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1836 Election
The election of 1836 was largely a referendum on Andrew Jackson, but it also helped shape what is known as the second party system.
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1828 Election
Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 by a landslide, receiving a record 647,292 popular votes (56 percent) to 507,730 (44 percent) for the incumbent John Quincy Adams.
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1852 Election
The 1852 election rang a death knell for the Whig party.
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1856 Election
The 1856 election was waged by new political coalitions and was the first to confront directly the issue of slavery.
The election of 1844 introduced expansion and slavery as important political issues and contributed to westward and southern growth and sectionalism. Southerners of both parties sought to annex Texas and expand slavery. Martin Van Buren angered southern Democrats by opposing annexation for that reason, and the Democratic convention cast aside the ex-president and front-runner for the first dark horse, Tennessee's James K. Polk. After almost silently breaking with Van Buren over Texas, Pennsylvania's George M. Dallas was nominated for vice president to appease Van Burenites, and the party backed annexation and settling the Oregon boundary dispute with England. The abolitionist Liberty party nominated Michigan's James G. Birney. Trying to avoid controversy, the Whigs nominated anti-annexationist Henry Clay of Kentucky and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. But, pressured by southerners, Clay endorsed annexation, although concerned it might cause war with Mexico and disunion, and thereby lost support among antislavery Whigs.
Enough New Yorkers voted for Birney to throw 36 electoral votes and the election to Polk, who won the electoral college, 170-105, and a slim popular victory. John Tyler signed a joint congressional resolution admitting Texas, but Polk pursued Oregon, and then northern Mexico in the Mexican War, aggravating tension over slavery and sectional balance and leading toward the Compromise of 1850.
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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This Day in History
Feb 9
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Satchel Paige nominated to Baseball Hall of Fame, 1971
On this day in 1971, pitcher Leroy "Satchel" Paige becomes the first Negro League veteran to be nominated for the Baseball Hall of Fame. In August of that…
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