The Campaign and Election of 1836

Democratic support for nominating Martin Van Buren as the party’s presidential choice for the 1836 campaign was not universal. Some party members resented what they believed was his manipulation to become Jackson’s successor; others thought Jackson was trying to strongarm the party into accepting Van Buren. White southerners were particularly skeptical that a native New Yorker would defend their practice of enslaved labor. Despite this intraparty dissension and a lack of full state representation at the 1835 Democratic national convention, delegates nominated Van Buren on the first ballot.

They nominated U.S. representative Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky as the vice-presidential candidate. Johnson brought his own weakness to the ticket. He had lived openly at home with one of his enslaved women, with whom he had two daughters. In an era of ingrained racial prejudice against African Americans, some white southern Democrats would not vote for someone who so flagrantly violated the racist system in which they believed.

The Whigs were the Democrats’ opponents in 1836. Their party represented disparate factions, including the Anti-Masons and abolitionists, and lacked a settled identity or a cohesive organization going into the campaign. The Whig Party ran three regional candidates in 1836: U.S. senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was the New England candidate; U.S. senator (and former Democrat) Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee was the southern candidate; and William Henry Harrison, the hero of the Battle at Tippecanoe during the War of 1812 and former territorial governor and congressman, was the western candidate.

The 1836 campaign saw both parties use cultural politics—material, print, and visual culture, political events and music, public correspondence, auxiliary organizations, and women’s political activity—to energize existing voters and recruit new voters. Democrats met in Kinderhook Clubs, raised tall hickory poles, and published Van Buren letters in which he pledged not to interfere with slavery. Whigs printed anti-Van Buren songs and political cartoons, published pro-Harrison biographies, and used women’s presence at public events to indicate their endorsement of White and Harrison. Breaking with traditional expectations that presidential candidates would not personally campaign, Harrison traveled across the western states and the East Coast giving speeches at public rallies intended to bring voters into the Whig camp.

Van Buren won the election, defeating the three Whig candidates 170 to 113 in electoral votes. But he only secured a winning margin of about 28,000 popular votes against their combined total, an underwhelming result compared to Jackson’s margin of nearly 162,000 popular votes in 1832. The popular vote margin in several states was so close, in fact, that a change in just a few thousand votes in either New York or Pennsylvania or in several combinations of two other states would have led to the election being given to the U.S. House, as it had been in 1824. The vice-presidential election between Johnson and the Whig candidate, U.S. representative Francis Granger of New York, had to be decided in the U.S. Senate, where the Democratic majority carried Johnson to victory, 33 votes to Granger’s 16.

The Campaign and Election of 1840

Martin Van Buren faced an uphill battle to win reelection in 1840. While Democrats renominated him without opposition at their national convention (the first to produce a party platform), they could not settle on a vice-presidential nominee. Vice President Richard M. Johnson remained enough of a political liability that delegates refused to renominate him, but they were unable to unify around proposed replacements, such as former House Speaker and current Tennessee governor James K. Polk.

Four years after their disjointed campaign, Whigs took a page from the Democratic playbook and united behind a popular military hero. William Henry Harrison’s connection to the War of 1812 and his surprisingly strong showing in the 1836 election convinced Whigs that he was a better choice than other possible nominees. Senator Henry Clay carried a lot of political baggage and had failed in his attempt to defeat President Andrew Jackson’s reelection bid in 1832, while U.S. general Winfield Scott was considered too politically unpredictable despite his extensive military record. To satisfy states’ rights and slavery supporters, Whigs nominated John Tyler of Virginia as Harrison’s running mate.

The real problem for Van Buren, though, remained the ongoing economic depression and his role in not mitigating its consequences for Americans. Whigs portrayed the president as an out-of-touch elitist. The prime example of this campaign spin was Pennsylvania representative Charles Ogle’s April 1840 speech, “The Regal Splendor of the President’s Palace.” Often called the “Gold Spoon Oration,” it described Van Buren as a leader more interested in using taxpayer money to turn the White House into a royal palace than in alleviating Americans’ economic suffering. The speech was full of disinformation and outright lies, but in politics, perception often trumps reality.

Ogle’s speech demonstrated another important factor in Van Buren’s defeat: the Whigs outcampaigned the Democrats. They used even more numerous forms of cultural politics to convince voters that Harrison was the best choice to lead the nation. Democrats, who had Van Buren’s campaign playbook from his days in New York and the early years of the Democratic Party to follow, failed to match the Whigs’ campaign nationally. Harrison went on a speaking tour in the summer of 1840, but the custom of the times dictated that incumbent presidents did not campaign. Van Buren wrote long public letters published in newspapers on various topics such as taxes, infrastructure, and federal appropriations, but his efforts could not compete with those of the Whigs.

Ironically, the Democrats handed their opponents a winning theme early in the campaign. A Baltimore newspaper advised that giving Harrison, who was sixty-six years old when nominated, “a barrel of HARD CIDER” and a pension would ensure that he spent his remaining years sitting and reading by the fire in his log cabin. Whigs jumped on the chance to turn this attack on Harrison’s age and alleged low energy into something positive. The Whigs’ “Hard Cider and Log Cabin” campaign turned Harrison, who was born into a wealthy, politically prominent Virginia family and lived a life that reflected that background, into a hard-working, common farmer who understood the struggles of average white Americans. However false this depiction was, it provided a stark contrast to the Whig-created image of Van Buren as an aristocrat, one that the Democrats failed to counter effectively.

The voter participation rate in 1840 exceeded 80 percent for the first time in a presidential election, resulting in more than 2.4 million votes being cast. Just about 146,000 popular votes separated Van Buren and Harrison. But only electoral votes mattered, and there, Harrison crushed Van Buren 234 to 60. He also won nineteen states to seven, with Van Buren losing even his home state of New York.