Our Presidents and how we make themMcClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
History
Our Presidents and how we make them
McClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
Presidents -- United States -- Election
Fillmore was the second Vice-President who had succeeded to the
Presidency by the death of the President, and, like Tyler, he reversed
the policy of the party, and estranged the Whigs of the North very
generally from him. After he became President the Compromise Measures
were revived, and Clay made the last great battle of his life as
pacificator. With the power of the administration added, the Clay
Compromise Measures passed both branches of Congress, and were
promptly approved by the President. They declared, first, against the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; second, in favor
of the admission of California as a Free State; third, in favor of a
severely stringent Fugitive Slave law; fourth, for the payment to Texas
of $10,000,000 for yielding her claims to New Mexico, and fifth, in
favor of the admission of Utah and New Mexico as Territories without
restrictions as to slavery.
The passage of the Compromise Measures practically united the
Democratic party, as the friends of slavery extension had won a
substantial triumph, and the Democrats of the North were generally
in harmony with that policy, but it greatly weakened the Whigs in
the North without strengthening them in the South, and Fillmore, and
Webster, then Secretary of State, became rival candidates for the Whig
nomination, while the anti-Compromise or antislavery element of the
Whigs united on General Scott.
When the Democratic National Convention met at Baltimore, June 1, 1852,
the leaders were entirely confident of electing their candidates. John
W. Davis, of Indiana, was made President, and the two-thirds rule
reaffirmed. The sessions of the convention were protracted, lasting six
days, but there was little angry dispute as to either candidates or
measures. There were 49 ballots for President, Cass and Buchanan being
the leading competitors at the start. The Virginia delegation, that was
always potential in Democratic conventions, had become weary of the
hopeless contest between the candidates, and on the 35th ballot cast a
solid vote for Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, whose name had not
up to that time been before the convention. The friends of Cass made
an earnest rally, but were unable to concentrate sufficient strength
to approach the two-thirds vote, and Marcy finally loomed up as the
leading competitor of Pierce. The following table gives the detail vote
on each ballot:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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