Textbook
Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire secured victory in the presidential election of 1852 against his Whig opponent General Winfield Scott. The election marked the last national campaign for the Whigs and signaled the beginning of a realignment in American partisan politics. (By Matthew Pinsker)
Note Cards
Election of 1852 (Tindall, 1999)
The Democrats, despite a fight over the nomination, has some success in papery over the division within their party. As their nominee for president they turned finally to Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire. The platform pledged the Democrats to "abide by and adhere to the faithful execution of the acts known as the Compromise measures." The candidates and the platform generated a surprising reconciliation of the party's factions...The Whigs were less fortunate. They repudiated the lackluster Fillmore, who had faithfully supported the compromise, and once again tried to exploit martial glory. It took fifty-three ballots, but the convention finally chose Winfield Scott, the hero of Mexico City, a native of Virginia backed mainly by northern Whigs...Scott, an able commander but politically inept, had a gained a reputation for antislvery and nativism, alienating German and Irish ethnic voters. In the end Scott carried only Tennessee, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Pierce overwhelmed him in the electoral college 254 to 42, although the popular vote was close 1.6 million to 1.4 million.
George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, eds., America: A Narrative History, 5th ed., vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), 690.
Events
Documents
Bibliography
Chicago Style Entry | Link |
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Earle, Jonathan Halperin. Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. | View Record |
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion. Vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. | View Record |
Gara, Larry. The Presidency of Franklin Pierce. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991. | View Record |
Gienapp, William E. "The Whig Party, the Compromise of 1850, and the Nomination of Winfield Scott." Presidential Studies Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1984): 399-415. | View Record |
Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: W W Norton & Company, 1983. | View Record |
Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. | View Record |