AHC: Have Fillmore win in 1856

Is it possible for Millard Fillmore to win 1856 as a third party?

  • Yes, with both OTL candidates

    Votes: 7 43.8%
  • If James Buchanan isn't part of the Democrats, yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • If John C Fremont isn't part of the Republicans, yes

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Yes, but it needs different candidates for the main parties

    Votes: 8 50.0%
  • No, it's completely ASB

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    16
Millard Fillmore may be a dull president, but he stands out for being the second most successful third party candidate in terms of the popular vote(21.5%). And he's the first third party to take a state. With a POD of November 4 1855, can Millard Fillmore win the 1856 election for the Native American/Know Nothing Party and become the 13th/15th president? To make this an actual challenge, you can't have his opponents die or have some devastating controversy(I'm not sure if Buchanan being outed would count).
 
Fillmore puts extensive effort into Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky (which in OTL, he lost by 3%, 4%, and 5% respectively). That's enough to kick the election into the House, where Fillmore would have been the favourite.
 
Millard Fillmore may be a dull president, but he stands out for being the second most successful third party candidate in terms of the popular vote(21.5%). And he's the first third party to take a state. With a POD of November 4 1855, can Millard Fillmore win the 1856 election for the Native American/Know Nothing Party and become the 13th/15th president? To make this an actual challenge, you can't have his opponents die or have some devastating controversy(I'm not sure if Buchanan being outed would count).

I think the best way involves two PODs. The first is Charles Sumner deciding to delay his anti-Kansas speech for a month or so, and hence prevents his being attacked by Preston Brooks. The second is Governor Shannon ordering Colonel Sumner's regulars, rather than the Missourian territorial militia, to respond to the assassination of Samuel Jones.

From 'Scapegoat? Colonel Edwin V. Sumner and the Topeka Dispersal', Durwood Ball:

"Sumner and Governor Shannon likewise diverged over army assistance to legally constituted civil authorities. When in Lawrence on April 23 a free-state assassin shot Democratic sheriff Samuel Jones, who was assisted by seven regulars, Sumner earnestly advised the governor not to summon the Kansas militia, called them “partisans,” and galloped to the scene, at Shannon’s request, to calm tempers. The previous winter, Shannon had begged the president for federal military assistance, but immediately after the Jones shooting, the governor groused to his boss, Secretary Marcy, about his administration’s complete dependence on Sumner’s regulars. To prove his mettle, Shannon tried to dispense with Sumner’s troops. When U.S. Marshal Israel B. Donelson summoned a civilian posse to serve federal warrants in Lawrence, Sumner exhorted the governor to dismiss the men—Missouri “partisans,” as the colonel accurately described them—predicting serious trouble if they entered Lawrence behind a marshal or sheriff. But Shannon refused, and the incredulous Sumner reported their exchange to Secretary Davis. Ten days later on May 21, this posse of five to eight hundred men sacked free-soil Lawrence. This brigandage coincided with the savage caning of abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, a cousin to the colonel, by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks on the Senate floor in the U.S. Capitol. Both acts of violence fueled sectional fires and further jeopardized Pierce’s political prospects."

The caning of Sumner and the Sack of Lawrence both amplified Republican outrage; here that outrage will be muted and Fillmore's attempts to chart a moderate cause more plausible. Meanwhile, Franklin Pierce is able to eke out a victory at the Democratic Convention in June, presumably by having his delegates vote to suspend the 2/3 rule, as was done in 1836 and 1840. Given that Pierce was able to muster 122.5 votes on the first ballot in OTL even after the Sack of Lawrence and the caning of Sumner suggest to me that he should have been able to secure renomination without these two events.This weakens the Democratic ticket considerably by keeping the unpopular Pierce on it. From here, Fillmore needs to rally the remnants of the old Whig organisation around his candidacy. He needs to hold a convention in the summer which will nominate the Know Nothing ticket. The Whig platform must stress moderation and Unionism, as Fillmore tried to do in OTL.

From 'The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War', Michael F. Holt

"At Albany, Rochester, and elsewhere [Fillmore] primarily rehearsed his patriotic devotion to the Union. He attacked Democrats for reopening sectional agitation with the Nebraska Act and Republicans for cynically inflaming that agitation to arouse the North. ...[H]e warned that either a Democratic or a Republican victory would “break asunder the bonds of our Union and spread anarchy and civil war through the land.” Only he stood above the sectional fray. “If there be those at the North who want a President to rule the South—if there be those at the South who want a President to rule the North—I do not want their votes,” he declared. “I stand upon the broad platform of the Constitution and the laws.”

Fillmore then needs the support of the remnants of the New York Whig Party, led by sitting senator Hamilton Fish, who ultimately backed Fremont in OTL:

...[V]irtually every old guard Whig in New York state considered [Hamilton] Fish, a sitting United States senator, absolutely the key figure to lead a revival of the National Whig party and swing the remaining Whig holdouts behind Fillmore. Pouting that Weed and Seward had merged the state Whig organization with the Republicans in 1855 without ever consulting him, Fish resolutely remained on the Whig fence during the first half of 1856. Fillmore dearly wanted him to jump off."

With Fish's support, Fillmore has a chance to win New York. Add to this every state in which he polled better than 40% in OTL, and Fillmore comes first in the Electoral College with 130 EV. I think it's likely the Democrats will lose Pennsylvania without native-son Buchanan, so that leaves Fremont in second with 106 and Pierce with 60. To win outright, he would need another 18 EV from any combination of Alabama (9), Texas (4), Arkansas (4) and California (4), in which Fillmore polled 30%-40% in OTL, which is probably a long-shot. Fillmore's best chance is to be the leading candidate when the election goes to the House and hope that enough Democrats vote for him once they realise that Pierce cannot be re-elected.
 
I like @Well 's approach, but I'll look at it from the extent of managing as few butterflies as possible.

There was a Unionist ticket in Pennsylvania for the Presidential election, with the Republicans and Americans nominating a joint slate of electors bar one elector each to measure popular support for Fillmore or Fremont; those electors were then to be divided accordingly. Now @David T has said that the Unionist ticket had fallen apart a short time before the election itself, but I have never found any news of it in the New York Times pieces of the period. Assuming it stood, and with a small kick, that would have left Buchanan with (148) electors to his name (the nature of the Unionist ticket would mean that Buchanan won (1) Pennsylvania elector by default), which leaves the election hinging on Louisiana in this case.

genusmap.php

The problem with Fillmore doing much better is that it'd promote the idea of managing "Unity Tickets" like the one in Pennsylvania, which can potentially inflate Fremont's own electoral count. The States of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio could have been subject to this as they were battleground States, and possibly New York and New Jersey as well, as vote-splitting would become a very real concern. Obviously this is far from a guarantee as most of the State affiliates of the Republican and American parties failed to ratify or refused to consider Unity Tickets, but it is something that must be considered in situations where there is more pressure to do so.

Even by forcing the election into the House however, the Democratic Party at the time held the majority of State delegations and would have been able to elect Buchanan.

genusmap.php

The Republicans and Americans would inevitably need to hold their ground in a number of House races or make gains to balance the control of the delegations, and thankfully a handful of them were fairly evenly divided as it was. Flipping close contests in Indiana and New Jersey, as well as three close contests in Pennsylvania, would keep the Democratic Party from controlling a majority of the delegations even when considering the tied delegations of Tennessee and Texas.


From there, those remaining Americans have a lot of negotiating power as they are now unofficially the required swing-vote to name the next President. As the Democratic Party easily held control in the Senate, John Breckinridge would be made Acting President in the interim, and while Republican Congressmen would initially be loathe to support Millard Fillmore (there were more than a few who refused to even consider voting for him should an election be thrown to the House), if they could negotiate their way into the Cabinet in return for their support they may well have done it, considering the alternatives and that the remaining Americans could even more so not support Fremont (or least guarantee their congressmen would fall in line behind him).

It would be a chaotic start to the Fillmore Administration, one made up of members of three major parties, but it seems the least invasive of the drafts possible.
 
There was a Unionist ticket in Pennsylvania for the Presidential election, with the Republicans and Americans nominating a joint slate of electors bar one elector each to measure popular support for Fillmore or Fremont; those electors were then to be divided accordingly. Now @David T has said that the Unionist ticket had fallen apart a short time before the election itself, but I have never found any news of it in the New York Times pieces of the period.

Evidently you are referring to my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ects-for-anti-buchanan-fusion-in-1856.349796/ I based that in part on Tyler Anbinder's Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's. Here is Anbinder's account in more detail (pp. 242-3):

"All hopes that the Pennsylvania fusion ticket would prevent a Buchanan victory there were dashed when the American state chairman, John P. Sanderson, repudiated the arrangement and announced that the original slate of Fillmore electors would remain in the field. Americans would therefore choose either the fusionist "Fillmore Union" ticket or the non-fusion "Fillmore Straight" ticket when they ventured to the polls on election day. Sanderson's decision outraged Republicans and those Americans who supported fusion, and when popular North Carolina American Kenneth Rayner arrived to campaign for the Fillmore Union ticket, pressure on the anti-fusionists to drop the Straight ticket increased. At this point only the consent of Fillmore himself could have persuaded the anti-fusionists to withdraw the Straight ticket. In response to last-minute pleas from both sides, the ex-President advised the anti-fusionists to "do as our friends there think best," but since he knew that the Straight men opposed fusion, this response was tantamount to an endorsement of their position. The continued division of the anti-Democratic forces on the eve of the election guaranteed a Buchanan victory in Pennsylvania.

"The refusal of Fillmore supporters in the lower North to endorse fusion might seem illogical, but Fillmore and his advisers believed that fusion in the North would help Fremont more than the Americans. They reasoned that fusion would inflate Fremont's electoral tally, while Fillmore's gains would be offset by the loss of southern states, whose voters would shun Fillmore if he cooperated with the Republicans. Fillmore calculated that he already controlled enough states to force the election to the House, and that consequently it made no sense to endorse fusion. This was a risky strategy, because if Fillmore made no fusion and did poorly in the South, the election would never reach the House. But Americans were willing to take this chance because they believed that a poor showing by Fremont would destroy the Republican party and leave the Americans as the Democrats' only viable national competitor. Conversely, Americans insisted that fusion would ruin their party's hopes of future political success. Pennsylvania's Henry D. Moore charged that those "in the Republican Party who are urging us to this course" are doing so not because "they believe we could carry the State by it, but because they know it would destroy our Nationality as a Party!" Others agreed that fusion was a Republican plot "to disorganize our party." Finally, Americans contended that cooperation with a sectional party was antithetical to the tenets of Americanism. Fillmore told Rayner after the election that fusing with the Republicans in Pennsylvania would have "violat[ed] one of the fundamental principles of our party, which was to be a national Union party." Moore also advised that the Americans should concede Pennsylvania "rather than lose our identity as a National conservative party." Although Republicans charged that Fillmore voters wanted Buchanan to win the presidency, principle and strategy dictated their actions... " https://books.google.com/books?id=lWlRyjY7EvwC&pg=PA242

If you want a contemporary source, see Astounding developments! Let all Americans judge for themselves! The American party sold to Buchanan! Address of the Republican state executive committee. To the people of Pennsylvania ... Philadelphia, Oct. 20, 1856. https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/rbpe/rbpe15/rbpe156/15602200/15602200.pdf The Republicans blamed Sanderson for the failure and argued that the narrow defeat of the fusion ticket at the state level did not mean it could not carry the state against Buchanan: "The Democratic State ticket has been elected by a small majority. It received the vote of thousands of Mr. Fillmore's friends in Philadelphia and elsewhere, who cannot support James Buchanan for the Presidency. It “slipped in at the side door,” while the true friends of the Union ticket were slumbering at their posts. They have not been vigilant. They have not put forth their strength. The official returns of the recent election show that in many counties their votes have not been polled...The Democratic party, with a perfect organization in every election district in the State, polled every vote which could be secured by the utmost vigilance, and at any cost. Never before were such efforts made by that party to carry an election—and never was an opposition more sanguine of its own success, and more neglectful of the proper means to secure it..."

Personally, I think it more likely that the fusion ticket would do at least a bit worse at the presidential level than it did at the state level, rather than better. I could see some Fillmore supporters who would give their votes to Republicans running for state offices on a fusion ticket, but would worry that if fusion on the presdeidential level helped Fremont to victory, the Union might be endangered. Still, if the fusion ticket had won the state election in October and if it held together, I could not rule out its carrying Pennsylvania. But in view of Fillmore's own hostility to fusion (as well as that of many of his followers) I think that Fillmore doing a bit better in a few southern states is a more plausible way of throwing the election into the House.
 

Even by forcing the election into the House however, the Democratic Party at the time held the majority of State delegations and would have been able to elect Buchanan.

genusmap.php


I don't know the source of your map, but as I indicated at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...buchanan-fusion-in-1856.349796/#post-10572481
here is the breakdown of the 34th Congress delegations by Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (third edition):

Democrats--10 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia)

Republicans--7 states (Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin)

Whig--4 states (Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania)

(It may seem bizarre that Missouri, which had always been one of the Whigs' weakest states, elected six Whig congressmen out of seven in 1854. The explanation is the split between pro- and anti-Benton Democrats. Anyway, by 1855 most Missouri Whigs drifted into the American party. As for New York, out of 33 seats, it had 16 Whig congressmen, and 11 nominated by both Whigs and Americans.)

Americans (slave states)--3 states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland)

Americans (free states)--4 states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island). All antislavery, all pro-Fremont by 1856.

Democratic-American tie--2 states (Tennessee, Texas)

Democratic-Republican tie--1 state (Iowa)

In short, Republicans or North Americans seem to dominate eleven delegations, Democrats eleven, pro-Fillmore Americans, four (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri) I suspect that by 1856 even the relatively conservative Whigs/Americans of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were largely for Fremont. [1] And Tennessee, Texas, and Iowa are all evenly split between Democrats and either Americans or Republicans. A quick glance at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/34th_United_States_Congress seems to confirm these figures.

Maybe your map comes from using the party breakdown for the 35th Congress (1857-59)? But before the 20th Amendment, it was the old Congress that decided. (In fact, not even all the new Congress would be elected by the time the House would decide on the new president; there was no uniform election day for the House in those days.)

Anyway, to get back to the 34th Congress: My own guess is that if the election goes to the House, there is a deadlock leading to Breckinridge being chosen acting president by the Senate. To many Republicans, Fillmore was a "doughface" in no way preferable to Buchanan; and this is true not only of those Republicans who had never been Know Nothings, but of some who had been. OTOH, unless the "South Americans" massively desert Fillmore for Buchanan, I don't see Buchanan winning, either. (To be sure, South Americans would vote Democratic to defeat a Republican, as was shown by their overwhelming support for Aiken in the Speakership fight against Banks. But the disproportionate power of the South under the "one delegation, one vote" rule guaranteed that Fremont could not win in the House. So there was no need for South Americans to support Buchanan--when the worst their opposition to him could do would be to put their fellow southerner Breckinridge into the White House.)

[1] FWIW, the following "Whig" or "Whig-American" congressmen from New York for the 34th Congress are listed by CQ as "Republican" candidates (successful or not) for the 35th: James S. T. Stranahan (2nd District); Guy R. Pelton (3rd); Abram Wakeman (8th); Ambrose S. Murray (10th); Edward Dodd (15th); Orsamus B. Matteson (20th); Henry Bennett (21st); Amos P. Granger (24th); Edwin B. Morgan (25th); John M. Parker (27th); William H. Kelsey (28th). Only two--Solomon Haven of the 32nd and Francis G. Edwards of the 33rd--ran for re-election as Americans (unsuccessfully in both cases). Haven was Fillmore's former law partner, and as late as 1857 he assured Fillmore that the American party had a bright future: "I think the Republican vote was accidental last fall...the causes which produced it are nearly extinct already. If our boys can hold on two years...one side or the other will come to our party." (Quoted in Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, p. 247.)
 
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Anyway, to get back tot he 34th Congress: My own guess is that if the election goes to the House, there is a deadlock leading to Breckinridge being chosen acting president by the Senate


BTW, if this happens, what's the score after March 4?

If Breckenridge doesn't summon it, presumably the HoR can't reconvene until December. Is it conceivable that they would resume balloting after that lapse of time, or would they construe the 12th Amendment as meaning that Breckenridge had now succeeded for the entire term? After all, its words "as in the case of the death - -" could be taken as implying this.
 
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Fillmore did have his supporters. There's a fellow buried in the local cemetery who was born in 1856 and he was named Millard Fillmore Jones. His father was clearly a Fillmore supporter :)
 
<Oddles of Evidence>
Alright, fair enough.

Personally, I think it more likely that the fusion ticket would do at least a bit worse at the presidential level than it did at the state level, rather than better. I could see some Fillmore supporters who would give their votes to Republicans running for state offices on a fusion ticket, but would worry that if fusion on the presdeidential level helped Fremont to victory, the Union might be endangered. Still, if the fusion ticket had won the state election in October and if it held together, I could not rule out its carrying Pennsylvania. But in view of Fillmore's own hostility to fusion (as well as that of many of his followers) I think that Fillmore doing a bit better in a few southern states is a more plausible way of throwing the election into the House.
When thinking of it in those terms, that makes sense as well.

I don't know the source of your map....
I admit I lacked confidence in it, but I wasn't sure if any of the Congressman elected in 1856, particularly those in the late summer and early fall, would have been part of the last session in March of next year. It has never been all that clear to me when certain delegations changeover during these earlier periods. I also had changed for affiliation based on what they became in the '56 elections, least those in the North.
 
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