What’s a prez to do? Taylor and third-partyism

The 1848 election would have been much simpler if James Polk hadn’t pledged not to run. Democrat Polk’s presidency had been remarkably successful, accomplishing the four goals he set for himself at its outset: to solidify the independent treasury system, to lower the tariff, to acquire California from Mexico, and to resolve the Oregon question with Britain. Had he not made the pledge to retire, he could easily have been reelected.

But he had so pledged, and an easy choice for the country became a hard one. Both parties were feeling the strains of sectionalism, intensified by the addition of the new western territories. Would they be open to slavery or closed? Polk’s Democrats were split by section but also within the states. The New York party brawled between its antislavery wing, called Barnburners, and its slavery-tolerant faction, the Hunkers. The fight was carried to the Democratic national convention, which tried to impose a compromise but instead prompted a bolt by the Barnburners, led by former president Martin Van Buren. The remaining delegates nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan and placed him on a platform supporting popular sovereignty regarding slavery in the new territories. This innocuously democratic-sounding approach, by which settlers in a territory would decide for or against slavery there, was actually a concession to the South, since under the Missouri Compromise slavery was barred from most of the western territories. The Democrats made a further gesture to the South by nominating William Butler of Kentucky for vice president.

The bolting Barnburners did something that would recur several times in American presidential history: they created a third party. Allying with the existing Liberty party, an inconsequential abolitionist group, the antislavery Democrats redubbed themselves the Free Soil party and nominated Van Buren. By this time antislavery opinion in the South had been intimidated into silence, so the Free Soilers didn’t bother about sectional balance; they paired New Yorker Van Buren with Charles Adams, son of John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts.

The rift among the Democrats was a gift to the Whigs. Yet the Whigs almost squandered it. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the enduring great figures in American politics were three men best known as senators: Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John Calhoun of South Carolina. Clay had been a Jeffersonian Republican before helping found the Whig party; Webster had been a Federalist before a Whig. Calhoun had been a Republican and remained in the party under its new Democratic label. Clay and Webster now vied for the Whig nomination for president. But their forces neutralized each other, leaving the party open to new figures.

The new figure who seemed most likely was Zachary Taylor, a career military officer and most recently a hero of the war with Mexico. “Old Rough and Ready,” Taylor was called by his men, for the unkempt nature of his dress and his impatience with protocol, combined with his tactical mastery at war. America had already elevated three victorious generals to the presidency: Washington, Jackson and Harrison. The Whigs saw no reason the country shouldn’t elevate another: Taylor.

The general had been born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky. He now called Louisiana home and owned property—including a hundred slaves—in Mississippi. He was as Southern as a man could be at that time. Yet he was Jacksonian Southerner: a Southern Unionist. Having devoted his adult life to service in the army of the United States, Taylor had no patience for Southerners who talked of secession as the logical extension of the philosophy of states’ rights. Taylor’s Southern connections, including his slaveholding, reassured Southerners that he wouldn’t attack slavery; his Unionism reassured Northerners he wouldn’t yield to Southern secessionism.

There was something else appealing about Taylor, an aspect that would characterize other generals who entered politics. As a career officer, he had no political baggage: no unpopular votes in Congress to explain, no slips of the tongue in political speeches to take back. This was especially important as the rift among the Democrats developed. Any safe Whig was likely to walk through the Democratic split right into the White House.

This is precisely what happened. No third-party candidate has ever been elected president, but several major-party candidates have had their elections made possible by the effect of third parties on the other major party. Zachary Taylor was the first.