1844 Democratic National Convention

Proceedings

At the outset of the convention, the leading contender was former President Martin Van Buren of New York, who had been defeated in the 1840 election. His principal opponent was Lewis Cass of Michigan, who had served as United States Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson. The annexation of Texas was a major issue. Van Buren publicly opposed immediate annexation because it might lead to a sectional crisis over the status of slavery in the West. This position cost Van Buren the support of Southern and expansionist Democrats, but he believed that backing annexation would cost him the support of his fellow New Yorkers and other Northeasterners.

Van Buren's supporters arrived at the convention with a majority of the delegates pledged to support him on the first ballot. Cass, meanwhile, had support from a handful of Southern states, but far fewer delegates pledged to him. At the previous convention, in 1840, a majority of votes had been sufficient to secure the nomination, but this had been a departure from the party's previous rule requiring a two-thirds majority.

Early in the proceedings, Senator Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, in cooperation with Senator (and future president) James Buchanan of Pennsylvania called for reinstatement of the 1832 and 1835 convention rule requiring the nominee to win two-thirds of the votes. Following a historical pattern in which a minority faction of Northern Democrats delivered votes to produce southern wing victories for pro-slavery legislation, the Van Burenite delegates split over the pivotal vote. Fully one-third of the pro-Van Buren delegates (52 of 154) voted to reinstate the two-thirds rule, along with 90 of 104 anti-Van Buren delegates, producing a final vote of 148 to 116. The rule would remain in place until the 1936 Democratic National Convention, when it was revoked by supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Presidential nomination

Presidential candidates

File:Martin Van Buren circa 1837 crop.jpg|Former President Martin Van Buren of New York File:Lewis Cass crop.jpg|Former Ambassador to France Lewis Cass of Michigan File:Richard Mentor Johnson A29919 (cropped 3x4).jpg|Former Vice President Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky File:James Buchanan painted by J. Eichholtz.jpg|Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania File:George Peter Alexander Healy - John C. Calhoun - Google Art Project.jpg|Secretary of State John C. Calhoun of South Carolina File:Secretary of the Navy, Levi Woodbury.jpg|Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire

Van Buren supporters persisted in spite of the two-thirds rule setback, garnering 146 votes for their candidate on the first ballot, a 55% simple majority, but short of the now required 177 votes. Middle and Deep South pro-annexationists opposed Van Buren 75 to 3, depriving northern anti-annexationists the 31 votes needed for victory.

Support for Van Buren dwindled in subsequent ballots from 146 to 99, at which point Van Burenites were reduced to blocking nominations of numerous candidates, among them James Buchanan, Lewis Cass of Michigan, John C. Calhoun, and Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire. Incumbent President John Tyler, a former Democrat who was elected to the vice presidency on the 1840 Whig Party ticket, also hoped to win the support of delegates, but he was unable to find any backers. If the Democratic Party was to avoid dissolution at a national level, an acceptable nominee, fully committed to immediate annexation would be required, yet capable of unifying the party in the general election. Van Buren was open to deferring to Senator Silas Wright of New York, but Wright was a major supporter of Van Buren for president and had already declined to be considered.

On the eighth ballot, the historian George Bancroft, a delegate from Massachusetts, proposed former Speaker of the House of Representatives James K. Polk as a compromise candidate. Polk, who had also served as Governor of Tennessee, had entered the convention in hopes of becoming the vice presidential nominee. Despite Polk's fervent advocacy for annexation, he had remained loyal to Van Buren throughout the Texas controversy, and anti-annexationist Van Burenites were willing to accept Polk, with reservations, having already recognized him as a suitable vice-presidential choice to have complemented a Van Buren ticket. Southern Democrats benefited from the Tyler-Calhoun machinations in eliminating Martin Van Buren as a presidential candidate, and clearing the way for the pro-annexation nationalist Polk. On the ninth ballot, Van Buren instructed his delegates to support Polk, beginning a stampede to Polk that ended with him winning the nomination unanimously.

Despite Whig efforts to cast Polk as an unknown – "Who is James K. Polk?" they asked rhetorically – he was respected as an effective political operator. His sobriquet "The Young Hickory" contained a dual reference, one to his mentor Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson, and one to the term Young America, a reference to an international movements struggling to establish republican forms of government and the overthrow of monarchies and ascribed to Manifest Destiny Democrats. As a national imperialist, he exhibited an unwavering support for Manifest Destiny, perceived as a non-sectional devotion to expansionism, whether slave-soil Texas or free-soil Oregon Territory. Polk argued that Texas and Oregon had always belonged to the United States by right. He called for "the immediate reannexation of Texas" and for the "reoccupation" of the disputed Oregon territory. Polk's political reputation was expected to diffuse northern Democratic resentment towards the Slavepower, while delivering Texas to the Deep South.

File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination1stBallot.png|1st Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination2ndBallot.png|2nd Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination3rdBallot.png|3rd Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination4thBallot.png|4th Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination5thBallot.png|5th Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination6thBallot.png|6th Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination7thBallot.png|7th Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination8thBallot.png|8th Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination9thBallotBefore.png|9th Presidential Ballot Before Shifts File:1844DemocraticPresidentialNomination9thBallotAfter.png|9th Presidential Ballot After Shifts

Vice presidential nomination

Vice presidential candidates

File:George Mifflin Dallas 1848 crop.png|Former Minister to Russia George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania File:JohnFairfield (cropped).jpg|Senator John Fairfield of Maine File:Levi Woodbury SecNavy.jpg|Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire File:Lewis Cass crop.jpg|Former Ambassador to France Lewis Cass of Michigan File:Richard Mentor Johnson A29919 (cropped 3x4).jpg|Former Vice President Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky File:Commodore Charles Stewart 1841.jpg|United States Navy Captain Charles Stewart of Pennsylvania File:William L. Marcy - Brady-Handy.jpg|Former Governor William L. Marcy of New York

Declined

Image:GovSilasWrightNY.png|Senator Silas Wright of New York

Polk and Richard Mentor Johnson had both campaigned for the vice presidency prior to the convention, but with Polk's nomination for president, the party looked to the northern states for a running mate.

The anti-annexationist Silas Wright, US Senator from New York, was nominated almost unanimously on the first ballot, but when he was informed by telegraph at the US Capitol, Wright declined: this was partly out of refusal to support a ticket backing the annexation of Texas, and partly because he did not want to be accused of intriguing against Van Buren to benefit himself. Wright refused to reconsider despite Democratic Party attempts to convince him to do so.

On the second ballot, John Fairfield attracted significant support, but this was not even close to the 184 votes required for nomination: on the third ballot, the convention settled on George M. Dallas, a conservative from Pennsylvania.

File:1844DemocraticVicePresidentialNomination1stBallot.png|1st Vice Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticVicePresidentialNomination2ndBallot.png|2nd Vice Presidential Ballot File:1844DemocraticVicePresidentialNomination3rdBallot.png|3rd Vice Presidential Ballot

In popular culture

The basic events of the convention are outlined in the song "James K. Polk" by the rock band They Might Be Giants.

References

References

1. (2016-10-04). "James K. Polk: Campaigns and Elections".
2. Freehling, 1991, p. 429: "Van Burenites would possess a simple majority for their man on the first presidential ballot" and demanded a 50% plus one vote system. And "The Democratic Convention of 1840 had been run on that principle"
3. Widmer, 2005, p. 150: "Although they knew they were wounded [by the Hammett Letter] Van Buren's supporters still expected to prevail over a field of weaker candidates."
4. Widmer, 2005, p. 151
5. Freehling, 1991, p. 429
6. Freehling, 1991, p. 429: "...Van Buren's original 146 delegates had dropped to 99, sufficient to prevent any other candidates' two-third majority."
7. Wilentz, 2008, p. 569-570: "The Hunker-backed presidential hopefuls had stayed the course – Lewis Cass, James Buchanan, and Levi Woodbury..." as part of the efforts to enforce the two-thirds rule.
8. Southern intransigence had succeeded in eliminating Van Buren and his stand on Texas annexation.Wilentz, 2008, p. 568: The Hammet Letter "was the most courageous act of his political career."
9. Freehling, 1991, p. 429-430: "The party, in peril of dissolution...needed a new candidate acceptable to all factions."
10. Wilentz, 2008, p. 569: When the 2/3 rule was adopted "Van Buren's chances sharply dwindled."
11. (2003). "Party of the People". Random House.
12. Freehling, 1991, p. 430: "Young Hickory, as Polk was called...stood positioned as the southern annexationist best suited to heal party wounds by becoming Van Buren's vice-presidential nominee." "Van Burenites grumpily agreed that so acceptable" a running mate "could move up the ticket"and "Polk's...version of annexation was less obnoxious to the North."
13. Wilentz, 2008, p. 570: "On the eighth ballot...announced for a candidate new to field who had personal endorsement of Andrew Jackson."
14. Wilentz, 2008, p. 571-572: [Democrats] seem to have succumbed to Calhoun's plotting and, by rejecting Van Buren, capitulated to the pro-slavery South...the outcome was actually more complicated...To Democrats it was an effort to surmount sectionalism with democratic nationalist expansionism and to achieve equilibrium after what looked like the Calhounites' coup."
15. Widmer, 2005, p. 157: Van Buren "worked hard to swing New York for Polk..."
16. Holt, 2005, p. 11: "Van Buren's disappointed followers loyally supported Polk's candidacy..."
17. Wilentz, 2008, p. 571: "Less well known to the electorate that either Van Buren or Clay - prompting Whigs to chant derisively,'Who is James K. Polk?' - he was well known in Washington as one of the most capable of the younger border-state Jacksonians..."
18. Wilentz, 2008, p. 563: "The name ascribed to and embraced" by advocates of Manifest Destiny "had been borrowed from the insurgent liberals...of Italy" and "there were, in time, many others in the international movement..."
19. Freehling, 1991, p. 430: Polk promised he "would propel democracy and enterprise forward by annexing both Texas and Oregon."
20. Wilentz, 2008, p. 570: Wright declined: "To do otherwise...would have been a renunciation of both his personal loyalties and his highest principles (The convention settled on the conservative...George M. Dallas)."
21. Flansburgh, J. and J. Linnell, 1996, "James K. Polk" ''Factory Showroom''