Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Campaign of 1848

American Presidential Elections

by Joel H. Silbey

The presidential campaign of 1848 saw the first strong electoral challenge to the expansion of slavery in the United States; most historians consider the appearance of the Free Soil Party in that election a major turning point of the nineteenth century. The three-way race capped a decade of political turmoil that had raised the issue of slavery to unprecedented prominence on the national stage and brought about critical splits in the two major parties.

In the first book in four decades devoted to the 1848 election, Joel Silbey clarifies our understanding of a pivotal moment in American history. The election of Whig Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War, over Democrat Lewis Cass and Free Soiler Martin Van Buren followed a particularly bitter contest, a fierce political storm in an already tumultuous year marked by the first significant attempt by antislavery advocates to win the presidency.

Silbey describes what occurred during that election and why it turned out as it did, offering a nuanced look at the interaction of the forces shaping the direction of politics in mid-nineteenth century America. He explains how the Free Soilers went about their reform movement and why they failed as they ran up against the tenacious grip that the existing two-party structure had on the political system and the behavior of the nation’s voters.

For Whigs and Democrats it was politics as usual as they stressed economic, cultural, and ideological issues that had divided the country for the previous twenty years. Silbey describes the new confrontation between the force of tradition and a new and different way of thinking about the political world. He shows that ultimately, when America went to the polls, northerners and southerners alike had more on their minds than slavery. Nevertheless, while Van Buren managed to attract only 10 percent of the vote, his party’s presence foreshadowed a more successful challenge in the future.

Emphasizing both persistent party commitments and the reformers’ lack of political muscle, Silbey expertly delineates the central issues of an election framed by intense partisanship and increasing sectional anger. If 1848 did not yet mark the death rattle of traditional politics, this insightful book shows us its importance as a harbinger of change.

Genres: American History

214 pages, Hardcover

First published March 11, 2009

About the author

A specialist in mid-19th century American politics, Joel H. Silbey was Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University, where he taught from 1966 until his retirement in 2002. A graduate of Brooklyn College, Silbey earned his master’s degree in 1956 and Ph.D. in 1963 from the University of Iowa. In addition to teaching at Cornell, Silbey taught as an assistant professor at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University), the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maryland.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

If, as Ralph Waldo Emerson prophesied, the conquest of Mexico in 1848 acted like a poison to the United States, then the first signs of its effects can be seen in the presidential election of 1848. In that year, as the Democratic and Whig parties maneuvered to claim the office, the question of slavery in the territories newly acquired from Mexico threatened to create sectional schisms within national politics. The failure of the two political parties to address the divisive issue led anti-slavery activists to form a new political party, the Free Soil Party, which sought to harness disaffected voters and elect former president Martin Van Buren to the White House on a platform of opposing the extension of slavery into the new territories. This issue and the role it played in the presidential campaign is at the core of Joel Silbey's book, which offers readers a history of a campaign that was in many ways a harbinger of the conflicts to come.

Silbey begins with a description of the political scene in the 1840s, one in which the "Second American Party System" was in full force. Having fully matured after their formative period in the early 1830s, Whigs and Democrats fought each other for office along well-established ideological lines, offering competing visions of national development and political power. The election of 1844 brought James Polk to the presidency, a Democrat of great determination whose controversial policies rapidly polarized public opinion. Though he declined to run for another term, the 1848 presidential election was fought in Polk's shadow, as it was his expansionist program which brought the issue of extending slavery to the forefront of national politics. Despite the best efforts of the Free Soilers, however, Silbey argues (perhaps unsurprisingly, given his longstanding advocacy of the primacy of party politics in the era) that prevailing partisan affiliations proved in the end to be more enduring than anti-slavery passions, with the Southerner Zachary Taylor emerging triumphant in the end.

A longtime historian of the period, Silbey provides a brisk and informative narrative account of the 1848 presidential election. Though lacking some of the insightful analysis of some of the other volumes in the University Press of Kansas's "American Presidential Elections" series, this is nonetheless a useful addition to it, one that makes a convincing case for the resiliency of the party system. Yet as Silbey points out in his conclusion, the Free Soil supporters would gain their own victory down the road, as Abraham Lincoln would win election a dozen years later on what was essentially the Free Soil platform. In this sense, the lasting significance of election of 1848 was as just one of the initial stages in the long, drawn-out crisis that would ultimately lead to secession and civil war, one that the two parties' policy of avoidance did nothing to address.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's about as interesting a book you can find on election contested between two peoples who were not major figures in American politics: Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass. What's more interesting is that this election was pretty much the last one where people still picked their party over their region. People still were not quite exactly ready to vote on the basis of their stance on slavery.

But they would be soon.

[Jason S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and detailed account of American politics 1845-1848. Persuasively argues that 1848 was not a beginning of the rise of sectional interests, but instead was a sign of the strength of the party system despite the rise of the Free Soil Party and the expansion of slavery.

[Bryan Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is part of the wonderful University of Kansas Press election series. It does not disappoint, well researched and well written.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazon reviews

The Making of the President 1848

There is much to be learned from Joel Silbey's recounting of the US Presidential election of 1848 and the author covers all of the bases. Professor Silbey discusses the political climate going into the election, the issues of the day, the divisions within the two major political parties (leading to formation of the third party, the Free Soil Party), the battles within each party for the presidential nomination, and the campaign for the presidency.

Elections were much different in the antebellum period, long before the electronic media and the 24 hour news cycle, and this is what I especially enjoyed about this book - the author's description of what it was like to attend a convention, to campaign, to get out the vote and to actually cast one's ballot in 1848. The era has its still spin doctors and campaign managers, but at a time when candidates did not make speeches, and when their message was spread through letters published in partisan newspapers, the author gives the reader a wonderful flavor of the 1848 presidential election experience.

In 1848, the United States had undergone great expansion following the Mexican War and the treaty with Britain settling the boundaries of the Oregon Territory. The issue on everyone's mind was slavery. Would the newly acquired territories become free states or slave states, that was the question on everyone's minds. This issue divided parties geographically and led to the formation of a significant third party. National campaigns of the two parties had to walk a tightrope on this issue, trying to maintain support in all areas of the country, while avoiding defections to the Free Soil movement.

Professor Silbey's analysis of the campaign and his post mortem of the election results are fascinating, as he gives the reader an understanding of what significance to place on voting patterns in the various states and regions. He ably makes the case for why the election of 1848 was a pivotal one for the future of the nation, and how conditions at the time were the kindling for what would later become the crisis of the Civil War.

In 156 pages, Professor Silbey gives the reader a tremendous understanding of the issues and the times. His analysis is brilliant and his detail is fascinating. This book will delight anyone with an interest in antebellum United States.

Rule 62 Ken

[James Dempsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flashpoint election! or so I claimed.

[Karl Rove]

The University of Kansas Press has long provided a valuable service to students of the American Presidency with its terrific volumes on each of America’s chief executives. Now the University of Kansas Press has done fans of American politics a great favor by commissioning volumes on each presidential election, all by noted historians.

Cornell Professor Joel Sibley is an expert in the antebellum era and tackles the 1848 presidential election that featured a three-way contest between a southern slave-holding Whig, Zachary Taylor; a northern Democratic Senator, Lewis Cass; and former president Martin Van Buren, running as the candidate of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.

Silbey focuses on the messages each party used to attract votes in an election where the issue of slavery in the territories was roiling opinion in both existing parties and providing energy for a new political party committed to no expansion of slavery in the vast new lands under American control as a result of the Mexican-American war.

Sibley shows, whoever, that Free Soil anti-slavery sentiments played less of a role in the outcome than might be expected. Democratic defections in New York State to Free Soil largely because of personal loyalty to home state favorite Van Buren handed the electoral votes of the largest state in the Union to Taylor and the Whigs, but Whig defections to Free Soil in Indiana and Ohio handed an equal number of electoral votes to Democrat Cass.

More important than Free Soil anti-slavery sentiment were the differing abilities of the parties to turnout their adherents. Turnout dropped to 72% from the 80% who had voted in 1844 and the Whigs did a better job of getting its supporters to vote than did the Democrats, especially in the north.

But even the variation in turnout by party doesn’t explain all the contest, Sibley argues. The Florida 2000 or Ohio 2004 of 1848 was Pennsylvania, an historically Democratic state. And there the Whigs won in the coal counties, as normally Democratic miners either crossed over or stayed home and gave this battleground state to the Whigs.

At times dry and, after the conventions, focused more on strategy and messages than events (as is perhaps necessarily the case in the age before candidates went on the campaign trail or big large national newspapers set the tone), Sibley’s volume is an easy, sharp and interesting look at an election where the stirrings of deep, irreconcilable feelings on slavery both north and south first appear.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good overview of the 1848 election. The description of political party infighting might be a bit too "inside baseball" for a general reader.

[Mark Cheathem]

My full review will be in a future issue of Civil War Book Review. In a nutshell, solid introduction to the 1848 election, with a couple of minor omissions.