The Rise and Fall of the Whigs

Upon the re-election of President Andrew Jackson in 1832, Henry Clay set about coalescing the many parties that opposed King Andrew.  Thus, the Whig Party was born in 1833.  By 1836, the Whigs nominated several candidates to oppose Jackson's VP and selected successor, Martin Van Buren.  They went down to defeat.  However, the Whigs held a third of the Senate and 40% of the House.  The party was growing.  In the midterms of 1838, the party increased its representation in both houses of Congress.  The Panic of 1837 earned the president an unwanted nickname: Martin Van Ruin.  1840 would be the year for the Whigs.

William Henry Harrison had been one of the four Whig candidates in 1836, winning the most votes and most states among them.  Despite his age (67), he was nominated as the sole candidate for 1840.  "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" was the slogan that won the presidency.  Better yet, the Whigs took control of the Senate (29 out of 52 seats) and the House (142 out of 242 seats).  Senator Henry Clay prepared a slate of legislation that would reverse Jacksonian policies and finally put his ambitious American System in the driver's seat.  However, President Harrison wasn't as pliant as Clay hoped.  Nonetheless, Harrison was a Whig who would push Whig policies.  There was nothing to stop the abrupt change in direction of the country.

President Harrison died.

After only one month in office, Harrison hadn't done anything yet.  Vice President Tyler, who had retreated to his plantation in Virginia after the inauguration (who needs a useless VP milling in Washington), was called to the capitol.  While Henry Clay was considering who could replace Harrison as president, Tyler took the oath of office.  The Constitution didn't say what happened if a president died in office and wouldn't until 1967.  Worse, Tyler insisted that he was now president and there would be no majority vote in the cabinet to determine what action he could take.  Worse still, Tyler suddenly resumed his Democrat views; he had broken with the party in the wake of the Nullification Crisis but now decided he was more Democrat than Whig.  He vetoed bill after bill from Congress, preventing the implementation of the Whig agenda.  The great victory of 1840 dissolved.

Though the Whigs would win the presidency again in 1848, they never again held the majority in both houses.  The death of President Harrison was also the death of the Whigs as a majority party.  The Whigs remained an opposition party until the mid 1850s, when it was absorbed by the newly-formed Republican Party.

Van Buren vs. 4 Whigs

In 1824, Henry Clay was Speaker of the House and one of four Democratic Republicans running for president.  The others were Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford.  Clay correctly predicted that no one would win the majority, which would throw the election of president to the House of Representatives.  As Speaker, he liked his odds of being selected there.  His plan was ruined when he placed 4th and the House could only consider the top three candidates.  Drats!

Twelve years later, Henry Clay's nascent Whig Party was pitted against Jackson's Vice President, Martin Van Buren.  The Whig Party was only a couple of years old and Clay - who had the best name recognition - chose not to run in 1836.  Instead, hearkening back the 1824, the Whigs fielded a slate of candidates, each running in states where they had the best chance at winning.  All they needed to do was prevent Van Buren from winning a majority of the electoral votes, which would let the House pick from the top contenders.

William Henry Harrison, who had largely vanished from politics more than a decade before, proved to be the most popular of the Whigs, winning 7 states and 37% of the popular vote.

Hugh White, a senator from Tennessee, won 2 states and 10% of the vote.

Daniel Webster, the famous orator and senator from Massachusetts, carried his home state and 3% of the vote.

Willie Mangum, yet another senator, carried South Carolina.  This was odd as he was the senator for North Carolina, which voted for Van Buren.

Despite the number of candidates arrayed against him, Martin Van Buren won a majority of the votes, nearly 51% and carried 15 states.

Though the gambit didn't pay off for the Whigs, they did discover which of their candidates they should run in the next election.  William Henry Harrison, Hero of the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe and noted General from the War of 1812, had shown the most nationwide support.  It was thus no surprise when he was selected as the sole Whig candidate to face Van Buren in 1840.

Three Time Loser: The Whig Party

In the wake of the War of 1812, Henry Clay proposed his American System.  He called for a high tariff to protect and encourage American manufacturing, infrastructure spending to foster domestic commerce, more funding for national defense, a national bank to provide credit, and Federal assumption of state debt.  This eventually became the foundation for the Whig Party nearly 2 decades later.  Though President John Quincy Adams liked the American System, the Congress was not inclined to pass it.  Clay's stint as Secretary of State was busy but not noteworthy; it was mostly a case of maintaining the status quo with minor tweaks.

In the wake of the 1824 election, the Democratic-Republican party splintered.  Jackson had founded the Democratic Party (which is the one that exists today) and Adams became a National Republican.  There were other splinter parties such as the Anti-Masonic and Nullifier. In 1828, the rematch took place and Jackson crushed Adams.  Clay found himself out of government but now he was looking toward a rematch.   Clay was back in the Senate in 1831, a 20-year gap since his last service in that deliberative body.

In 1832, Clay was the nominee for the National Republican Party.  Like the 1824 election, there were multiple candidates though they each represented different parties.  There was John Floyd for the Nullifier Party and William Wirt for the Anti-Masonic Party.  Jackson proved too popular and the opposition too disorganized.  Clay won less than 40% of the vote and 49 electoral votes to Jackson's 54% of the vote and 219 electoral votes.  It was Clay's second losing run at the presidency.

Clay set about coalescing the anti-Jacksonians into a single party: The Whigs.  In Britain, the Whigs had opposed absolute monarchy and Clay viewed Jackson in that light.  In 1836, Jackson held with tradition of only serving two terms.  His chosen successor, Martin Van Buren, ran as the Democratic nominee.  Though Clay's Whig Party had assembled the various anti-Jacksonians, it was unable to settle on a single candidate.  As such, 1836 saw 4 Whigs facing Van Buren; Clay was not one of them.  Would the multiplicity of candidates lead to a contingent election like in 1824?  No.  Van Buren won, but the Whigs did secure seats in Congress.

In 1837, the Whigs controlled a third of the seats in the Senate and 40% in the House.  Clay had high hopes for the election of 1840.  Martin Van Buren - "Martin Van Ruin" - had presided over a disastrous economy and his re-election chances didn't look strong.  Though Clay sought the nomination, General William Henry Harrison was selected at the Whig National Convention; he had had the strongest showing of the 4 Whigs in 1836.  Harrison defeated Van Buren and the Whigs seized both the Senate and the House of Representatives!  Oh, happy days!  Clay was eager to implement the American System, but then disaster struck.  Harrison died only 1 month into his presidency and Vice President Tyler proved not to be quite the convert to the Whig Party as thought.

When the Party Cracked

In 1848, President Polk could claim success on all four of his campaign promises.  He had reduced tariffs, reestablished an independent treasury, settled the Oregon boundary with Great Britain, and acquired California from Mexico.  Promises made and promises delivered.  This should have been a boon to his party.  Instead, his success broke his party.  That vast stretch of land was now up for grabs between the free states and the slave states.  Many northern Democrats weren't keen on the extension of slavery.  These voters split from the Democratic Party to join the Free Soil Party.  Former President Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) was chosen as the presidential nominee and Charles Francis Adams - son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams - as the VP nominee.  Though the Free Soil Party didn't earn a single electoral vote, it did manage to accumulate 10% of the popular vote.  The Free Soil Party out-performed the Democrats in three states.

Of course, Vermont and Massachusetts had voted for Henry Clay (Whig) in 1844, so Van Buren did little damage to the Democrats there. The important state was New York with 36 electoral votes.  In 1844, President Polk carried the state by a margin of 5,100 votes.  Native New Yorker Van Buren took all those votes and much more.  General Taylor, the Whig candidate, defeated Lewis Cass by an electoral vote of 163 to 127.  If Cass had carried New York, that would have been exactly reversed.  Van Buren knew full well that he had no chance of winning and that he was almost certainly handing the presidency to the Whigs, but he had moved toward the abolitionist camp over the years.

This was the second - and final - time that the Whigs won the presidency.  Like the previous time, the president died during his term: Harrison had only served a month as president and Taylor died after 16 months.  By the next presidential election, it was the Whig Party that unraveled.  By the mid 1850s, the disaffected Democrats, the Free Soil Party, the American Party, and various other splinter groups formed the Republican Party.