the undisputed Whig boss of New York State. Weed was second only to Crittenden as a Taylor asset, except for one thing: he was fickle. He occasionally leaned toward Senator John M. Clayton of Delaware, a man ten years younger than Taylor and a brilliant orator. Another possible candidate was Crittenden himself, though the senator immediately turned the prospect down. Crittenden was doubtless sincere in his refusal, but Clayton was questionable. His disadvantage was that he came from a small state. It is possible that his greatest significance in the election of 1848 lay in tempting the roving eye of Thurlow Weed.



For eight months following the Battle of Buena Vista, Taylor remained at Monterrey, where his presence with the Army of Occupation was important. We know today that Santa Anna’s defeat at Buena Vista put a permanent end to any further plans to move north by the overland route, but the Mexican president did not say so in public. The possibility of another overland invasion from central Mexico was not to be discounted. By November 1847, however, after Scott had occupied Mexico City for two months, Taylor felt free to return home.
During that period Taylor’s political support waned for a while. A contributing factor to the cooling off was the series of headlines reporting Scott’s victories in his drive from Veracruz inland to Mexico City. For sheer military brilliance, it must be admitted, Scott’s victories at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Mexico City far overshadowed those of Taylor.
A more important threat to Taylor’s presidential prospects, however, was the attitude of Taylor himself. With time on his hands in Monterrey, he amused himself by writing to friends, and his letters did nothing to further his cause. Besides his constant railings against the Polk administration (which probably did him no harm politically), he constantly disavowed any interest in running for president. He would cheerfully support Henry Clay if Clay decided to run again, he insisted, though notably he usually added a caveat: that he would do so only if Clay were electable. At the same time, Taylor consistently refused to identify himself as a Whig.
Taylor’s reluctance to commit himself is understandable. It is only natural for a military man to think of the electorate as he did of his soldiers, people who deserve equal consideration regardless of the political party they belong to. And Taylor had not, after all, worked up to his position of prominence through the ranks of the Whigs. But the effect of his frank and open views, spread through his correspondence, was to discourage those who did not know him. Partisan Whigs demanded assurance that, if elected, Taylor would follow the principles of the party. As William Seward of New York remarked to Thurlow Weed, what Taylor was writing from Monterrey would have ruined any other candidate.5



When Taylor returned home, he learned firsthand what a national idol he had become. His world had completely changed. As described by Holman Hamilton,

The soldier, who had won few honors in four decades on active duty, became the recipient of honors galore. Medals of bronze, silver and gold—swords, scabbards, sashes, medallions—were showered on him by grateful compatriots. Popular songs were dedicated to him. Girls strewed flowers in his path. Even more than his victories, the unassuming manner of Zachary Taylor endeared him to American civilians, while enshrining him in his comrades’ hearts. And suddenly the warrior who never voted became the masses’ favorite candidate for the highest office in the land.6

Taylor did not pause long in New Orleans to savor his newfound fame. He proceeded immediately to his plantation at Cypress Grove, near Baton Rouge. Here he could rest, enjoy reunions with his family, and inspect the various plantations he owned. It was a happy time because the overseers who ran his various properties had done well. His wife, Margaret, having been abandoned for so long, was grateful to have him back. She was, however, likely to be something of a burden politically. She devoutly desired domestic peace and quiet and constantly prayed that someone else, not Zack, would be nominated for the presidency. Meanwhile, Taylor continued to write letters refusing to identify himself as a Whig. As a result, the doubts haunting Thurlow Weed and others were becoming acute. The concern was shared by Taylor’s entourage at Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The situation could not go on without something being done.
On April 22, 1848, a boat sailed up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and docked at Cypress Grove. It carried Taylor’s aide Colonel William W. S. Bliss, who, though a regular army officer, had become a full-scale participant in Taylor’s political life. Bliss had been in New York conferring with Weed. The word he brought was urgent: Taylor must declare himself a Whig.
By coincidence, the boat that brought Bliss to the landing below Taylor’s home was also scheduled to take aboard three gentlemen who had been visiting Taylor. On meeting them on the dock, Bliss learned that the trio, Crittenden’s southern lieutenants, had already accomplished what he had come to do; they had induced Taylor to declare himself a Whig.
Logan Hunton, James Love, and Bailey Peyton had not found Old Rough and Ready easy to deal with. Fortunately, they were persistent. They had decided on visiting Taylor some three days earlier while conferring in a New Orleans hotel. With the concurrence of other Taylor supporters, they had decided that a trip to Baton Rouge was necessary. Love, Hunton, and Peyton, accordingly, decided to go. Hunton, the driving spirit, drew up a draft of the letter they hoped Taylor would sign. The others approved the draft.
The three had arrived at Baton Rouge on Friday morning, April 21. Taylor personally met them at the dock, took them to his plantation, and showed them to their quarters. After dinner, Hunton read his draft letter, and Taylor made periodic comments—which Love dutifully jotted down. After dinner Love and Taylor met, and Love assured his host that all he had to do was sign a letter based on the remarks he had made while Hunton had been reading his own draft. Taylor reluctantly agreed to sign a letter including what he had said that evening but no more.
That was enough. Love and Hunton retired to their rooms, and Hunton worked late into the night composing a letter based on Taylor’s remarks. Taylor approved the message at breakfast the next morning. The visitors then pushed their luck; they insisted that Taylor copy the letter in his own handwriting. He addressed the letter to Captain J. S. Allison of New Orleans, a close friend and the widower of Taylor’s late sister. Allison had little interest in the letter’s contents, but he was a convenient addressee. The letter was described as short, but only by the standards of the day; it went on for pages and pages. But Taylor was accustomed to writing long letters; he had been doing so for months, and he acceded. Its critical paragraphs were just what his visitors wanted.

I reiterate what I have often said … I am a Whig but not an ultra Whig. If elected I would not be the mere president of a party—I would endeavor to act independent of party domination and should feel bound to administer the Government untrammelled by party schemes.
Second—the veto power—the power given by the Constitution to the Executive to exercise his veto is a high conservative power; but in my opinion it should never be exercised except in cases of clear violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste or want of due consideration by the Congress—Indeed I have thought for many years past, that known opinions and wishes of the Executive have exercised undue and injurious influence upon the Legislative Department of the government and from this cause I have thought that our system was in danger of undergoing a great change from its true theory.

Hunton and Love were totally satisfied. They took Taylor’s letter with them and, as mentioned, showed it to Bliss when they met him on the dock. Weed, Crittenden, and other Taylor supporters now had a concrete commitment with which they could work. The Whig nomination, they believed, was ensured.7
The First Allison Letter, as it came to be called, actually had less effect on Taylor’s situation than might have been imagined. Certainly it had no effect on his determination to be his own man in the White House, and no great immediate swing in public opinion seemed to result from it. As the Whig convention neared, however, he was definitely the front-runner.
Taylor had protested against holding a Whig convention, even though national party conventions had become the norm from 1832 on. Holding such a spectacle would, in his opinion, emphasize his Whiggery, something he desired to avoid in order to maintain his broader appeal among voters of all party persuasions. Like Crittenden, he was well aware that the Whigs were still much in the minority.
Taylor’s wishes regarding a convention were not, however, to be respected. He may have been the leading candidate for president, but he exercised no control over the Whig party machinery. Accordingly, the Whig delegates descended on Philadelphia in early June 1848 and opened their proceedings in the Chinese Museum on Ninth Street. Taylor, as was considered proper, remained at Cypress Grove, completely out of touch with what was going on.
John Crittenden proved his loyalty. Though running for governor of Kentucky, he took the time to act as Taylor’s floor manager. Always sensitive to the feelings of those Whigs who were hostile to his candidate and hoping to attract independent voters, Crittenden avoided high-handed action to keep the goodwill of those states that had sent favorite sons, for example. So, even though he believed Taylor could be nominated on the first ballot, he let things ride, always confident of the ultimate outcome.
The convention got off with an unruly start, due to inadequate security measures to keep boisterous political enemies out of the hall. And then a Scott delegate got up and introduced a rule demanding that the nominee must agree to follow the decisions of the convention and to promote the Whig Party. The chairman, John M. Morehead of North Carolina, overruled the proposal as out of order. Then the names of the various nominees were introduced—Clay, Scott, Webster, Clayton, and Taylor.
On the first ballot, Taylor received a plurality but far from a majority: Taylor 111; Clay 98; Scott 43; and Webster 22. On the second ballot, Taylor picked up 7 delegates; Clay slipped to 86; Scott rose to 49; and Webster fell to 12. The trend continued until the fourth ballot on which Taylor garnered 171 votes; Scott 60; Clay 35; and Webster 17. Taylor now had a majority and became the party nominee.8
But not universally approved. Some of the northern delegates refused to join in the customary ritual of casting one extra ballot to make the vote unanimous. One delegate from Massachusetts rose to his feet and accused the convention of nominating a man who would “continue the rule of slavery for four more years,” even proposing to declare the convention “dissolved.” Though others voiced somewhat the same sentiments, most of the delegates were anxious to get on with the next order of business, the nomination of a vice president. Even Horace Greeley, despondent as he was, refrained from voicing a protest on the floor.9
The nomination for vice president was wide open, and the candidates were plentiful. Not all were willing. Names such as Thurlow Weed, who had no interest in the position, were brought up—even William Seward. The voting, however, was not long drawn out, because one man stood out above the rest, Millard Fillmore of New York. Granted, the name of Millard Fillmore does not figure prominently in our history books, but he was, except for Henry Clay, the most experienced Whig under consideration at the convention. He had been in contention for the vice presidency for several years and was said to have been disappointed when he was not nominated with Clay in 1844. There was little protest when Fillmore was chosen for the second spot.



Taylor, at Cypress Grove, seemed to show little interest in the drama being played out in Philadelphia. He was still a major general in the regular army and the owner of plantations to be overseen. His official position was commander of the Western Command, in charge of all army troops west of the Mississippi. His dual role as army officer and candidate was facilitated by the practice of the time that defined the headquarters of a command as being merely where the commander was—no need for large establishments with extensive staffs and communications. Taylor simply set up a headquarters a few miles away from Cypress Grove, staffed it with a couple of aides and presumably clerks, and kept his own schedule.10
The official notification of Taylor’s nomination for president by the Whigs, in the form of a letter from John M. Morehead, presiding officer of the convention, arrived at the Baton Rouge post office on June 18, 1848. To everyone’s surprise, Taylor did not reply for nearly a month. When he did so, he seemed unapologetic. He gracefully expressed his gratitude for the honor, though many considered his response too bland. The main interest on most people’s part was Taylor’s long delay. Did he really plan to accept the nomination? The Whigs had a right to wonder.
The delay turned out to be due to a misunderstanding between Taylor and the Baton Rouge postmaster. Taylor had notified the official that he would no longer pay for letters on which postage was due, and the official had thrown the Morehead letter into the deadletter file.11



The Democrats had held their convention at Baltimore in late May, before the Whigs. Like the Whigs, their convention was open; President James K. Polk was upholding his pledge, made during the 1844 election, not to run for a second term. The slate the Democrats came up with was a pair of responsible, if perhaps colorless, candidates. Though neither carried the appeal of Zachary Taylor, they made a good team.
The presidential candidate, Lewis Cass of Michigan, was two years Taylor’s senior in age, having been born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1782. He was very much a product of the eastern establishment, having attended Phillips Exeter Academy in the same town. He had participated in the War of 1812 as a brigadier general and was later appointed by President James Madison as governor of the Michigan Territory, a post he held for eighteen years. During that time, he had led an exploring expedition to find the headwaters of the Mississippi River, since that location was deemed of some importance in the continuing negotiations between the United States and Britain over the boundary between the United States and Canada.
In 1831, Cass resigned his post in Michigan to serve as secretary of war under President Andrew Jackson. During his tenure, he was credited with—or accused of—playing a major role in Jackson’s policy of removing all the Indian tribes to the west of the Mississippi. Cass later served for six years as American ambassador to France, and upon his return home he entered the Senate from Michigan, where he remained until the 1848 presidential campaign.
The man chosen to be the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate was General William O. Butler of Kentucky. He was no stranger to Taylor, having commanded the Volunteer Division at Monterrey. By no means, however, was that assignment his only accomplishment. Born in 1781, Butler was also a veteran of the War of 1812 but as a junior officer. He had attained one great distinction: he had been aide-de-camp to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. He had also served as a congressman from Kentucky from 1839 to 1843.



The 1848 election also spawned a third party, the Free-Soil Party, whose motto was “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.” Unlike the Liberty Party of the 1844 presidential election, it did not advocate the abolition of slavery where it already existed. In essence the Free-Soilers subscribed to the spirit of the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a proposal put forth in Congress by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. Its immediate objective was simply to ensure that any territory gained as a result of the Mexican War would be free, with no slavery permitted. Though the Wilmot Proviso had failed enactment into law, it had become a rallying cry for the Free-Soilers.
The new party’s membership was polyglot. It began with antislavery elements in the Democratic Party, including the Barn-burner faction from New York led by former president Martin Van Buren but also antislavery Whigs and former Liberty Party adherents. Meeting in Buffalo, the Free-Soilers nominated Van Buren for president and Charles Francis Adams for vice president. But unlike the Liberty Party, which in 1844 had cost the Whigs enough votes in New York to throw the state to Polk, the Free-Soil Party was not expected to exert a decisive influence because its members were drawn about equally from both the Whigs and the Democrats. The spectacle of a Democratic former president, Van Buren, opposing the Democratic Party, however, was dramatic, and the impact of that remained to be seen.



The Whig strategy for the 1848 election fit in exactly with Taylor’s wishes: he planned to say as little as possible, leaving the bulk of the campaign to be conducted by surrogates, especially Thomas Ewing in Ohio and Thurlow Weed in New York. It was a sensible scheme because Taylor had not improved much in his propensity to commit political blunders. In one instance, it was as much a matter of the recipient of one of his letters, George Lippard, that caused pain among Whigs. Lippard had no credentials as a politician; he was, in fact, a sensational novelist, not of the best reputation. In July, Taylor told him, “I am not a party candidate, and if elected cannot be President of a party, but the President of the whole people.”12
Because Taylor continued to insist on his independence from Whig straitjackets, the Whigs once more began to grow uneasy about his Whig convictions. The result, as in the period before his nomination, was that Taylor was induced to write another Allison letter. In this instance, unlike the first such missive, the original author is unknown. It was most likely Thomas Ewing. But never mind; it was the candidate who signed it. That was what counted.
With issues so mixed, and with neither major party committed to slavery or antislavery sentiments, the election became largely a local issues affair. In the South, for example, the Whig organization was strong in Georgia but weak in Alabama and Mississippi. Toward the end, Crittenden once more forsook his own gubernatorial campaign and took over Taylor’s election effort. He played his role masterfully.
The key to the election was a trio of states—New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Together they controlled 79 electoral votes out of a total of 146 needed to win. As it turned out, Taylor carried New York and Pennsylvania but lost Ohio.
In the final count, Taylor and Cass each carried fifteen states. Taylor, however, had carried more electoral votes: 163 to Cass’s 127. Taylor also won the popular vote: 1,360,099 to 1,220,544.13
The news of his election reached Taylor by a circuitous route. It was sent by telegraph as far as Memphis, where the line ended, and from there was carried aboard a paddle-wheel steamer named, by coincidence, the General Taylor. When Taylor received the news, he showed no emotion at all. There were enough reasons to be less than exultant, but he resolved to do his duty.
Taylor had insisted that he would accept the presidency only if drafted by all the people. In the end it was not quite so. He had been drafted only by the Whigs, who were desperate for a winner. It was as a Whig that Old Rough and Ready was elected president of the United States.