HINTS OF MODERN POLITICS

 

As advertised, this posting presents a timeline of Whig Party accomplishments, developments, and policy proposals.  Roughly the timeline begins in the 1820s but ideologically, the ideas of that party began with the Federalists, such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton.  This review, though, starts with the general political environment of the 1820s.

1824 

By way of context, the party started as various members of the Democratic-Republican Party, inflated by former Federalists Party members – who drifted to Jefferson’s party as a result of the War of 1812 – felt uncomfortable with this alignment.  A new thrust took place as that discomfort became more acute and an array of minor “parties” took hold in representing their political beliefs.  For example, in 1824, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay were National Republicans.

With that background, one can find the first organized efforts to attain the White House by these displaced politicians began in 1824.  In the election of that year, there were four major candidates:  nationalist Clay, Secretary of State Adams (whose father was the famous founding father and Federalist president), Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford (who while supporting re-chartering the national bank in 1811 was a champion of state sovereignty), and the war hero, Andrew Jackson. 

Clearly against the national bank was Jackson.  The pro national bank candidates were Clay and Adams.  Of the four candidates, Jackson garnered the most votes but failed to get a majority in either the popular vote or the Electorate College vote.  Per the Constitution, the election was forwarded to the House of Representatives where each state had/has one vote and chooses the winner among the three top vote getters of the general election. 

Clay, since he was third and generally agreed with Adams’ major positions, threw his support to Adams and that proved to be sufficient to win the White House.  Jackson claimed that that arrangement was the product of a “corrupt bargain” and almost immediately began his campaign to become president four years hence.

1825-1828

Shortly afterward, those misplaced Democratic-Republicans, under the leadership of Adams, Clay, and Daniel Webster organized themselves initially under the name, Adams’ Party.  In opposition, Jackson, along with Crawford and John C. Calhoun, led in organizing the supporters of Jackson under the label of Jacksonians.  Highly effective in this latter effort was the organizing role that the New Yorker, Martin Van Buren, played. 

1828-1832

So effective was this other group that by 1828 they were able to defeat Adams’ attempt to win reelection by securing 56 percent of the vote.  Shortly after, they organized permanently as the Democratic Party.  But not all was going swimmingly under this new party’s leadership.  During the years of his term, Jackson developed an animosity toward his vice president, Calhoun. 

It seems Calhoun’s wife involved herself in derogatory talk against recently deceased Rachel, Jackson’s wife.  As the next election day approached, Jackson did not choose Calhoun to be his running mate but instead chose Van Buren.  Consequently, those who supported Adams and Clay felt that their fate was in good stead since the Democrats were hit with this split between Calhoun and the President. 

1832-1833

Beyond the “wife” issue, Calhoun and Jackson disagreed over tariff policy and Calhoun’s backing of South Carolina’s nullification position.[1]  He, Calhoun, resigned as vice president and entered the Senate in 1832.  To remind the reader, the nullification issue came to a boil in the years 1832-1833 and is known as the Nullification Crisis in which South Carolina threatened to not abide by federal law.  While a supporter of states’ rights, Jackson vehemently opposed this nullification position.

Clay proceeded to organize the National Republicans but was defeated in the 1832 election and Jackson achieved a second term.  That election saw for the first time that each party held nominating conventions.  But with the results of that election, the National Republicans would quickly thereafter fall apart as its members mostly evolved into the new Whig Party. 

That newer party was the product of smaller Whig groups that opposed South Carolina’s nullification position but could not align themselves with Jackson.  In short order, National Republicans, Anti-Mason adherents, and others formed a national Whig party.  But while one can detect a “party” of sorts, it was not unified enough and decided to use a curious strategy for the next election in 1836.

In 1833, Clay set out to unite those who opposed Jackson and supported Clay’s “American System” policy positions.  Those positions were made up of three foundational elements:  advocacy for a sufficiently high tariff to protect and encourage American industry, support of a national bank to encourage business activities, and promotion of central government infusing money to advance infrastructure projects such as roads and canals throughout the nation. 

These advocacies by Clay and his allies have been credited, by such historians as Michael Holt, with Whigs winning control of the Senate in 1833.[2]  Through their efforts, they were able to shed the elitist image the National Republicans had.  They also were able to make inroads into the South.

1833-1836

These nationally aligned politicians were mostly united in their opposition to Jackson but with not enough harmony to support one candidate.  The challenge in 1836 was not facing the General – he was completing his second term – but instead his hand-picked successor, Martin Van Buren.  As already alluded to, the Whigs ran various candidates and divided the anti-Jackson vote.  Their plan was to deny Van Buren a majority of Electoral College votes and again win the White House as Adams had done in 1828, but that plan did not succeed, and Van Buren ascended to the presidency.

Adding to the Whig’s diverse base between its northern and southern supporters, there were other factors at play.  There was the lost opportunity when former Jackson’s vice president, Calhoun, withheld his support to any anti-Jackson/Van Buren candidate who refused to adopt his nullification position.  And the Whigs faced an improving economy under the Democrats and Jackson’s leadership.  That proved to be enough to give Jackson the successor he wanted in Van Buren.  Apparently, the Whigs still were not sufficiently united. 

But then the national scene changed a great deal.  And one sees what would become a recurring political storyline:  “what the economy giveth, the economy can taketh away.”  And it did not take long for the economy to face a sudden downturn.  This blog will pick up that part of the story in the next posting by describing how the Panic of 1837 brought to a cessation Democratic rule as a results of the 1840 election. 

1837-1840

But first, their defeat in 1836 convinced the Whigs that for 1840 they needed to be united.  In addition, they had to generate a national policy platform and run a single standard-bearer.  Among their ranks, they were able to elicit, beyond Clay and Webster, the support of many Anti-Masons such as William H. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens and disenchanted Democrats such as Willie P. Mangum, John Berrien, and John Tyler.[3] 

And before leaving this general topic of uniting people under the Whig banner is the general antagonism to the Masons.  It seems the concern there was that organization’s secrecy.  Whigs were big on ending or highly curtailing secrecy in politics.  Generally, they felt that such “behind the curtain” politicking was feeding a strong executive as exemplified by Jackson.  The “American System” should include transparent governance and this business of secret protocols or hidden beliefs seemed to them as being un-American.

Along with this openness, Whigs got into conducting open rallies.  Parades became common events as Whigs drummed up support around the country leading up to 1840.  This furthered their attempts to give them a common touch and counteract the general impression that they were the party of the wealthy or of business interests. 

The campaign ended, as will be further described in the next posting, with the election of William Henry Harrison and that effort is attributed with being the first presidential campaign to actively appeal to average Americans – a strong federalist move.  A lasting campaign slogan in 1840 to which American school children are still taught from that election is “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” 

It, Tippecanoe, refers to Harrison’s military victory in what would become the state of Indiana during the War of 1812.  It reflects the Whigs’ understanding that for a party that represented the business interests of the country, it could only win a national election by proactively attracting those people’s votes that were not directly the targeted beneficiaries of their policies.  A good bit of salesmanship enters the American political landscape and has been there ever since.

But all that would be incorporated in the election not of 1836 which featured Harrison as one of its leading candidates, but of 1840.  Those moves went a long way in establishing the basic format of how national elections were to be conducted in the ensuing years up until today.  While the Whigs experimented with this openness in 1836, it was a full-throated effort leading up to the 1840 victory.

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[1] Calhoun provided a lot of the theory supporting the nullification argument.

[2] Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1999).  For a critique of this book, one can look at a review by Allen C. Guelzo (“The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party:  Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War by Michael Holt,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 22, 2 (Summer 2004), 71-86)), accessed July, 23, 2021, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0022.206/--rise-and-fall-of-the-american-whig-party-jacksonian-politics?rgn=main;view=fulltext .  In that review, Guelzo writes,

Howe reintroduced the Whigs, not as Eastern elitists bent upon wickedly obstructing the righteous class-leveling justice of Jackson/Roosevelt, but as the "sober, industrious, thrifty people," as the party of the American bourgeoisie, attracting the economic loyalty of small businesses and small commercial producers, and enlisting the political loyalty of those who aspired to transformation.

[3] Of course, this last politician will become president and prove not to maintain his support for Clay and the pro-national bank position of the Whigs.