WI Henry C. Murphy nominated instead of Franklin Pierce?

Apparently at the 1852 DNC when the Virginia delegation were looking for a compromise candidate, future President Franklin Pierce was made nominee by just one vote over former Representative and Brooklyn Mayor Henry C. Moore.

What if that one vote was reversed? Or would it be an "in spite of a nail" situation?
 
I spent some time a couple of years back trying to research the Henry Murphy legend. As far as I can tell, the only source for it comes in Murphy's obituary, written in (IIRC) the 1880s, thirty-odd years after the event. All other sources point to either each other or, ultimately, that obituary, which makes me rather sceptical of the whole thing. I can believe that a boast ("You know, I was at the deadlocked convention that nominated Franklin Pierce; perhaps I could have been nominated instead!") grew into a family legend and snuck into his obituary that way. I know that stranger nominees have emerged (a one-term congressmen from Illinois, for example) but Murphy doesn't look very available to me as a candidate in 1852; he's a two-term congressmen and sometime member of the New York state legislature, instead of Franklin Pierce, a war-hero, senator and de facto leader of his state's Democratic Party. Something just doesn't smell right about the whole business.

With that said...

From what little I know of Murphy, there's not a lot to go on for his presidency. He was a War Democrat in OTL, which is encouraging. The real interesting question is OTL's Kansas-Nebraska Act; in OTL, Pierce initially refused to support it, correctly regarding it as a threat to sectional harmony, but was talked around by Stephen Douglas and his cabinet. Even if a hypothetical President Murphy changes nothing else about the 1853-1857 term, that would be an enormous change. It preserves the shaky period of sectional peace after the Compromise of 1850 and probably prevents the rise of the Republican Party. The Know-Nothing movement, which in OTL stormed to success in the 1850s and then was smothered by the rise of Republicanism and political anti-slavery might do better out of this. Somebody on this forum once suggested that Murphy's name looks Irish (though as far as I know, he wasn't) which gives the whole 'Democrats are supported by Catholic immigrants' line a sharper edge. All in all, a very interesting timeline could be written on the subject, even if one has to squint at the whole Murphy legend.
 
Murphy was a historian and owned a newspaper.

True, and as I say, stranger nominees have emerged, but I'm still a bit sceptical of the story given it's lack of evidence. Not that that should dissuade you; as I say, the possibility of an alt-Franklin Pierce is a incredibly interesting divergence, whether that's Murphy or somebody else; given that the 1852 Convention ran to 49 ballots, there's no telling what might happen in an ATL.
 
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