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
In several of the States they harmonized on an electoral ticket. They
did it by printing two electoral tickets for the two wings of the
opposition. On one ticket the first candidate for elector was John C.
Fremont, and on the other ticket was the name of Millard Fillmore.
The understanding was that if the Union electoral ticket succeeded,
the entire vote, less the one lost by using the names of Fillmore and
Fremont, should be cast for either candidate if thereby he could be
elected, and if such united vote would not elect either candidate the
vote was to be divided between Fillmore and Fremont, as the voters
indicated by the first name at the head of the ticket.
In common with the great mass of conservative Whigs who were at first
greatly disappointed in the nomination of Fremont and the radical
attitude of the new Republican party, I gradually drifted into the
contest because of the offensive deliverances on slavery made by the
Cincinnati platform. I knew Mr. Buchanan personally, and if I could
have obeyed my individual preferences as to a candidate, would have
voted for him. The slavery issue soon became so sharply defined
that the great mass of the Whigs of the North fell in to the support
of Fremont. There was considerable defection of prominent Whigs in
Buchanan’s State, embracing the Reeds, the Ingersolls, the Whartons,
the Randalls, and others of Philadelphia, whose conservative Whig
views, with their great personal respect for Buchanan, influenced them
to support him. Buchanan was not a magnetic man, not a popular man in
the common acceptation of the term, but he was respected by all not
only for his ability, but for his integrity and generally blameless
reputation. He was a very courteous gentleman, but the multitude did
not rush into his arms as it did into the arms of Clay and Blaine, and
it is quite probable that his bachelor life, a destiny given him by a
devotion with tragic end, doubtless made him less genial than he might
have been.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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