AHC WI:Lewis Cass Wins In 1848

What if Lewis Cass had won the 1848 election? How would this happen? How would President Cass handle the issue of slavery? Would the Whigs collapse earlier or would they survive and win in 1852? How would Cass do as President? What do you think?
 
Flip Pennsylvania which Taylor won by 13,337 votes and Cass wins 153 to 137 ev (145 was required to win then)

genusmap.php

Cass & Butler 153
Taylor & Fillmore 137
 
In OTL
Taylor 1,360,235 163 ev
Cass 1,222,353 127 ev
Van Buren 291,475 0 ev

With the flipping of Pennsylvania Taylor would still win the popular vote....
 
If Van Buren did not run, Cass would probably have carried New York, which would (taken in isolation) be enough to win him the election. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1848.txt (According to Michael Holt's *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party* virtually all of Van Buren's votes in New York came from Democrats. Antislavery Whigs in the state had a long record of opposing Van Buren and did not trust the man at all.)

The problem, though, is that in Ohio, Van Buren took far more votes from Whigs than from Democrats, and probably cost Taylor the state (which had voted for Clay in 1844 and Harrison in 1836 and 1840--in other words, until 1848 it had voted Whig in every presidential election since the Whig party was founded). Van Buren also may have cost Taylor Indiana.

So not having a Free Soil Party would not elect Cass. What *could* elect him would be having a Free Soil Party that would appeal almost entirely to Whigs. In other words, Van Buren has to decline to be their candidate and they have to nominate an anti-slavery Whig like Joshua Giddings.
 
what was the total PPA vote that year?

PENNSYLVANIA Cass 172,186 46.7% Taylor 185,730 50.3
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1848.txt

IMO Cass was doomed in Pennsylvania in 1848 because of the economy and the tariff issue. There was a recession, and the Whigs blamed it on a surge of the imports of cheap British iron, made possible by the Walker Tariff. "Taylor, Fillmore and the Tariff of 1842" was the very effective Whig slogan in the state. http://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA367

3.6 percent of the vote (Taylor's margin over Cass in PA in 1848) may not seem like much, but in a basically Democratic-leaning state like PA (which had only gone very narrowly for Harrison in 1840 and which had supported Polk in 1844) it was practically a Whig landslide...
 
If Taylor didn't run, would Cass win or would the Whig nominee(Clay?Scott?Webster?)win? Probably Cass I think.
 
On slavery, Cass was an exponent of popular sovereignty, i.e., the people living in the territory or state would decide whether to allow slavery or not, and the federal government would stay out. We know how that doctrine played out in Kansas.

Popular sovereignty was an approach advocated by those who had no convictions of their own and wished the issue would just go away. I think that Cass would be worse than Taylor, who showed some strength of character in dealing with the slave lobby, and more like Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan, who didn't.
 
If Taylor didn't run, would Cass win or would the Whig nominee(Clay?Scott?Webster?)win? Probably Cass I think.

IMO Scott would win--provided he avoided making some great blunder (granted, that is a big "provided" when you are talking about Scott...) Like Taylor, he would carry New York and Pennsylvania--the former because of Van Buren splitting the Democratic vote , the latter because of widespread discontent in that protectionist stronghold with the Walker Tariff and the recession. (Also, although Van Buren was not a major factor in Pennsylvania, David Wilmot's support of Van Buren did take some Democratic votes away from Cass.) Unlike Taylor, he would probably carry Ohio, which Clay had won in 1844, and where a great many antislavery Whigs could not stomach Taylor. He would also have a better chance than Taylor of carrying Indiana, where some Hoosiers thought that Taylor had unfairly maligned the conduct of certain Indiana volunteers at Buena Vista

Granted, Scott would do much worse than Taylor in the Deep South--but he could lose Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida and still win, provided he carried all the Taylor states in the North plus Indiana or Ohio. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1848.txt And I doubt that he *would* lose Louisiana (which he almost carried even in 1852). http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1852.txt No doubt he would not come as close to carrying Alabama or Mississippi as Taylor did, but that counts for nothing in the Electoral College. In the Upper South, I don't see Scott doing any worse than Taylor (at least in electoral votes).

As for Clay, I doubt the Whigs would nominate him after his defeats in 1832 and 1844, but if they did, he might very well win. See my analysis at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/nfwybRHKiHc/oO8qkkyPCIQJ

There is no chance that the Whigs will nominate Webster. The last thing they wanted to do was to nominate an "aristocratic" ex-Federalist and thus seem to validate the Democrats' stereotypes of the Whigs. Besides, some Whigs still resented that Webster had stayed in Tyler's cabinet for so long.
 
Does this mean we don't get the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Or might something similar have gone through while Cass was still in office?
 
Does this mean we don't get the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Or might something similar have gone through while Cass was still in office?

I assume that something like the compromise of 1850 still gets passed, and that the Democrats win in 1852. (I am not sure it will be with Cass; Fire Eaters and 1848 Free Soilers returned to the Democracy may combine to deny him renomination. Sure, all factions of the party would say they acquiesce in the Compromise, but many would still like to defeat the man who signed it into law.) It is hard for me to see any plausible Democratic president in 1854--except Sam Houston, whose nomination was unlikely--resisting the pressure from Douglas and the South for repeal of the Missouri Compromise. And after all, Cass had been the original sponsor of "popular sovereignty"...

If there were a Whig president, it would be different, but I think it unlikely the Whigs would win in 1852. The increase in currency following the discovery of gold in California had led to prosperity and pretty much rendered their economic program obsolete. Meanwhile, they were more divided on slavery than the Democrats.
 
Well, 1844 was all about Texas and Cass wasn't seen as very bold on that issue, even though he did support annexation. If he were more gung-ho about it, I imagine he'd make different choices than Polk but we'd still get the Mexican-American War.
 
Well, 1844 was all about Texas and Cass wasn't seen as very bold on that issue, even though he did support annexation. If he were more gung-ho about it, I imagine he'd make different choices than Polk but we'd still get the Mexican-American War.


Cass put more emphasis on Oregon than on Texas--which is natural for someone from a northwestern state like Michigan. And Cass had been an Anglophobe ever since he had witnessed Hull's surrender of Detroit.

So would Cass have insisted on "54 40 or fight"? Would he have avoided the Mexican War to concentrate on Oregon? I discuss this at
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/toUpmIq0zV4/yXx-cQdX1FEJ:

***

The most plausible POD here is Lewis Cass getting elected president in
1844 instead of James K. Polk. Cass was a northwestern expansionist, an
Anglophobe, and a strong defender of US rights to "fifty-four forty."

There are, however, at least three problems:

First, it is hard to see Cass winning the nomination, given the hatred the
Van Burenites felt for him. In order to stop Van Buren and have a chance
to be nominated, Cass (and his supporters) had to re-instate the two-
thirds rule. But by doing so, he embittered the Van Burenites so much,
that they were determined that even if Van Buren couldn't get the
nomination, at least they would see that Cass would not. And as they were
over one-third of the delegates, they could and did block him.

Second, I am doubtful that Cass, had he gotten the Democratic nomination,
could have defeated Clay. As a non-slaveholder, Cass would have less
appeal than Polk in the South, and I am not sure he would make up for it
in the North. The hatred of the Van Burenites would almost certainly cost
him New York (which Polk very narrowly carried in OTL) and possibly
Pennsylvania as well. Cass might do beter than Polk did in the Old
Northwest (though even this is doubtful, because Polk in 1844 appeared to
be a good all-Oregon man) but the only state in this area that Polk lost
was Ohio
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1844.txt and even if
Cass carried Ohio, this could not make up for losing narrow Polk states
like New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Georgia.

Third, let's suppose that Cass is elected. It was one thing for Cass *as
senator from Michigan* to make "fifty-four forty" speeches in Congress, to
vote against the Oregon Treaty, and to scoff at the notion that a war with
Britain would be ruinous to the US:

"Happen what may, we can neither be overrun nor conquered. England might
as well attempt to blow up Gibraltar with a squib, as to attempt to subdue
us. I suppose an Englishman never even thinks of that, and I do not know
that I can exhibit in stronger terms its impossibility.

"I might easily spread before the Senate our capacity to annoy a maritime
adversary, and to sweep the British flag from this part of the continent;
but I forbear. What we have twice done in the days of our comparative
weakness, we can repeat and far exceed in these days of our strength.
While, therefore, I do not conceal from myself that a war with England
would temporarily check our progress and lead many evils in its train,
still I have no fear of the issue, and have an abiding confidence that we
shall come out of it, not indeed unharmed, but with all the elements of
our prosperity safe, and with many a glorious achievement written on the
pages of our history..." http://books.google.com/books?id=BzIFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA277

But it is another thing to refuse to compromise on Oregon, when you are
president of the United States, representing not a small northwestern
state but the whole country, and in particular when you are the leader of
a party which includes many people far more eager for a war with a weak
Mexico than with a strong Great Britain--especially Southerners who may
not be sure whether Mexican territory will be suitable for slavery but
*know* that British territory will not...

I suppose that problems one and two could be overcome if Van Buren dies in
an accident sometime before 1844. I discuss that at
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/4738a9e15d74098f
(It was entitled "Cass in 1844--Part One" but it seems I never got around
to writing a Part Two.) Problem three would still remain, though: Cass
was a Texas man as well as an Oregon man, and the acquistition of Texas
made war with Mexico likely, and the US could not very well fight Mexico
and Great Britain at once...
 
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