A thought came to my mind recently…could I name all the major candidates of presidential elections in American history off the top of my head? I certainly couldn’t fully do so for 1836. The reason it was fuzzy to me is because there was not just one major candidate vs. another. There was much more to it than that!

In 1836, Jackson, honoring the two-term precedent, decided not to run for another term, leaving the presidency to his chosen successor, Vice President Martin Van Buren. The Whig Party had been founded since the 1832 election to oppose Jackson, and they were entering the business of fielding a presidential candidate…or should I say candidates? The Whig Party was unified on opposition to Andrew Jackson, but opposition alone doesn’t make for a long-standing coalition. Thus, the Whigs had no convention and no party platform. They also had not a whopping four candidates! The Whigs were, unofficially, hoping to throw the election to the House of Representatives by denying Van Buren a majority in the electoral college. This was not exactly planned, but simply the best that could be conceived in the circumstances. The four nominees were William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Hugh White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Willie Mangum of North Carolina. These represented the different groups that were in opposition to Jackson for one reason or another. Mangum, for example, also got the nomination of the Nullifier Party. Harrison snagged the nomination of the Anti-Masonic Party.

The End Result

The results were clean for Van Buren himself, who pulled off 50.8% of the popular vote and the electoral college and critically pulls off a narrow win in Pennsylvania. He wins a majority in both the North and the South. For the Whigs? Mangum only wins South Carolina, Webster his home state of Massachusetts, Hugh White his home state of Tennessee plus Georgia, but Harrison wins the rest of the states that vote Whig. There is, however, a minor wrinkle for Van Buren’s ticket. His running mate, former Kentucky Senator Richard Mentor Johnson, was quite controversial due to his slave mistress who he acknowledged as well as their daughters and his questionable claim that he killed Indian chief Tecumseh (United States Senate). Virginia’s electors refuse to cast their electoral votes for him, and thus the election is thrown to the Senate, which votes for him 33-16. However, by far the best performer among the Whigs was William Henry Harrison, and this sets him up to be the party’s candidate in the next election.

References

Blakemore, E. (2015, October 13). The Election Season That Was Weirder Than 2016. Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/4070370/2016-1836-presidential-election/

The Senate Elects a Vice President. United States Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/senate-elects-vice-president.htm