William Henry Harrison by Gail Collins

Author:Gail Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

6

The First Campaign

Andrew Jackson’s presidency had been so strong that it had created two political parties—Jackson’s Democrats and the Whigs, whose unifying principle was simply opposition to Old Hickory and all his works. For every political appointment Jackson had made over almost eight long years in office, he had probably created ten disappointed enemies. When Jackson vetoed federal support for a part of the great Cumberland Road system, he helped Henry Clay organize around support for roads and other “internal improvements.” As Jackson declared war on the Bank of the United States, he added the bank’s supporters to his restive opponents.

If the Whigs stood for anything more specific than anti-Jacksonianism, it was Clay’s philosophy of a strong federal government where power was centered in Congress, not the president, and national policies encouraged economic development through public schools, a sound banking system, and the construction of roads and canals. But in reality the party’s unity was mainly negative. There was a banking faction and an anti-banking faction. The Whigs appealed in the North to voters with abolitionist sympathies, and in the South to states-rights slave owners. As the Whigs’ influential newspaper the National Intelligencer admitted, the party wanted a candidate who would rally all of its potential members “and we desire what is impossible.” Clay, who was now a powerful U.S. senator and who some regarded as the only possible unifying force in the Whig Party, was not particularly interested in running what he regarded as a nearly hopeless race. Besides, he was in mourning for Anne, the last of his six daughters, who had died in childbirth.

So for the 1836 election, which Jackson’s vice president, Martin Van Buren, was almost universally expected to win, the party fell back on nominating regional candidates. In theory, such a strategy might deprive Van Buren of a majority of the electoral votes and force the election into Congress. In reality, only the most wildly optimistic Whig could have imagined that the strategy would work. But many hoped that popular regional candidates might help draw voters for the Whig congressional and state tickets. As a Virginia supporter wrote to Clay, controlling the state government was “an object of great importance and almost a compensation for the loss of our presidential candidate.”

In the winter of 1834–35, state Whig gatherings began to float names, and it looked as though the northern candidate was going to be Massachusetts’ favorite son, Senator Daniel Webster. In the South, the Whig candidate was Senator Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee. In Ohio, the party looked toward Supreme Court justice John McLean, but McLean seemed lukewarm to the idea. He was apparently willing to take the job if it was offered on a plate, but not to fight for the nomination against other contenders.

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, some of Harrison’s old friends began to circulate his name as a possible candidate. Writing to a friend early in 1835, the delighted Harrison reported that “some folks are silly enough to have formed a plan to

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