1840 United States presidential election

Election of William Henry Harrison related races 1840 United States elections November 2013 February 2023 1840 United States presidential election United States 1837 presidential no 1836 United States presidential election 1836 1844 United States presidential election 1844 294 members of the Electoral College 148 electoral 80.3% https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present United States Election Project CQ Press 23.9 pp October 30 – November 23, 1840Dubin Michael J. United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State 2002 McFarland & Co. Jefferson, NC xvi x200px William Henry Harrison Portrait (3x4 cropped).jpg William Henry Harrison Whig Party (United States) Anti-Masonic Ohio John Tyler 234 19 1,275,390 52.9% Bust Portrait of Martin Van Buren (Cropped).jpg Martin Van Buren Democratic Party (United States) New York N/AWhile there was no official Democratic nominee, the majority of the Democratic electors still cast their electoral votes for incumbent vice president Richard Mentor Johnson. 60 7 1,128,854 46.8% 350px Presidential election results map. Buff denotes states won by Harrison/Tyler and Blue by Van Buren. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state. President Martin Van Buren Democratic Party (United States) William Henry Harrison Whig Party (United States) Presidential elections were held in the United States from October 30 to December 2, 1840. In the shadow of an incomplete economic recovery from the Panic of 1837, Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent President Martin Van Buren of the Democratic Party. The election marked the first of two Whig victories in presidential elections, but was the only one where they won a majority of the popular vote. This was also the third rematch in American history. In 1839, the Whigs held a national convention for the first time. The 1839 Whig National Convention saw 1836 nominee William Henry Harrison defeat former Secretary of State Henry Clay and General Winfield Scott. Van Buren faced little opposition at the 1840 Democratic National Convention, but controversial Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson was not renominated. The Democrats thus became the only major party since 1800 to fail to select a vice presidential nominee. Referencing vice presidential nominee John Tyler and Harrison's participation in the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Whigs campaigned on the slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." With Van Buren weakened by economic woes, Harrison won a popular majority and 234 of 294 electoral votes. Voter participation surged as white male suffrage became nearly universal,White Manhood Suffrage https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voice/getting-vote/demanding-vote/white-manhood-suffrage National Museum of American History 6 July 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210629070524/https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voice/getting-vote/demanding-vote/white-manhood-suffrage 29 June 2021 English live and a contemporary record of 42.4% of the voting age population voted for Harrison.Between 1828–1928: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections: 1828–2008 The American Presidency Project UC Santa Barbara 2012-11-09 Van Buren's loss made him the third president to lose re-election. The Whigs did not enjoy the benefits of victory. The 67-year-old Harrison, the oldest U.S. president elected until Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, died a little more than a month after inauguration. Harrison was succeeded by John Tyler, who unexpectedly proved not to be a Whig. While Tyler had been a staunch supporter of Clay at the convention, he was a former Democrat, a passionate supporter of states' rights, and effectively an independent. As President, Tyler blocked the Whigs' legislative agenda and was expelled from the Whig Party, subsequently the second independent (after Washington) to serve as president. Van Buren would be the last incumbent president to lose his reelection bid in a general election until fellow Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1888. This was also the last time a challenger to an incumbent president got a majority of the vote until 1932. This was also the last time as of 2024 where the incumbent president seeking re-election flipped a state yet failed to secure re-election, with Van Buren winning South Carolina, despite losing it four years earlier, and losing re-election to Harrison. Nominations Whig Party nomination 1839 Whig National Convention 1840 Whig Party ticket black William Henry Harrison black John Tylerfor Presidentfor Vice President center|200x200px center|200x200px United States Minister for Gran Columbia(1829) U.S. Senatorfrom Virginia(1827–1836)President pro tempore of the Senate(1835)Campaign The first national convention of the Whig Party was called for by members of the party in Congress and it was attended by almost 250 delegates in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Henry Clay, William Henry Harrison, and Winfield Scott ran for the party's presidential nomination. The delegations of each state balloted separately before meeting together with the other representatives of the states. Clay initially led on the first ballot, but Harrison won on the final ballot with 148 votes compared to Clay's 90 votes and Scott's 16 votes after supporters from Scott switched to Harrison. John Tyler was selected as a factional and geographical balance to Harrison.1979 National Party Conventions, 1831-1976 Congressional Quarterly Democratic Party nomination 1840 Democratic National Convention 1840 Democratic Party ticket white Martin Van Burenwhite Nonefor Presidentfor Vice President center|200x200px 8thPresident of the United States(1837–1841) N/A thumb|207x207px|Martin Van Buren, the incumbent president in 1840, whose term expired on March 4, 1841 Democratic members of the New Hampshire General Court made a call for the 1840 Democratic National Convention which was held in Baltimore, Maryland in May 1840. Delegates from twenty-two states attended the convention, but the sizes of the delegations varied with New Jersey having fifty-nine delegates to cast its eight votes while Massachusetts only had one delegate to cast its fourteen votes. A committee was formed to make recommendations for the nominations and the committee supported Van Buren for renomination which was approved by acclamation. However, the vice-presidential nomination was left vacant due to opposition to Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson's personal life. Anti-Masonic Party nomination After the negative views of Freemasonry among a large segment of the public began to wane in the mid-1830s, the Anti-Masonic Party disintegrated. Many leaders began to move to the Whig party. Remaining leaders met in September 1837 in Washington, and agreed to maintain the party. The third Anti-Masonic Party National Convention was held in Philadelphia on November 13–14, 1838. By this time, the party had been almost entirely supplanted by the Whigs. The delegates unanimously voted to nominate William Henry Harrison for president (who the party had supported for president the previous election along with Francis Granger for vice president) and Daniel Webster for vice president. However, when the Whig National Convention nominated Harrison with John Tyler as his running mate, the Anti-Masonic Party did not make an alternate nomination and ceased to function and was fully absorbed into the Whigs by 1840. + Convention vote Presidential vote Vice presidential vote William Henry Harrison 119 Daniel Webster 119 Liberty Party nomination 1840 abolitionist presidential nominating convention James G. Birney, Myron Holley, Joshua Leavitt, and Gerrit Smith proposed the creation of an anti-slavery party. In July 1839, two resolutions proposed by Holley at the American Anti-Slavery Society's meeting in Cleveland, called for the creation of an abolitionist party. They failed. Nevertheless, the supporters nominated Birney and Francis Julius LeMoyne as a presidential ticket at a meeting in Warsaw, New York. However, Birney declined the presidential nomination as he preferred a nomination to be made by a regular body of abolitionists and LeMoyne also declined the vice-presidential nomination. Smith and Holley made a call for an abolitionist nominating convention to be held on April 1, 1840, in Albany, New York. 121 delegates attended the delegation and selected a presidential ticket of Birney and Thomas Earle. which was accepted. It took the name Liberty Party.Hesseltine William B. William B. Hesseltine 1962 33 Third-Party Movements in the United States Van Nostrand Company Birney was unable to campaign during the election as he was in England until November. The Liberty Party received opposition from followers of William Lloyd Garrison and abolitionist Whigs. The Liberty Party received 7,453 votes. General election Campaign thumb|Caricature on the aftermath of the panic of 1837 In the wake of the Panic of 1837, Van Buren was widely unpopular, and Harrison, following Andrew Jackson's strategy, ran as a war hero and man of the people while presenting Van Buren as a wealthy snob living in luxury at the public expense. Although Harrison was comfortably wealthy and well educated, his "log cabin" image caught fire, sweeping all sections of the country. Harrison avoided campaigning on the issues, with his Whig Party attracting a broad coalition with few common ideals. The Whig strategy overall was to win the election by avoiding discussion of difficult national issues such as slavery or the national bank and concentrate instead on exploiting dissatisfaction over the failed policies of the Van Buren administration with colorful campaigning techniques. Log cabin campaign of William Henry Harrison William Henry Harrison 1840 presidential campaign Harrison was the first president to campaign actively for office. He did so with the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too". Tippecanoe referred to Harrison's military victory over a group of Shawnee Native Americans at a river in Indiana called Tippecanoe in 1811. For their part, Democrats laughed at Harrison for being too old for the presidency, and referred to him as "Granny", hinting that he was senile. Said one Democratic newspaper: "Give him a barrel of hard cider, and ... a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year ... and ... he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin."1840: The Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign · Voices and Votes: Democracy on Delmarva · Nabb Research Center Online Exhibits https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/voices/the-machinery-of-democracy/1840--the-log-cabin-and-hard-c 2023-01-07 libapps.salisbury.edu right|thumb|350px|Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of yellow are for Harrison (Whig) and shades of blue are for Van Buren (Democrat). Whigs took advantage of this quip and declared that Harrison was "the log cabin and hard cider candidate", a man of the common people from the rough-and-tumble West. They depicted Harrison's opponent, President Martin Van Buren, as a wealthy snob who was out of touch with the people. In fact, it was Harrison who came from a family of wealthy planters, while Van Buren's father was a tavernkeeper. Harrison however moved to the frontier and for years lived in a log cabin, while Van Buren had been a well-paid government official.September 2022 Nonetheless, the election was held in the wake of the Panic of 1837, one of the worst economic depressions in the nation's history,Campbell Stephen 2020-11-12 Panic of 1837 https://economic-historian.com/2020/11/panic-of-1837/ 2023-01-07 The Economic Historian en-US and voters blamed Van Buren, seeing him as unsympathetic to struggling citizens. Harrison campaigned vigorously and won. Results 31.9% of the voting age population and 80.3% of eligible voters participated in the election.Abramson Aldrich Rohde 1995 99 This was the first time that a majority of southern voters participated in the election. (A majority in the north had first participated in an election in 1828.)Black Black 1992 214 Harrison won the support of western settlers and eastern bankers alike. Of the 1,179 counties/independent cities making returns, Harrison won in 699 (59.29%) while Van Buren carried 477 (40.46%). Three counties (0.25%) in the South split evenly between Harrison and Van Buren. The extent of Van Buren's unpopularity was evident in Harrison's victories in New York, the president's home state, and in Tennessee, where Andrew Jackson himself had come out of retirement to stump for his former vice-president. This was the first time a Democratic president lost re-election, as well as the first of only two times (the other being 1980) that a Democratic president lost re-election and lost the popular vote. This was also the first election in U.S. history in which a candidate won more than a million popular votes. This was the last election where Indiana voted for the Whigs. It was also the only election where the Whigs won Maine, Michigan, and Mississippi. The election was also the last time that a majority of voters in Mississippi voted against the Democrats until 1872, the last in which a majority of voters in Indiana voted against Democrats until 1860, and the last in which a majority of voters in Maine and Michigan voted against Democrats until 1856. This is the only election in American history in which a majority of voters in Alabama and a majority of voters in Mississippi voted for different candidates. The 1840 presidential election was the only time in which four people who either had been or would become a U.S. President (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk) received at least one vote in the Electoral College when it voted for president and vice-president.https://www.270towin.com/1840_Election/ 1840 Presidential Election 23 November 2020 270toWin Harrison's victory won him precious little time as chief executive of the United States. After giving the longest inauguration speech in U.S. history (lasting about 1 hour and 45 minutes, in cold weather and rain), Harrison served only one month as president before dying of pneumonia on April 4, 1841. File: United States Electoral College 1840.svg (a) William Henry Harrison Whig Ohio 1,275,583 52.87% 234 John Tyler Virginia Martin Van Buren (incumbent) Democratic New York 1,129,645 46.82% 60 3 Richard Mentor Johnson (incumbent) Kentucky 48 Littleton W. Tazewell Virginia 11 James K. Polk Tennessee 1 James G. Birney Liberty New York 7,453 0.31% 0 Thomas Earle Pennsylvania 13 0.00% 2,412,694 294 148 Source (Popular Vote): 1840 July 27, 2005 Source (Electoral Vote): 1840 July 31, 2005https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1840&f=0&off=0&elect=0 https://web.archive.org/web/20220120070955/https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1840&f=0&off=0&elect=0 January 20, 2022 live 1840 Presidential General Election Results Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote. Popular vote 600px 410px Harrison Whig Party (United States) 52.88 Van Buren Democratic Party (US) 46.81 Others #777777 0.31 Electoral vote 600px 410px Harrison Whig Party (United States) 79.59 Van Buren Democratic Party (US) 20.41 Geography of results Cartographic gallery Results by state Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–257. States/districts won by Van BurenStates/districts won by Harrison/Tyler William Henry HarrisonWhig Martin Van BurenDemocratic James G. BirneyLibertyMargin State Total State electoralvotes # % electoralvotes # % electoralvotes # % electoralvotes#% # Alabama 7 0001361828,515 45.62 - 0004866933,996 54.38 7 no ballots -5,481 -8.76 62,511 AL Arkansas 3 5,160 43.58 - 6,679 56.42 3 no ballots -1,519 -12.84 11,839 AR Connecticut 8 31,598 55.55 8 25,281 44.45 - no ballots6,31711.10 56,879 CT Delaware 3 5,967 54.99 3 4,872 44.89 - no ballots1,09510.10 10,852 DE Georgia 11 40,339 55.78 11 31,983 44.22 - no ballots8,35611.56 72,322 GA Illinois 5 45,574 48.91 - 47,441 50.92 5 160 0.17 - -1,867 -2.01 93,175 IL Indiana 9 65,302 55.86 9 51,604 44.14 - no ballots13,69811.72 116,906 IN Kentucky 15 58,488 64.20 15 32,616 35.80 - no ballots25,87228.40 91,104 KY Louisiana 5 11,296 59.73 5 7,616 40.27 - no ballots3,68019.46 18,912 LA Maine 10 46,612 50.23 10 46,190 49.77 - no ballots4220.46 92,802 ME Maryland 10 33,528 53.83 10 28,752 46.17 - no ballots4,7767.66 62,280 MD Massachusetts 14 72,852 57.44 14 52,355 41.28 - 1,618 1.28 -20,49716.16 126,825 MA Michigan 3 22,933 51.71 3 21,096 47.57 - 321 0.72 -1,8374.14 44,350 MI Mississippi 4 19,515 53.43 4 17,010 46.57 - no ballots2,5056.86 36,525 MS Missouri 4 22,954 43.37 - 29,969 56.63 4 no ballots -7,015 -13.26 52,923 MO New Hampshire 7 26,310 43.88 - 32,774 54.66 7 872 1.45 - -6,464 -10.78 59,956 NH New Jersey 8 33,351 51.74 8 31,034 48.15 - 69 0.11 -2,3173.59 64,454 NJ New York 42 226,001 51.18 42 212,733 48.18 - 2,809 0.64 -13,2683.00 441,543 NY North Carolina 15 46,567 57.68 15 34,168 42.32 - no ballots12,39915.36 80,735 NC Ohio 21 148,157 54.10 21 124,782 45.57 - 903 0.33 -23,3758.53 273,842 OH Pennsylvania 30 144,010 50.00 30 143,676 49.88 - 340 0.12 -3340.12 288,026 PA Rhode Island 4 5,278 61.22 4 3,301 38.29 - 42 0.49 -1,97722.93 8,621 RI South Carolina 11 no popular vote no popular vote 11 no popular vote - - - SC Tennessee 15 60,194 55.66 15 47,951 44.34 - no ballots12,24311.32 108,145 TN Vermont 7 32,445 63.90 7 18,009 35.47 - 319 0.63 -14,43628.43 50,773 VT Virginia 23 42,639 49.35 - 43,757 50.65 23 no ballots -1,120 -1.30 86,394 VA TOTALS: 294 1,275,585 52.87 234 1,129,645 46.82 60 7,453 0.31 -145,9386.05 2,412,694 US TO WIN: 148 States that flipped from Democratic to Whig Connecticut Louisiana Maine Michigan Mississippi New York North Carolina Pennsylvania Rhode Island States that flipped from Whig to Democratic South Carolina Close states States where the margin of victory was under 1%: Pennsylvania 0.12% (334 votes) Maine 0.46% (422 votes) States where the margin of victory was under 5%: Virginia 1.3% (1,120 votes) Illinois 2.01% (1,867 votes) New York 3.0% (13,268 votes) New Jersey 3.59% (2,317 votes) (tipping point state) Michigan 4.14% (1,837 votes) States where the margin of victory was under 10%: Mississippi 6.86% (2,505 votes) Maryland 7.66% (4,776 votes) Ohio 8.53% (23,375 votes) Alabama 8.76% (5,481 votes) Method of Electoral college selection Each Elector appointed by state legislature South Carolina State's electors chosen as general ticket by plurality of voters statewide The other 25 Campaign songs/slogans Harrison "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" Tip and Ty first.ogg Abbreviated version First verse and chorus. Ogg Tip and Ty again.ogg Full version All twelve verses. Ogg Van Buren Rockabye, baby, Daddy's a Whig When he comes home, hard cider he'll swig When he has swug He'll fall in a stu And down will come Tyler and Tippecanoe. Rockabye, baby, when you awake You will discover Tip is a fake. Far from the battle, war cry and drum He sits in his cabin a'drinking bad rum. Rockabye, baby, never you cry You need not fear of Tip and his Ty. What they would ruin, Van Buren will fix. Van's a magician, they are but tricks. Election paraphernalia and history In the 1997 film Amistad, Van Buren (played by Nigel Hawthorne) is seen campaigning for re-election. These scenes have been criticized for their historical inaccuracy.Foner, Eric (March 1998). "The Amistad Case in Fact and Film" https://web.archive.org/web/20220224192220/http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/74/ February 24, 2022 . See also 1840–1841 United States House of Representatives elections 1840–1841 United States Senate elections History of the United States (1789–1849) Second Party System Notes References Works cited Abramson Paul Aldrich John Rohde David Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections CQ Press 1995 0871878399 Black Earl Earl Black (political scientist) Black Merle Merle Black The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected Harvard University Press 1992 https://archive.org/details/vitalsouthhowpre0000blac 0674941306 Further reading Chambers, William Nisbet. "The Election of 1840" in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (ed.) History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (1971) vol 2; analysis plus primary sources Cheathem, Mark. R. The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) Ellis, Richard J. Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation (U of Kansas Press, 2020) online review Formisano, Ronald P. "The new political history and the election of 1840", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 1993, Vol. 23 Issue 4, pp. 661–82 in JSTOR Gunderson Robert Gray The Log-Cabin Campaign Lexington University of Kentucky Press 1957 Greeley Horace Horace Greeley Recollections of a Busy Life https://archive.org/details/recollectionsab00greegoog 1868 Greeley's description of the 1840 election is posted on Wikisource. Holt, Michael F. "The Election of 1840, Voter Mobilization, and the Emergence of the Second American Party System: A Reappraisal of Jacksonian Voting Behavior", in Holt and John McCardell, eds. A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald (1986); emphasizes economic factors; See Formisano (1993) for criticism Holt Michael F. 1999 The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War Oxford University Press 0-19-505544-6 Leahy, Christopher J. President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU, 2020), a major scholarly biography; excerpt also online review Shade, William G. "Politics and Parties in Jacksonian America", Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 110, No. 4 (Oct. 1986), pp. 483–507 online Zboray, Ronald J., and Mary Saracino Zboray. "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts", Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 277–315 in JSTOR Primary sources Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977) online Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. National party platforms, 1840-1964 (1965) online 1840-1956 External links Presidential Election of 1840: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress "The Campaign of 1840: William Henry Harrison and Tyler, Too" high school level lesson plans and documents 1840 popular vote by counties Election of 1840 in Counting the Votes https://web.archive.org/web/20171213010150/http://www.countingthevotes.com/1840/ December 13, 2017 United States presidential election United States presidential election Category:William Henry Harrison Category:Richard Mentor Johnson Category:Presidency of William Henry Harrison Category:Presidency of Martin Van Buren Category:John Tyler Category:Martin Van Buren