The Election of 1853
June-November 1853
When the Whigs and Democrats met for their conventions in 1853, factions within each party were determined to improve their results upon those of the previous year, which had, in both camps, led to compromise candidates. The revelation of the Gadsden Purchase just prior to the conventions exacerbated these intraparty divisions and resulted in the most contentious party conventions in American history to that point.
The Whigs had been spared significant intraparty bickering between northern and southern wings of the party by the nomination in 1852 of General Winfield Scott, a northern, anti-slavery Whig, and by the adoption of a pro-slavery platform. The disastrous results of the previous election had led both the Northern and Southern Whigs to believe that a more consistent ticket-platform relationship would allow a Whig to return to the White House. Both factions, of course, assumed that it was only logical that their preferred view win out, and the atmosphere in Philadelphia’s National Hall was tense from the beginning.
Banking on the unpopularity of the currently-debated Gadsden Treaty in the North, and simmering unhappiness about the 1850 compromise, the extreme anti-slavery Northern Whigs nominated New York Senator William H. Seward, a figure who repulsed Southerners in the extreme with his frequent anti-slavery rhetoric. The New England delegates nominated Massachusetts Senator Edward Everett as a more moderate nominee that could still use his opposition to the spread of slavery to gain votes in the North.
The Southern Whigs rejected both of these candidates, and proffered former President Fillmore as a candidate to the convention. The northerner who had signed the Fugitive Slave Act was anathema to most Northern Whigs, and was viciously attacked by the Northern Whigs throughout the convention’s proceedings.
The delegates deadlocked for a then-record sixty ballots, with support from Seward and Fillmore slowly drifting to Everett and then remaining at relatively steady levels, with Everett having nowhere near the necessary amount of support to be nominated as the party’s candidate. On the 61st ballot, however, Everett’s supporters began to drift back to Seward, and on the 69th ballot, Seward passed the 50% mark of delegates. Infuriated, a majority of the Southern Whigs and several pro-slavery Northern Whigs stormed out of the convention en masse, to booing and hissing from the anti-slavery northern delegates. Fearing the imminent catastrophe of the party’s split, the convention chairman adjourned the convention for two weeks.
In late June, the Whigs’ National Convention convened again in Baltimore, MD. A few of the southern delegates who had stormed out of National Hall two weeks previously returned to Baltimore, lured by promises that Seward would not be selected. On the 3rd ballot of this second Whig convention, Everett was unanimously nominated for President. Solomon Downs of Louisiana, a former senator and a slave-owner himself, was nominated unanimously on the second ballot for Vice-President. The party’s official platform was a short document that mostly consisted of anti-immigration measures requested by Fillmore supporters, and, importantly, was ambiguous on the question of slavery.
As the Whigs uneasily settled on a compromise ticket, the Democrats, too, experienced a heated convention. Four major contenders for the Presidential nomination emerged: Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State Marcy, and President Atchison. Each had his electoral strengths and weaknesses. Douglas, Cass, and Marcy were Northerners, and therefore automatically more palatable to the Northern Democrats. All three had differing stances towards slavery; Douglas, least-favored in the South, was one of the architects of the Compromise of 1850, which limited the possible expansion of slavery to the recently-created New Mexico and Utah territories. Cass had been the party’s presidential candidate in 1848, and ascribed to the doctrine of popular sovereignty: that each new territory ought to be able to decide for itself whether to be a free state or a slave state. His status as a previous electoral loser and his age (seventy at the opening of the convention) counted against him. Secretary of State Marcy was the most pro-slavery Northerner, but was tarnished in the eyes of most Northern Democrats by his hand in the hotly-debated Gadsden Purchase. Finally, President Atchison was wildly popular in the South, but his rash actions as President had caused the ire of the anti-slavery Democrats to be focused directly on him.
The Democratic National Convention eventually ended up being drawn out even longer than the extended Whig convention; opening on June 1 in Charleston, SC, and concluding on July 6, it easily became the longest national convention ever in the United States, lasting 36 days.
52 ballots were held over the first week of the convention, with the delegate counts of each of the major four candidates rising and falling several times, although a plurality consistently held for Atchison, the most divisive candidate. An attempt to bring forward James Buchanan, the pro-slavery Pennsylvanian ambassador to Great Britain, as a compromise candidate faltered as most of Atchison’s delegates refused to switch to a candidate until the other candidates released their delegates. While Douglas and Cass were willing to do so, Secretary of State Marcy refused to release his powerful New York delegation, in part due to Atchison’s ignoring of his advice regarding the Gadsden Purchase. Before the 67th ballot, Cass released his delegation to Marcy, and Marcy soon appeared to be picking up steam. Douglas was prepared to release his delegates to Marcy when Atchison informed him that he would sooner break up the party and leave with the Southern delegation than allow his “insubordinate” Secretary of State to win the nomination: Douglas reluctantly kept his delegates. When word of this “deal” got out to Marcy’s camp,
his delegates threatened to march out of the convention. The DNC chairman, Benjamin Hallett, saw that the Whig Party’s convention was being drawn out and did not hesitate to adjourn the convention on June 11 to prevent a complete fracture of the party.
While Hallett had intended the convention to convene again on June 20, several Northern delegations actually left Charleston to discuss with their state Democratic institutions as to how to proceed. It was not until June 24 that all of the delegations finally returned to Charleston. With only two days before Sunday, the delegates mostly discussed the platform, and it was not until Monday June 28 that the convention finally returned to the business of nominating a candidate. It is certain that Atchison met with members of the Douglas camp and disgruntled members of Marcy’s New York delegation before the next round of voting began, although rumors that he talked with Douglas in person are unfounded. Either way, pro-slavery Texas Senator Sam Houston was proposed as a compromise candidate to the convention, and received immediate support from delegations belonging to Atchison, Douglas, and even a few members of Marcy’s New York delegation. Marcy was furious, but enough of his delegates eventually broke for Houston, who was nominated with just over two-thirds of the delegates on July 1 on the 88th ballot. In an unsuccessful attempt to placate Marcy, his fellow New Yorker Congressman William Tweed was nominated for the Vice-Presidency, winning the nomination on the 5th ballot.
The Democratic platform was another source of division. The eventual platform included a plank of popular sovereignty, which alienated the anti-slavery Democrats. By the time the Democrats concluded their convention, it appeared that there would be no repeat of their dominant victory over the Whigs in the previous election.
This was an accurate assessment. Houston’s firm advocacy of slavery played poorly in the North, and his equally firm opposition to the extension of slavery did not inspire many southerners to vote for him. Houston’s repeated statements that directly contradicted his own party’s pro-Popular Sovereignty platform were an additional embarrassment to the already unenthusiastically-supported Democratic ticket. Marcy coldly refused to support Houston in New York. While the popular vote was relatively close (Everett gained 51% of the vote to Houston’s 47%), Everett won the Electoral College handily (208-88) to become the fifth Whig President of the United States.
GREEN: Whig Party, Edward Everett (MA)/Solomon Downs (LA)
RED: Democratic Party, Sam Houston (TX)/William Tweed (NY)