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
It was not a representative convention, as although over six hundred
delegates attended, a majority of them were from Maryland alone,
but each State was allowed to cast the vote corresponding with its
representation in Congress. Van Buren was nominated unanimously on the
1st ballot, and Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was made the candidate
for Vice-President, receiving 178 votes, with 87 cast for William
C. Rives, of Virginia. The two-thirds rule was reaffirmed in the
convention, and even after Johnson had been nominated under the rule
Virginia refused to approve the action of the convention presenting him
as the candidate for Vice-President. No platform was adopted and no
address was issued by the body to the people of the country.
The prominent candidates presented in opposition to Van Buren were
General William H. Harrison and Judge John McLean, of Ohio; Daniel
Webster, of Massachusetts, and Judge Hugh L. White, of Tennessee.
Willie P. Mangum, who received the electoral vote of South Carolina
chosen by the Legislature, was not a candidate before the people, and
it is remarkable that South Carolina, at war with Jackson on the right
of nullification, cast her electoral vote for Mangum, who was one of
the leaders of the Whig party and afterward distinguished as a Whig
United States Senator.
No attempt was made to bring these opposing opposition elements
together. Harrison was first nominated at Harrisburg, Penn., by two
State conventions, both meeting ostensibly as anti-Masons, the one
being Democratic and the other inclining to the new Whig organization,
and he was also presented by Legislatures and mass-meetings in other
States. Webster was nominated by the Whig Legislature of Massachusetts,
and Judge White was nominated by the Legislatures of Tennessee and
Alabama, and by mass-meetings in different sections of the South.
He was then a United States Senator from Tennessee, but at war with
Jackson, and he was confessedly the strongest opponent of Jackson in
the entire South. The fact that he could command a nomination from the
Democratic Legislature of Tennessee while Jackson was President is the
best evidence of his exceptional popularity with the people, and it was
proved also by him carrying the electoral vote of the State over Van
Buren by a decided majority. Judge McLean gradually dropped out of the
fight, as he was from Harrison’s State, and Harrison soon developed as
much the strongest candidate of the entire opposition competitors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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