Hello and welcome back to another edition of Lace ‘Em Up’s Presidential Election series for today we will be discussing the election of 1852. A dark horse candidate from the Democrats takes on a Military General from the Whigs and the Free Soil Party has returned in another three-way bout for the presidency.

Presidential Shake-Up & The Compromise of 1850

Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States ascended to the Oval Office with many Southern politicians believing that they could work with Taylor on matters regarding Slavery as the former general was a slave owner. However much to the shock of many Southerners, Taylor was more of a moderate who was willing to compromise but not to the extent of spreading slavery into the Western and Northern states.

Unfortunately for Taylor, his time in office would end prematurely as he died a year and a half into his term at the age of 65 after consuming some cherries and milk days earlier with the cause of Taylor’s death being gastroenteritis.

Millard Fillmore (Taylor’s Vice President) was soon sworn in as the 13th President of the United States and much like his predecessor, Fillmore had to deal with the issue of slavery. In an attempt to deal with this problem, Whig Party leaders: Henry Clay and Daniel Webster proposed a series of bills known as ‘The Compromise of 1850’.

While Taylor was against the compromise, Fillmore supported it including “The Fugitive Slave Law” which basically allowed people to return escaped slaves back to their masters; This infuriated Northerners because if one or more people claimed that you were a slave to the authorities then you would be forced to work under the slave owners.

Franklin Pierce: The Compromise Candidate

At the beginning of the Democratic Party’s Convention, there were four names running to get the nomination:

• Stephen Douglas- Senator from Illinois 
• Lewis Cass- Senator from Michigan who ran in 1848
• James Buchanan- Senator from Pennsylvania 
• William Marcy- The Secretary of War

However, none of the candidates were able to get enough of the support needed from either the Southern or Northern wings of the party to get the nomination and after 49 ballots, the decision was made to throw in a ‘Dark Horse’ or compromise candidate to break up the deadlock.

That dark horse was Franklin Pierce, who was a former Senator and Representative from New Hampshire; Because he wasn’t well known to many and his views on slavery weren’t made public to the masses, Pierce would end up getting the party’s nomination for president.

Pierce’s running mate was William Rufus DeVane King, a Senator from Alabama who helped to make Pierce look acceptable in the eyes of Southern Democrats by referring to the 48 year old former Senator as “A Northern Man with Southern Principles”.

Problematic Whigs

By the 1850s the Whig Party are in a downward spiral as the Compromise of 1850 left many Northerners angry; Combinedwith the death of party founder Henry Clay months before the election, the party continues to fall into disarray.

Unsurprisingly, the Whigs were struggling to pick a candidate to represent them with the party having gone through 53 ballots before they finally got their nominee.

President Fillmore hoped to get the nomination but he was only getting support from the party’s Southern wing whereas the Northern faction supported Mexican-American War Hero Winfield Scott while a smaller coalition of Whigs supported Daniel Webster.

By the end of it, Scott would get 159 delegates to Fillmore’s 112, ensuring that the general nicknamed “Old Fuss and Feathers” would be the party’s nominee. The Whigs chose the Secretary of the Navy from North Carolina, William Alexander Graham as Scott’s running mate.

The Return of The Free Soil Party

Much like in 1848, the Free Soil Party was looking to capture the White House in the next general election following their success in the midterms where the party gained seats in Congress.

However when the Compromise of 1850 was passed into law, most Free Soilers left the party and returned back to the Whigs and Democrats.

Nonetheless, the Free Soil Party nominated John Parker Hale, a key member of the party and an anti-slavery Senator from New Hampshire with Indiana native, George Washington Julian as his running mate.

While the Free Soil Party might be the biggest third party to run in the 1852 election, they weren’t the only one to run as there were a few more third parties that ran during this time around.

The Other Third Parties

Several third parties ran in this election including the newly created Union Party which was a small band of Whigs who weren’t satisfied with Scott or Fillmore as possible candidates. Members of the Union Party nominated Daniel Webster as their nominee with Charles Jenkins a Georgian politician as his running mate.

On the opposite side of the coin, the Native American Party and nicknamed “The Know Nothing Party” also nominated Daniel Webster for president, however he refused to accept their nomination mostly due to the party’s xenophobic and nativist views.

Despite their best efforts, these third parties weren’t able to get as much momentum as the Free Soilers, but the fact that this many third parties are running is a clear example of how things are falling apart in the United States.

The Campaigns

Both the Democrats and the Whigs are bringing up some damaging claims to each other regardless if there true or not.

The Democrats are accusing Scott of being court martialed for disagreements he had with another general to allegedly hanging soldiers during the Mexican-American War and their also bringing up his anti-slavery views.

The Whigs responded with claims of Franklin Pierce being anti-Catholic, the injuries he sustained off the battlefield as Brigadier General under Winfield Scott and even Pierce’s issues with alcohol were brought up with the Whigs calling him “The Hero of Many a Well-Fought Bottle”.

Neither side is taking a hard stance when it comes to slavery leading to a decrease in voter turnout and with the new state of California being added into the Union, you’ll need 149 or more electoral votes to win this time around.

The Election of 1852: The Results & Aftermath

When the results were all counted up, it becomes clear real soon that the Democrats have not only won the election but did so in a landslide with Franklin Pierce becoming the Fourteenth President of the United States. Pierce finished with 254 electoral votes and 50.8% of the popular vote.

Winfield Scott (in the party’s worse showing in both the electoral and popular vote) received 42 electoral votes and 43.9% of the popular vote. Scott’s anti-slavery views angered the Southern Whigs, plus his inability to garner major support in the North is what ultimately sealed the general’s fate in this election.

John Hale came in third place with no electoral votes and getting half of what the party received in 1848 with 4.9% of the popular vote. Daniel Webster came in fourth place with around seven thousand votes which adds up to .2% of the popular vote in spite of the fact Webster died a little over a week before the election; all the other parties received less than 1% of the popular vote.

William King became America’s 13th Vice President, sadly he died from tuberculosis just six weeks into the position having the third shortest tenure of Vice President in American history. Pierce’s victory would be the last time the Democrats won an election with a majority of both the electoral and popular vote until the 1930’s, however his win would be overshadowed by another death as his son Benjamin was killed during a train accident before Pierce was even inaugurated.

The 1852 election marked the end of the Whig party as the divisions over slavery and Winfield Scott’s performance would lead to the party’s utter demise…That said, from the ashes of the Whigs would rise a new political party, but more on that in the next article.

Be sure to leave your thoughts down below in the comment section and be sure to follow Lace ‘Em Up on Twitter @laceemupoffice you can follow me also on Twitter @hakeemfullerton and I’ll see you in the next article.