Volume 18 , Issue 41

NW Okie's Journey

This week we are researching past surprises in national elections. That takes us to the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, dated November 6, 1900, Tuesday, page 7, with "Past Surprises In National Elections." And their were no doubt at all of result in 1789 and 1792.

Found on Newspapers.com

In 1900 there was one party or the other had a surprise in store for it in the approaching election, for each appears to be confined of sweeping the country. In fact, the result unpresidential canvasses was usually a surprise to the losing side. Sometimes both parties see the way the election was to go long before the voting takes place, but this is so seldom that it was hardly worth taking into account. For example, nobody at all was in doubt in 1789 and 1792 that Washington would be chosen president.

Washington was so easily "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen" that nobody else was seriously mentioned in connection with he presidency in the election in which he consented to be a candidate. The pre-eminence which made him the commander-in-chief of the American armies in the War of Independence was increased by the successful result of that war, which, according to a British historian, would have been ten times lost to the Americans were it not for the skill, patience and fortitude of Washington and the confidence which he inspired in the hearts of all patriotic Americans.

When the convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 which framed the federal constitution, Washington being one of the seven delegates from Virginia, he was singled out, by the unanimous choice of the delegates of all the states represented, to be that body's residing officer. The only man in the Untied States who had a reputation which was calculated to make him a rival of Washington in any sense was Benjamin Franklin, who was one of Pennsylvania's representatives at the constitutional convention, and franklin, through Robert Morris, another of the Keystone state's delegates, proposed Washington for president of the convention on the opening day of the meetings of that body, Franklin being absent at the moment through ill-health. There was not the slightest surprise, therefore, when Washington was chosen by a unanimous vote of the electoral college in 1789 and 1792 to preside over the nation whose freedom he had done more than any other person to win, and who had been at the head of the convention which had provided it with the charter under which, with a few additional provisions, it had lived ever since.

Did you know there was a very serious contest for the presidency in 1796, on Washington's refusal to accept a third term. The principal candidates in that year were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, though Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Aaron Burr, of New York, received many votes, the person receiving the highest number of votes in the electoral college at that time, if a majority of all, being made president, and the second man vice-president. Jefferson, indeed, wrote to Adams that he, Jefferson, believed Adams was elected. This was just after the voting had taken place in early all the states, and while the country was in profound doubt as to the result. Fisher Ames, one of the Federalist leaders of Massachusetts, who was a supporter of Adams, also seems to have foreseen the result. He declared that Adams would be president and Jefferson vice-president, and said that there would be trouble for the administration, which would injure Adams in the contest in 1800, but that Jefferson would be able to utilize all the elements of hostility to Adams, and would beat Adams in the contest in that year.

Jefferson's and Ames's predictions in 1796 were notable for their accuracy, for Adams's vote in that year was seventy-one and Jefferson's sixty-eight. The transfer of two electoral votes from Adams to Jefferson would have made Jefferson president. Adams got one electoral vote each from states - Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina - which were largely in favor of Jefferson, as shown by the circumstance that Jefferson got all the rest of their votes. At that time the intention of the framers of the constitution, that the electors were to use their own judgment in choosing presidents, was observed. If the later conception, that the elector was merely the gent of the voters, and that he was selected to carry out their will, as dictated at the ballot box, had prevailed in 1796, Jefferson and not Adams would have been made president in that year.

The margin between the leading aspirants of the two parties was broader in 1800 than it was in 1796, and the result, in a large degree, was determined by the canvass in New York in the spring of that year, in which that state, which was carried by Adams in 1796, went to the democrats, foreshadowing a drift to Jefferson. Jefferson and the other prominent Democratic aspirant, Burr, were tied in the electoral college, and this sent the contest to the house of representatives, which, after a long and exciting fight, made Jefferson president, thus carrying out the intention of his party, for the mass of the Democrats undoubtedly wanted Jefferson for the higher office and Burr for the lower. The tie and the danger, as shown from the Federalist intrigues with Burr, that the wrong man might be made president under the original plan of voting in the electoral college, secured the adoption of the twelfth amendment to the constitution in 1804, just in advance of the election of that year, by which each of the electors was required, in casting his two votes, to state which was for president and which for vice-president.

No presidential contest, after 1800 until 1824, was exciting enough to disturb the country in any degree except that of 182, in which De Witt Clinton was the candidate of one element of the democrats against Madison, who was seeking re-election, and Clinton was supported by the federalists. At that time the Federalists were able to make a spurt for the first and last time after their overthrow in Adams's defeat in 1800. Clinton carried all the New England states except Vermont, and also got the electoral votes of New York (his own state) and Delaware, and five of Maryland's eleven. he expected to carry Pennsylvania, and if he had done that he would have been elected, for his aggregate vote was 89, as against 128 for Madison. The federalists never were a serious factor in presidential canvasses afterward, and Monroe in his second election, in 1820, had no opposition, receiving all the votes of the electoral college except one.

Scarcely any presidential contest in American history was more uncertain and exciting than was that of 1824. Half a dozen men were in the presidential race, including Clinton and Calhoun, early in the canvass, but both withdrew before the voting took place, Calhoun letting it be known then that he sought the second office instead of the first. This left four candidates in the field - John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Clay and William H. Crawford - and each called himself a Republican, which was the name of Jefferson's party at the outset, although it adopted the name Democratic soon after 1824, and was sometimes called by that name before that date. The choice of president was not made by the electoral college in 1824, on account of the absence of a majority for any of the four candidates, and the house of representatives was called upon to settle it, as in 1800, which it did by making Adams president. Calhoun had a majority of the electoral college for vice-president.

In the next four presidential contests the winning party got a heavy majority in the electoral college, yet the result, except in the last one of them, that of 1840, was in doubt tot he end. Jackson, who was beaten in the election of 1824 by Adams, defeated Adams in 1828, after an active and exciting canvass. Jackson beat Clay by a much broader margin in 1832, though Clay and the National Republicans, who were his principal supporters, believed to the end of the contest that Clay would carry the country. In 1836 Van Buren, who had the ardent support of Jackson, was elected after a rather one-sided fight.

The Whig party, only two years old at that time, did not unite on a candidate, but the Whigs cast their votes for Webster in New England, for Mangum in part of the South, for Harrison in the West, and for Hugh L. White in another part of the South. By working up all the elements of opposition to the Democrats in this way the Whigs expected to throw the election into the house of representatives, and then trust to chance to give them the presidency. They failed, and Van Buren easily carried the country.

The campaign of 1840 was one of the most extraordinary presidential contests in the history of the country. Shortly before that canvass the Democratic Register, a well-known, able and influential presidential of that day, predicted that the approaching campaign would be the last that the Whig party would ever make, and advised that party to dissolve at that time, and not go to the trouble of waging a contest in which it was sure to be overwhelmingly beaten. Toward the latter part of the canvass a wave of emotion for "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," sept over the country, and though the Democrats retained their confidence to the end, Harrison and Tyler carried nineteen states, as compared with only seven for President Van Buren, who was seeking re-election, and got 234 electoral votes, as against 60 which went to Van Buren.

Did you know that the next two contests, those of 1844 and 1848, were very close, and the result was in doubt to the end. In each case the beaten party was decidedly surprised at the outcome. Clay, the Whig nominee, expected to win in 1844, but he was beaten by the defection of an element of his party in New York, which went to Birney, the candidate of the liberty, or abolition, party, on account of some concessions to slavery which Clay had made in letters written during the campaign. Polk's party was confident of winning in 1848, because of the successful war, that against Mexico, which it had just waged. The Whigs though, following the example of the democrats in nominating Jackson and following their own lead eight years earlier in patting up Harrison, selected a hero of that war, Zachary Taylor, the victor at Buena Vista, and carried the country. The result as in the previous campaign, was determined by the vote of New York, which went to Taylor on account of a split among the Democrats, by which Van Buren's element of the party fought Cast, the regular Democratic candidate, in 1848, because Cass's presidential aspirations in the convention of their party in 1844, as they believed, defeated Van Buren for the Democratic candidacy then, and gave it to Polk.

It was in 1852 that occurred one of the greatest political avalanches in the country's annals. The Whig party nominated a war hero in that year, as in 1840 and 1848, Scott, the commander of the army in the war against Mexico, who had also won fame in the conflict with England a third of a century earlier. The Democrats, after a long contest in their convention, also selected a Mexican war soldier, Franklin Pierce, but though he was a subordinate of Scott, and won no renown whatever in the conflict, he defeated that warrior by a majority which had seldom been approached in magnitude.

At that time the Whig party was weakened, throughout the dominant slavery issue, by defections both in the North and the South, the North abandoning it because of its hand in the passage of the fugitive slave law, and the south turning against it because of an idea that its candidate, Scott, would be under the influence of the anti-slavery men, particularly Seward, if he should be elected. Scott carried only four states and got but 42 electoral votes, 27 states with 254 electoral votes going to Pierce.

The Republicans were surprised in 1856 because they did not carry the country in that year, although the real cause for surprise, as the situation was viewed in 1900, was that they came so near winning as they did. The Republican party was only two years old at the time it nominated Fremont for president. Many of the men who were expected to support its candidate, and who did support him, had not yet adopted the name Republicans, but were vaguely known as Anti-Nebraska men. Fremont had no political reputation, though he had served a short time in congress as one of the senators from California. Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, on the other hand, had been in political station over a third of a century, and had been one of the leaders of his party for over half of that time. Moreover, the conservative element of the country feared that the success of the Republican party would precipitate secession and civil war, as it undoubtedly would have done, and voted for Buchanan on that account.

Nevertheless, the vote of Pennsylvania and either Indiana or Illinois, all three of which the Republicans carried in 1860, would have given the Republicans the victory in 1856.

Even after the split among the democrats in the Charleston convention of 1860, through which the Southern element put up Breckinridge and the Northern faction nominated Douglas, there were many Democrats in the country who imagined that one section or the other of their party would get a majority in the electoral college, especially as a party of negativists, calling themselves Constitutional Unionists, nominated Bell and Everett, both well-known old Whigs, who were expected to draw heavily from he Republicans, but who, in reality, had no following of any consequence except in the South, the Democratic portion of the country. The three opposition parties or sections of parties had just 123 electoral votes in the aggregate, as compared with 180 for Lincoln. In the popular vote the aggregate of the two Democratic factions and the Constitutional Unionists was almost 1-million in excess of that of the Republicans.

Good Night! Good Luck!
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