The Election of 1836
- Harrison (NR)
- Popular Vote
- 624,989 (41%)
- Electoral Vote
- 121 (41%)
- States Carried
- 10
- Dickerson (PD)
- Popular Vote
- 453,223 (30%)
- Electoral Vote
- 83 (28%)
- States Carried
- 4
- Jay (Lib.)
- Popular Vote
- 212,607 (14%)
- Electoral Vote
- 50 (17%)
- States Carried
- 4
- Calhoun (D)
- Popular Vote
- 234,527 (15%)
- Electoral Vote
- 40 (14%)
- States Carried
- 6
During President Henry Clay’s term in office, there became an obvious breach within the National Republican Party between “Conscience Republicans” and “Cotton Republicans.” The latter were comprised mostly of Southern Republicans and Northerners who had either no strong interest in fighting slavery or who just wanted to maintain good relations with southern planters, mostly out of a connection to the textile industry. The Conscience Republicans were morally opposed to slavery and began to leave for the American Liberty Party due to Clay’s active participation in the “Caribbean slave trade” and his inability to prevent southern state governments from removing Native Americans from their lands in favor of white settlers.
With the National Republican and Liberty parties splitting the northern vote, it became apparent that the election could easily be won by a Democrat (evident by the closeness of the 1832 election and further strengthening of the Liberty Party). The problem became that the Democrats knew that the election was theirs and began to infight as well over who should win the easy election. The Southern Democrats rallied around Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina while Northern Democrats rallied around the 1832 nominee Senator Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey. In order to secure the Democratic Party nomination a candidate needed 2/3rds of the delegates at the national convention and neither was able to get it, nor was any compromise candidate accepted.
Finally, Dickerson and his supporters walked away from the convention to form the Popular Democracy Party, the Populists, leaving Calhoun the Democratic nominee.
The Liberty Party chose Representative Peter Augustus Jay of New York again, and the National Republicans chose General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, a war hero from the War of 1812. The nominees for vice-president were Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania for the Populists, Martin Van Buren of New York for the Democrats, Representative Arthur Tappan of Massachusetts for the Libertarians, and Senator Willie Person Mangum of North Carolina for the National Republicans.
As noted in the chart above, no candidate managed to secure a majority of electoral votes, so the election went to Congress. The easiest question to solve was the question of the vice-president. The Senate, with each senator voting as individuals, had to choose between Mangum and Buchanan, the two top vote-getters, Mangum, the only Southerner left for either office, was elected to serve as vice-president to keep balance between the two halves of the country and to try to win over Southern states for the remaining candidates.
The House had to choose between Harrison, Dickerson, and Jay, but the Libertarian Jay only served to make getting an absolute majority of states (each representative voted in their state’s delegation as each state was allowed one vote for president) harder. Fourteen states were needed, and it would prove to be a hard climb for every candidate. On the third ballot, Dickerson scrapped by with fifteen votes. He carried his four states from the election; the six states that supported Calhoun; New Hampshire from Jay; and Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee from Harrison.
For the third time in four elections, a president was elected despite not winning a plurality/majority of the popular votes, and for the second time in four, the election went to the House. Still, Dickerson became the first president since 1801 to be neither a Democratic-Republican nor a National Republican, and the first Northerner not from Massachusetts.
Mahlon Dickerson, Eighth president of the United States
The Dickerson Administration (1837-1845)
First Term
The three most pressing matters for Dickerson upon entering office were reuniting with the Democrats to recreate the banner of a national party, electoral reform, and lowering tariffs..
Reuniting with the Democrats was achieved through the advent of what became the “spoils system.” Dickerson purged National Republicans from civil service jobs and replaced them with Populists in the North and Northwest and Democrats in the South, culminating in Democratic vice-presidential nominee Martin Van Buren being given the position of Secretary of State and John Quincy Adams being withdrawn as US Minister to Mexico (replaced by James M. Wayne of Georgia). By the midterms, the divide between Populists and Democrats was gone, however, attempts by Populists to lower the delegate requirement for a presidential nominee to one half plus one were unsuccessful. Instead, it was only lowered to three fifths (60% as opposed to 66%).
With three elections out of four resulting in a losing candidate in the popular vote winning office and two times out of those having the election go the House, the office of president came under fire for not representing the will of the people, and the opposition could always point to a lack of popular mandate to refuse negotiating with the president and his agenda. Abolishing the Electoral College would only serve to anger the small states and slave states (the 3/5ths Clause helped in increasing their number of electors and therefore their influence), so there needed to be some way to work with the system, and distributing the state electors in proportion to popular vote was rejected because it was thought that it would only lead to more elections being thrown into the House. Confused, angry, and on the border of infighting, the Dickerson Administration gave up.
Lowering tariffs to an average of 25% was much easier, however, it proved to be problematic. Abolitionists in the North started pushing for buying “slave-free” cotton products from Mexico, Great Britain, and northern South America. While the extent that this affected Northern textile factories is debatable and in all likelihood small, it definitely angered them and even angered the South as it was feared that there would be a decrease in the price of cotton.
In response to this and an increasing number of petitions from the North about slavery, the House passed a resolution that prevented the petitions from being read. When John Quincy Adams took a seat in the House of Representatives following the 1838 midterm elections, he made a name for himself by criticizing and flaunting the gag rule and slavery. At one point Dickerson was recorded as saying, “I should have left Adams in Mexico.”
The Election of 1840
The newly reunited Democratic Party nominated Dickerson for president on the first ballot, and for his vice-president choose Senator William Cabell Rives of Virginia.
The National Republicans decided to focus on weakening the Liberty Party’s hold on New England and strengthening their position in the Upper South. To this end, they ended up choosing Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts for president (JQ Adams was on a few ballots but he was considered too anti-slavery), and Vice-President Willie Person Mangum of North Carolina for vice-president.
The Liberty Party stuck with Representative Peter Augustus Jay of New York, but for vice-president they nominated former president John Quincy Adams, despite his insistence on remaining with the National Republicans.
This election was kinder to Dickerson as he managed to win the election outright with 149 electoral votes (148 were needed to win) to Webster’s 124. Jay trended downward with only 21 electoral votes and 203,253 (8.5%) popular votes as a result of the National Republicans’ strategy. Dickerson, however, lost the popular vote 1,077,045 (44.6%) to 1,132,383 (46.9%), making him the only president so far to win two terms without winning a plurality of the popular vote at least once and marking the fourth time in five elections that an election resulted in a president without a popular mandate,
Second Term
Dickerson’s second term, compared to the first, was disastrous.
In foreign policy, relations with Mexico took a hit. On 14 February 1842, on his 60th birthday and in recognition of his services to the crown, Vicente Guerrero was made Duque of Texas and made a member of the Order of the Imperial Golden Eagle (a new Mexican chivalric order). During the ceremony, which included ambassadors from all over the world, US Ambassador James Wayne refused to bow to the Afro-Mestizo. (He would later come to say that he didn’t know he had to bow, but that doesn’t explain why he didn’t bow when he saw everyone else doing it. It would have been embarrassing, but not insulting.) Emperor José, by nature temperate, ordered Wayne to leave Mexico City and demanded that he be recalled and that “some important Yankee” (his words) apologize to him and to Duque Vicente.
Likewise, tensions over runaway slaves going to Mexico and the United States’ refusal to commit to a defensive treaty against the British stung. Firebrands from the Deep South pushed Dickerson to take some action against Mexico in “defense of American property and interests.” Dickerson refused, but abolitionists in Texas made sure that their speeches and petitions were made public in the Empire to strengthen anti-Southern/anti-slavery sentiment (depending on who’s asked).
The aforementioned Vienna Conference resulted in no new territory for the United States and no solution to the Oregon Territory Question. His postering did, however, allow the National Republicans to claim that Dickerson was going against the spirit of President George Washington by attempting to involve the country in European affairs and alliances.
Domestically, he still failed to make any headway on finding a way to increase the legitimacy of the presidency in the face of an opposition that could claim to represent the majority of American opinion and in the eyes of democratically-minded Americans. Still, how to do it without upsetting the various factions while guaranteeing Democratic victory.
There was no immediately groundbreaking legislation passed during Dickerson’s second term, but the naval academy in Savannah, Georgia and the national university in Washington DC graduated their first classes. Dickerson used the good press to pass legislation to endow new universities in Philadelphia, New York City, Raleigh (North Carolina), and St. Louis (Missouri(). The blatant attempt to win over swing states with what amounted to bribery wasn’t lost on the Republican press or the various states that didn’t get anything but felt they should have. The fact that National Republicans supported the act was brushed aside as standard Republican politics in supporting higher education.
As the 1844 election approached, Dickerson announced that he would respect the two-term limit and support whichever candidate the Democrats nominated, regardless of regional considerations.
