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This Day in History
Feb 9
Presidential
William Henry Harrison is born, 1773
On this day in 1773, future President William Henry Harrison is born on the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. Harrison went on to serve as the ninth U.S.…
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Henry A. Kissinger
(1923- ), foreign policy specialist, national security adviser, and secretary of state.
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1804 Election
The 1804 presidential election was a landslide victory for the incumbent Thomas Jefferson.
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1808 Election
Republican James Madison was elevated to the presidency in the election of 1808.
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1812 Election
In the 1812 contest James Madison was reelected president by the narrowest margin of any election since the Republican party had come to power in 1800.
The election of 1848 underscored the increasingly important role of slavery in national politics. Democratic president James K. Polk did not seek reelection. His party nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, who created the concept of squatter, or popular, sovereignty (letting the settlers of a territory decide whether to permit slavery), with Gen. William O. Butler of Kentucky for vice president. Antislavery groups formed the Free-Soil party, whose platform promised to prohibit the spread of slavery, and chose former president Martin Van Buren of New York for president and Charles Francis Adams, the son of President John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts for vice president. The Whig nominee was the Mexican War hero, Gen. Zachary Taylor, a slave owner. His running mate was Millard Fillmore, a member of New York's proslavery Whig faction.
Democrats and Free-Soilers stressed their views of slavery, and Whigs celebrated Taylor's victories in the recent war, although many Whigs had opposed it. For his part, Taylor professed moderation on slavery, and he and the Whigs were successful. Taylor defeated Cass, 1,360,099 to 1,220,544 in popular votes and 163 to 127 in electoral votes. Van Buren received 291,263 popular votes and no electoral votes, but he drew enough support away from Cass to swing New York and Massachusetts to Taylor, assuring the Whigs' victory. With the Taylor-Fillmore ticket elected, the forces had been set in motion for the events surrounding the Compromise of 1850. But Van Buren's campaign was a stepping-stone toward the creation of the Republican party in the 1850s, also committed to the principle of "Free Soil."
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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