SeleucusNicator
Diadoch
These days, when it comes to American politics, the most common complaint is that there are only two choices, neither of which may necessarily represent all that an individual might want in a leader. However, one is generally presented with at least one, and usually two, competent individuals that could do the job if elected. Indeed, this has virtually always been the case -- except for 1852, which subjected Americans to having to chose between two of the worst, if not most colorful, candidates in the Republic's history. It was the year of Pierce vs Scott.
BACKGROUND
As 1852 dawned, the issue of slavery threatened to split the United States. A few years earlier, there had been a contentious debate about the status of slavery in the lands conquered from Mexico under the Polk administration. The Compromise of 1850, the brainchild of Henry Clay and supported by Whig president Millard Fillmore, attempted to settle the issue. According to the Compromise, which passed in September of 1850, California would be admitted to the Union as a free state. The rest of the Mexican Cession would be organized into territories where no laws either for or against slavery would exist, while the slave trade would be banned from the District of Columbia (the only place Congress could ban slavery without a constitutional amendment) and, most controversially, a law requiring northerners to arrest and extradite runaway slaves (the Fugitive Slave Act) was put in place. The Compromise, while supported by most Democrats and by Southern Whigs, was extremely unpopular among Northern Whigs, who saw the bill in general as an unnecessary concession to the south and the fugitive slave act specifically as immoral. Indeed, many local governments would go on to ignore the fugitive slave law, some small towns even passing laws making it a crime for the act to be enforced. Two other issues would also go on to play a role. One was the status of slavery in other US territories that would soon become states. There were two camps on this; some wanted to maintain the Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery from all US territories and states north of Missouri, the other favoring "popular sovereignty" -- that is, the banning or legalization of slavery in every territory according to popular vote. The other was US expansion; many Americans had their eye on Cuba, the future Dominican Republic, or even Honduras and other parts of Latin America as lands that could be potentially bought or conquered. Indeed, there were even some private expeditions organized to take control of those areas. There was also an undercurrent of slavery involved; it was assumed that those areas, if ever acquired by the United States, would be slave territories.
THE WHIGS AND WINFIELD SCOTT
When the Whigs gathered at their national convention to select a Presidential candidate for 1852, there were three main contenders. Millard Fillmore, the sitting President, was popular in the South for his support of the 1850 Compromise but was hated in the North for the same reason. Secretary of State Daniel Webster, considered by many to be the greatest orator in the nation's history, was the favorite son of New England, as well as the candidate of those who wanted to unite Pro-Compromise Whigs and Pro-Compromise Democrats in a new "Unionist Party" which simply agreed to disagree on slavery. And then there was the third candidate: Winfield Scott. Scott was the highest-ranking general in the United States Army and had fought brilliantly in the Mexican-American war, invading Mexico from the sea, taking the coastal city of Vera Cruz, and then marching to Mexico City without a supply line, capturing the capitol and forcing the final surrender. Unfortunately, his talents ended there. Scott was a large and pompous man. He wore the maximum number of medals, badges, and ribbons allowed, walked with his sword, and wore a large feathered hat. This earned him the nickname "Old Fuss and Feathers". He had much the same attitude towards language. Considering himself a literary and oratorical genius, he liked to use big words, poetic phrases, and often ridiculous imagery. This had already cost him any chance of being nominated for President by the Whigs in 1848. During the Mexican War he had written a letter in which he used the unfortunate phrase "while sitting down to take a hasty plate of soup". Nineteenth Century America found this phrase hilarious, and the growing support for Scott among big-wig Whigs died shortly thereafter. However, by 1852, many Northern Whigs believed that the party needed a famous war hero at the top of its ticket to attract Democrats and Independents, and Scott was brought back. Scott, a resident of New Jersey, was also seen as sympathetic to Northern Whiggery on the slave question, and his lack of political experience made him thoroughly malleable to the whims of the party elite.
As the balloting for President began, Fillmore placed first, Scott second, and Webster a distant third. Fillmore did not have the 2/3 majority needed to win nomination. However, if he were to gain the support of the like-minded Webster men, he would easily win. This was easier said than done. Webster and his supporters were angry at Fillmore for seeking a second term and refused to budge. Fillmore had likewise grown tired of Webster's stubbornness, and the two sides quickly learned to despise each other, with neither wanting to support the other. This allowed Scott to gain votes from disgruntled men in both the Fillmore and Webster camps, and he went on to win the nomination by a very slim margin. William Graham, a North Carolinian, was nominated as Vice-President. The convention also had the task of creating a national platform for the Whig Party. On this issue, the Webster and Fillmore delegates did not split; they ensured the platform would be pro-compromise and joined with the Scott men in condemning further American expansion.
Thus, at the end of the convention, the Whigs had nominated a man who was the pawn of the anti-slavery Whig of the Party but who was running on a pro-compromise platform that praised the Fugitive Slave Act. This was only the beginning of the many paradoxes that would mark the Scott campaign.
THE DEMOCRATS AND FRANKLIN PIERCE
As strange as the Whig convention got that year, the Democrats faced an even greater problem at theirs. Four "big name" candidates were running. Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, was the nation's foremost champion of popular sovereignty. Lewis Cass, a former general, was the Democratic nominee in 1848. While still maintaining some degree of support, he was viewed as largely uncharismatic. Then there was James Buchanan, the Pennsylvania bachelor and the champion of the moderate Democrats, by far the most experienced of all of the candidates, who had served virtually every Democratic president of the era, most recently as Secretary of State for Polk. Then there was William Marcy, who represented the Martin Van Buren wing of the party, which had grown steadily anti-slavery over the years. The convention could not pick between any of these men. Finally, somebody suggested Franklin Pierce as a dark-horse candidate. On paper, Pierce seemed perfect. An obscure New Hampshire governor, he had never been in a position to offend anyone politically. Moreover, in these times of sectional trouble, Pierce seemed to be a one-man solution: he was a Northern man with Southern principles (in the political slang of the time, the term for this was "doughface"). Even better, Pierce had been a general during the Mexican-American war, giving him the war hero status that every political party seemed to be seeking at the time. Pierce was nominated unanimously, the second Dark Horse in eight years for the Democrats. The Vice-Presidential nomination went to William Rufus King, an old Alabama Senator and a suspected homosexual (but that is another article) who had dreamed of having the position for almost two decades. The Democratic Platform adopted an enthusiastically pro-Compromise platform with expansionist undertones, and the race was on.
THE CAMPAIGN
Despite Scott's great fame and Pierce's relative obscurity, the Whigs had an uphill climb because of the aforementioned problem of having a Northern candidate running on a Southern platform. Both sides were unhappy. Northern Whigs condemned the platform, which they viewed as yet another white flag to "slave power", while Southerners distrusted Scott. The Whigs also had another problem. For years, they had been the party of Protestantism, catering to the old-money Southern aristocracy and the Northern moralists. As such, it naturally opposed immigration, particularly of Catholics. Its association with puritanical religious elites also made it lean towards being prohibitionist. By 1852, thousands of immigrants, most of them Irish and South German (read: heavy-drinking and Catholic) were ready to begin voting in American elections. If the Whigs did not change their image, all of those votes would go Democratic. This was not easy. A centerpiece of Whig campaigning in the 1840's had consisted of working with anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic nativist parties, and, naturally, most Whig leaders had been on record taking anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic stances. Even Scott had written a public letter supporting mandatory military service for immigrants.
The attempt to attract immigrant voters led to the single most amusing incident of the campaign. Since the Whigs controlled the White House and since Scott was still an active general, President Fillmore assigned Scott to perform a minor military task in Kentucky. But instead of sending Scott straight from Washington to the site of the project, the general was sent through Pennsylvania and Ohio which, coincidentally, had a large number of newly naturalized immigrant voters. In fact, Scott had enough time in those areas to make large-scale public appearances. In Ohio, his penchant for overspeaking dealt him a blow the Mexicans could have only dreamed of. He began his speech with the standard "My fellow Americans" -- but then immediately launched into a long-winded explanation of how "American" applies not only to native-born Americans, but also to naturalized immigrants. It only got worse. Out of the crowd, a man with an Irish accent yelled a question at Scott. Instead of answering, Scott exclaimed "Oh, the Irish brogue!" But it was not enough for Scott to use the term "brogue", which was considered archaic even at the time; Old Fuss and Feathers had to start talking about how he loved the sound of "the Irish brogue", how he had "heard it many times upon the field of battle", how he "hoped to hear it many more times", and how much he admired the "brave men of Eire". When transcripts of the speech reached Whig leaders in New York and Washington, there was undoubtedly a great deal of cursing, forehead-slapping, and general discontent. Indeed, not only were immigrants not impressed with Scott's theatrical performance, but anti-immigration voters, which had usually been safe for the Whigs, grew disgusted at the general's pandering and were threatening to leave in large numbers.
Remarkably, even after this, the Whigs still believed they had a chance at winning the election, and, arguably, they did. This was possible only because of Franklin Pierce's personal history. The Democratic nominee had served in the Mexican-American war, but, as it was soon learned, this hurt his campaign rather than helped it. While Scott had achieved nothing short of the remarkable in Mexico, Pierce had achieved nothing at all. During the two most important charges performed by the troops under his command, Pierce had fallen off his horse and been left behind by his own men to sit out the battle. When his division was storming the Mexican capitol itself, Pierce was immobilized in his tent with diarrhea. Moreover, it soon became clear that Pierce was an heavy drinker, if not an alcoholic. Given this and his rather lame military record, he was soon laughed off as the "Hero of Many a Well-Fought Bottle". Even worse, Pierce was nearly unable to capitalize on the wide distrust of Scott in the South due to a comment he had made only a few years earlier. While making a speech on local matters in New Hampshire, he had stated that he found the Fugitive Slave Act immoral and hinted that he was opposed to its enforcement. For dixie, this was a bombshell. The Whigs soon printed the comment in every Southern newspaper they controlled, and Scott was once again competitive in the race. Ultimately, Pierce recanted those words and was aided by his Alabaman running mate, who, although now diagnosed with a terminal case of tuberculosis, assured his fellow Southerners that Pierce was a true doughface.
BACKGROUND
As 1852 dawned, the issue of slavery threatened to split the United States. A few years earlier, there had been a contentious debate about the status of slavery in the lands conquered from Mexico under the Polk administration. The Compromise of 1850, the brainchild of Henry Clay and supported by Whig president Millard Fillmore, attempted to settle the issue. According to the Compromise, which passed in September of 1850, California would be admitted to the Union as a free state. The rest of the Mexican Cession would be organized into territories where no laws either for or against slavery would exist, while the slave trade would be banned from the District of Columbia (the only place Congress could ban slavery without a constitutional amendment) and, most controversially, a law requiring northerners to arrest and extradite runaway slaves (the Fugitive Slave Act) was put in place. The Compromise, while supported by most Democrats and by Southern Whigs, was extremely unpopular among Northern Whigs, who saw the bill in general as an unnecessary concession to the south and the fugitive slave act specifically as immoral. Indeed, many local governments would go on to ignore the fugitive slave law, some small towns even passing laws making it a crime for the act to be enforced. Two other issues would also go on to play a role. One was the status of slavery in other US territories that would soon become states. There were two camps on this; some wanted to maintain the Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery from all US territories and states north of Missouri, the other favoring "popular sovereignty" -- that is, the banning or legalization of slavery in every territory according to popular vote. The other was US expansion; many Americans had their eye on Cuba, the future Dominican Republic, or even Honduras and other parts of Latin America as lands that could be potentially bought or conquered. Indeed, there were even some private expeditions organized to take control of those areas. There was also an undercurrent of slavery involved; it was assumed that those areas, if ever acquired by the United States, would be slave territories.
THE WHIGS AND WINFIELD SCOTT
When the Whigs gathered at their national convention to select a Presidential candidate for 1852, there were three main contenders. Millard Fillmore, the sitting President, was popular in the South for his support of the 1850 Compromise but was hated in the North for the same reason. Secretary of State Daniel Webster, considered by many to be the greatest orator in the nation's history, was the favorite son of New England, as well as the candidate of those who wanted to unite Pro-Compromise Whigs and Pro-Compromise Democrats in a new "Unionist Party" which simply agreed to disagree on slavery. And then there was the third candidate: Winfield Scott. Scott was the highest-ranking general in the United States Army and had fought brilliantly in the Mexican-American war, invading Mexico from the sea, taking the coastal city of Vera Cruz, and then marching to Mexico City without a supply line, capturing the capitol and forcing the final surrender. Unfortunately, his talents ended there. Scott was a large and pompous man. He wore the maximum number of medals, badges, and ribbons allowed, walked with his sword, and wore a large feathered hat. This earned him the nickname "Old Fuss and Feathers". He had much the same attitude towards language. Considering himself a literary and oratorical genius, he liked to use big words, poetic phrases, and often ridiculous imagery. This had already cost him any chance of being nominated for President by the Whigs in 1848. During the Mexican War he had written a letter in which he used the unfortunate phrase "while sitting down to take a hasty plate of soup". Nineteenth Century America found this phrase hilarious, and the growing support for Scott among big-wig Whigs died shortly thereafter. However, by 1852, many Northern Whigs believed that the party needed a famous war hero at the top of its ticket to attract Democrats and Independents, and Scott was brought back. Scott, a resident of New Jersey, was also seen as sympathetic to Northern Whiggery on the slave question, and his lack of political experience made him thoroughly malleable to the whims of the party elite.
As the balloting for President began, Fillmore placed first, Scott second, and Webster a distant third. Fillmore did not have the 2/3 majority needed to win nomination. However, if he were to gain the support of the like-minded Webster men, he would easily win. This was easier said than done. Webster and his supporters were angry at Fillmore for seeking a second term and refused to budge. Fillmore had likewise grown tired of Webster's stubbornness, and the two sides quickly learned to despise each other, with neither wanting to support the other. This allowed Scott to gain votes from disgruntled men in both the Fillmore and Webster camps, and he went on to win the nomination by a very slim margin. William Graham, a North Carolinian, was nominated as Vice-President. The convention also had the task of creating a national platform for the Whig Party. On this issue, the Webster and Fillmore delegates did not split; they ensured the platform would be pro-compromise and joined with the Scott men in condemning further American expansion.
Thus, at the end of the convention, the Whigs had nominated a man who was the pawn of the anti-slavery Whig of the Party but who was running on a pro-compromise platform that praised the Fugitive Slave Act. This was only the beginning of the many paradoxes that would mark the Scott campaign.
THE DEMOCRATS AND FRANKLIN PIERCE
As strange as the Whig convention got that year, the Democrats faced an even greater problem at theirs. Four "big name" candidates were running. Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, was the nation's foremost champion of popular sovereignty. Lewis Cass, a former general, was the Democratic nominee in 1848. While still maintaining some degree of support, he was viewed as largely uncharismatic. Then there was James Buchanan, the Pennsylvania bachelor and the champion of the moderate Democrats, by far the most experienced of all of the candidates, who had served virtually every Democratic president of the era, most recently as Secretary of State for Polk. Then there was William Marcy, who represented the Martin Van Buren wing of the party, which had grown steadily anti-slavery over the years. The convention could not pick between any of these men. Finally, somebody suggested Franklin Pierce as a dark-horse candidate. On paper, Pierce seemed perfect. An obscure New Hampshire governor, he had never been in a position to offend anyone politically. Moreover, in these times of sectional trouble, Pierce seemed to be a one-man solution: he was a Northern man with Southern principles (in the political slang of the time, the term for this was "doughface"). Even better, Pierce had been a general during the Mexican-American war, giving him the war hero status that every political party seemed to be seeking at the time. Pierce was nominated unanimously, the second Dark Horse in eight years for the Democrats. The Vice-Presidential nomination went to William Rufus King, an old Alabama Senator and a suspected homosexual (but that is another article) who had dreamed of having the position for almost two decades. The Democratic Platform adopted an enthusiastically pro-Compromise platform with expansionist undertones, and the race was on.
THE CAMPAIGN
Despite Scott's great fame and Pierce's relative obscurity, the Whigs had an uphill climb because of the aforementioned problem of having a Northern candidate running on a Southern platform. Both sides were unhappy. Northern Whigs condemned the platform, which they viewed as yet another white flag to "slave power", while Southerners distrusted Scott. The Whigs also had another problem. For years, they had been the party of Protestantism, catering to the old-money Southern aristocracy and the Northern moralists. As such, it naturally opposed immigration, particularly of Catholics. Its association with puritanical religious elites also made it lean towards being prohibitionist. By 1852, thousands of immigrants, most of them Irish and South German (read: heavy-drinking and Catholic) were ready to begin voting in American elections. If the Whigs did not change their image, all of those votes would go Democratic. This was not easy. A centerpiece of Whig campaigning in the 1840's had consisted of working with anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic nativist parties, and, naturally, most Whig leaders had been on record taking anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic stances. Even Scott had written a public letter supporting mandatory military service for immigrants.
The attempt to attract immigrant voters led to the single most amusing incident of the campaign. Since the Whigs controlled the White House and since Scott was still an active general, President Fillmore assigned Scott to perform a minor military task in Kentucky. But instead of sending Scott straight from Washington to the site of the project, the general was sent through Pennsylvania and Ohio which, coincidentally, had a large number of newly naturalized immigrant voters. In fact, Scott had enough time in those areas to make large-scale public appearances. In Ohio, his penchant for overspeaking dealt him a blow the Mexicans could have only dreamed of. He began his speech with the standard "My fellow Americans" -- but then immediately launched into a long-winded explanation of how "American" applies not only to native-born Americans, but also to naturalized immigrants. It only got worse. Out of the crowd, a man with an Irish accent yelled a question at Scott. Instead of answering, Scott exclaimed "Oh, the Irish brogue!" But it was not enough for Scott to use the term "brogue", which was considered archaic even at the time; Old Fuss and Feathers had to start talking about how he loved the sound of "the Irish brogue", how he had "heard it many times upon the field of battle", how he "hoped to hear it many more times", and how much he admired the "brave men of Eire". When transcripts of the speech reached Whig leaders in New York and Washington, there was undoubtedly a great deal of cursing, forehead-slapping, and general discontent. Indeed, not only were immigrants not impressed with Scott's theatrical performance, but anti-immigration voters, which had usually been safe for the Whigs, grew disgusted at the general's pandering and were threatening to leave in large numbers.
Remarkably, even after this, the Whigs still believed they had a chance at winning the election, and, arguably, they did. This was possible only because of Franklin Pierce's personal history. The Democratic nominee had served in the Mexican-American war, but, as it was soon learned, this hurt his campaign rather than helped it. While Scott had achieved nothing short of the remarkable in Mexico, Pierce had achieved nothing at all. During the two most important charges performed by the troops under his command, Pierce had fallen off his horse and been left behind by his own men to sit out the battle. When his division was storming the Mexican capitol itself, Pierce was immobilized in his tent with diarrhea. Moreover, it soon became clear that Pierce was an heavy drinker, if not an alcoholic. Given this and his rather lame military record, he was soon laughed off as the "Hero of Many a Well-Fought Bottle". Even worse, Pierce was nearly unable to capitalize on the wide distrust of Scott in the South due to a comment he had made only a few years earlier. While making a speech on local matters in New Hampshire, he had stated that he found the Fugitive Slave Act immoral and hinted that he was opposed to its enforcement. For dixie, this was a bombshell. The Whigs soon printed the comment in every Southern newspaper they controlled, and Scott was once again competitive in the race. Ultimately, Pierce recanted those words and was aided by his Alabaman running mate, who, although now diagnosed with a terminal case of tuberculosis, assured his fellow Southerners that Pierce was a true doughface.
