1852 Election

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The 1852 election rang a death knell for the Whig party. Both parties split over their nominee and the issue of slavery. After forty-nine ballots of jockeying among Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, former secretary of state James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the Democrats nominated a compromise choice, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a former congressman and senator, with Senator William R. King of Alabama as his running mate. The Whigs rejected Millard Fillmore, who had become president when Taylor died in 1850, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster and nominated Gen. Winfield Scott of Virginia, with Senator William A. Graham of New Jersey for vice president. When Scott endorsed the party platform, which approved of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Free-Soil Whigs bolted. They nominated Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire for president and former congressman George Washington Julian of Indiana for vice president. Southern Whigs were suspicious of Scott, whom they saw as a tool of antislavery senator William H. Seward of New York.

Democratic unity, Whig disunity, and Scott's political ineptitude combined to elect Pierce. "Young Hickory of the Granite Hills" outpolled "Old Fuss and Feathers" in the electoral college, 254 to 42, and in the popular vote, 1,601,474 to 1,386,578.

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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