The campaign was not so exciting as that of 1832, and lacked the hysteria of the stump which characterized that of 1840. The newspapers were relied upon largely for propaganda, and the “Globe” was summoned to herculean efforts. To meet the work of Blair, a campaign paper, called the “Appeal,” was established in Washington to advocate the claims of White. The “Telegraph,” edited by the frenzied Duff Green, viciously attacked both Jackson and Van Buren. And the work of these papers colored that of all the minor papers of the country. But the people remained calm and indifferent. The attacks upon the candidates, many bald slanders, stirred no one but the politicians. The custom of interrogating candidates had now become fixed, and the three aspirants were bombarded with questions covering a multitude of subjects.
The followers of Calhoun feverishly continued their efforts to embarrass Van Buren on the abolition movement. From North Carolina came a demand for his position on the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. His answer was not as definite as the questioner had hoped. There was no question as to the right of Congress to act in the District, but the wily candidate had no intention to give a curt reply. His answer was that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery in the States—a question not put; and that he was opposed to the abolishment of slavery in the District by congressional action—which was not a reply at all.
Then followed the questions of the Equal Righters, or Locofocos, as they were dubbed in New York by the “Courier and Enquirer,” as to Van Buren’s position on their “declaration of rights.” The reply of the Red Fox, that his long public career furnished a sufficient illumination of his position on the general principles of the new party, was considered by the Locos as an “evasion,” and denounced as unsatisfactory “to any true Democrat.”
Meanwhile Clay was exercising an unnatural restraint on his partisan zeal, remaining in strict retirement at Ashland, tending his cattle, looking over his fields, writing an occasional letter, and meditating a retirement from the Senate before the next session. During the preceding winter, the death of a favorite daughter had crushed him to the earth. He keenly felt the apparent neglect of his party. In the canvass he took no part. It was not until the campaign was nearing its close, in October, that he appeared upon the platform to discuss the candidates, and then with evident reluctance. A barbecue had been arranged at Lexington, within sight of Clay’s home, and a declination to participate would have given deadly offense. He spoke, however, with unusual temperance, urging a unification of the opposition against Van Buren. This was to have been expected. Paying tribute to the civic worth of White, he announced his intention to vote for Harrison, not because he was his first choice—for he pretended to prefer Webster—but because he thought that Harrison “combined the greatest prospects of defeating Mr. Van Buren.”[922]
If Clay was indifferent, his old rival, Andrew Jackson, was not. Assuming the certainty of his favorite’s election, his personal pride was touched by White’s challenge of his own leadership in Tennessee, and as soon as Congress adjourned, he started on the long and tiresome journey to the Hermitage. Passing through eastern Tennessee, he appeared frankly in the rôle of a canvasser for votes. With old-time fire, he denounced his erstwhile friend, the Senator, as a Federalist—a discovery he had but recently made; and with all the fervor of Jacksonian friendship he held Van Buren up as the purest and most uncompromising of Democrats. The domineering quality of his leadership flared in his declaration that no friend of White’s could be other than his own enemy. At Blountville, Jonesboro, Greenville, Newport, Lebanon, and Nashville—every point he touched—he delivered political harangues in conversations with the friends and admirers who flocked to greet him.[923] Thus he employed every method known to electioneering, short of actually taking the stump.
This effort of the President was met by White with a powerful speech at Knoxville, where a banquet in his honor was arranged for the purpose. “It is not I who am to be put down and disgraced in this controversy, if Tennessee is either coaxed or coerced to surrender her choice,” he said. “The Saviour of the World, when upon earth, found among the small number of His disciples, one Judas, who not only sold but betrayed him for his thirty pieces of silver. It were vain for one of my humble attainments, who has nothing to offer but his best efforts to promote the public welfare, to hope that all who professed to be his friends must continue to act up to that character. Already have I found more than one Judas, who, by parting with their interest in me, have received, or expect to receive, more than twice their thirty pieces.”[924] Thus, however tame the campaign elsewhere, it was a hand-to-hand struggle in the President’s own State—and here Jackson was to meet the greatest humiliation of his career.
IX
The elections in 1836 were not held on the same day in all the States, and from November 4th, when Pennsylvania and Ohio voted, until November 23d, when the election was held in Rhode Island, the politicians were kept in suspense, and it was not until the first week in December that the Democrats were able to rejoice in the certainty of their victory. Massachusetts, which then idolized her Webster, gave him her electoral vote, and stood alone. South Carolina, which had encouraged White to enter the contest, again sulked, and, going outside the list of avowed candidates, gave hers to Senator Willie Mangum, of North Carolina. White greatly disappointed the Whigs, who had expected him to get enough votes in the Southern and Western States to throw the contest into the House of Representatives, by carrying only Tennessee and Georgia. Harrison received the electoral votes of Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, and Vermont—a total of 73; while Van Buren won Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island in New England; Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia in the South; Illinois and Michigan in the West; and both the most important States in the Union, Pennsylvania and New York. With only 124 electoral votes divided among his four opponents, Van Buren had 170, a majority of 46.
However, in the results the more prescient of the Democratic leaders could find ample justification for concern as to the future. The votes of Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee, which had gone to Jackson four years before, had been lost by Van Buren, and he had gained only Connecticut. But the electoral vote does not indicate the full extent of the Democratic slump. The popular vote in some of the States he had carried had fallen off woefully from the previous election. The Democratic majority in Virginia had decreased from 22,158 to 6893; in Illinois from 8718 to 3114; in North Carolina from 20,299 to 3284. As compared with Jackson’s popular majority of 157,293 in 1832, Van Buren won only on a popular majority of 24,893 out of a total of 1,498,205 votes cast. In his own State of New York, however, he increased Jackson’s popular majority of 13,601 in 1832 to 32,272.
In White House circles there were some painfully humiliating features in the results, and to none more than to Jackson. The people of Tennessee gave White a majority of 10,000, and even in the President’s own precinct, White received 43 votes to 18 for Van Buren. In Georgia, the home of the President’s Secretary of State, John Forsyth, the people turned from the candidate of the Georgian, who was so intimately identified with Van Buren’s political fortunes that he was to be retained at the head of the Cabinet through the new Administration, to give their vote to White. In Tennessee, the result was not unnatural. The President overestimated his strength in assuming that he could persuade the people to reject their neighbor and fellow citizen, who had served them well, for a New York politician. In Georgia the turnover was political, due to the ascendancy of the radical State-Rights party, and the strength of the Nullifying element which Forsyth had courageously fought.