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Understanding 9/11tv 1839 Whig Convention CSPAN January 21, 2017 1:01pm-1:21pm EST
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see one third of the nation still housed in our past. >> and at 8:00 on "the atsidency," killjoy looks u.s.-israel he relations from presidents harry truman to barack obama. shows i told the house of representatives i would commit suicide. who said this question mark that's right. jimmy carter. full view. schedule, go to www.c-span.org. >> c-span cities tour is in torisburg, pennsylvania learn about history. right now we are in city island located on the susquehanna
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river. of next week will take you to a wake church where the party held its first national convention in 1839 -- where the hig party held its first national convention in 1839. >> the election of 1840 was very election.inal the springch of talking about how contested elections work and how critical it was to be there setting the rules. that happened here first. >> we are at the church, which is to say the 1830 nine convention here in harrisburg. the whig party was basically a loose conglomeration of divergent political views that agreed on one thing -- that
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under the administration of president andrew jackson, executive power had just not in way out of control -- gotten way out of control. in fact, that is where the name came from. the whigs named themselves after a group that was opposed to king during the revolution. they were opposed to king andrew of his minions. otherwise, they did not agree on much. the whigs were made up of the conservative faction in the country. of ais a little bit misnomer because, for example, back then, the democrats were the hard money people. the whig party was the soft money people, which is totally reversed right now. were made above -- it was a whole conglomerate. you had pro-bank, anti-united , proslavery,
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anti-slavery, anti-masons thrown in to the mix. as i have said, the greatest wasying factor of the party opposition to the expansion of executive power, that they wanted the predominant driving engine of the government to be congress rather than the presidency. of the whigtar party was henry clay, who had been speaker of the house. he had been secretary of state, and now was serving in the united states senate. he was a very charismatic leader. he was by far the most popular politician of the whig opposition. his followers would have followed him anywhere. their devotion bordered on worship. -- whigs chose harrisburg
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number one, it was a mild nod to getting off the coast line. all of the previous conventions had been held in baltimore. the anti-masons held a small one in philadelphia. this was a little bit, like i said, a 100-mile nod to the expansion of the country westward. second, and probably the most important reason gets into the electoral map. higs, if they were going to have any hope of winning the 1840 election, but they absolutely had to have pennsylvania in the column, and this was a good way to get the ball rolling, as it were, and start making inroads into pennsylvania which it gone for jackson twice and van buren ones. when they decided to come to harrisburg, it was made basically as a point of the map and then they came to discover there was only one building in town large enough to hold it,
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and that was the designed lutheran church, which luckily had just been completed. the original church burned down a year before. this particular church had been completed and was able to host the whig convention. then of course, you had journalists, and back then, politics was theater. so you would have a large number of locals coming in to watch the show. the interior of the church looks very different than back then. the configuration would have been very much the same. you would have had your officers at the convention sitting up in probably the table -- and the delegates would be in the first rows behind them. then you have the press and the local citizenry.
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the convention convened on over december was 6, and what makes this convention so special, it was the first time that there was one candidate being put forward for the presidency of the united states. convention was not ,he first national convention basically the delegates gathered with a blank sheet of paper and they had to set rules and aocedures for choosing nominee for president of the among multiple people. henry clay was the prohibitive front-runner. but there was opposition to that. was thehenry harrison hero of the battle of
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tippecanoe. he had been one of the regional candidates for president in 1836, when henry clay decided he did not want to make the run again. and he was the largest vote-getter among all of the regional candidates. addition to the race in the person of general when phil scott, who was a career military officer and had just distinguished himself in upstate new york. not, was, believe it or internal strife across the canadian border and scott earned a lot of kudos among upstate new yorkers for his skillful handling and keeping things on the correct side of the border. and those are the three
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candidates put forward at this convention. henry thought -- because clay from nomination if he wanted it, and he came in with a substantial lead in the delegate count -- if it had been a straight up-and-down vote, each ,elegate voting the conscience clay probably would have walked out of there as the nominee, but the anti-clay forces came up with a plan. him and wouldwart prevent the nomination of harrison or scott. ae first thing was to settle rule that rather than everybody sitting out here on the lore talents -- their ballots, a committee would form. and they would go off and decide and they would
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cast the state's in tire votes. of a bit ofognition a herdsman talladega, trains leading -- leaving the station, a snowball type of thing, that the anti-clay forces that might come into play on clay's the half. the second thing that they did was they passed a rule whereby whoever had the most votes got that state's in tire vote. to put it -- that state's in tire vote. to put it in a modern context, take allbe a winner primary. clay had substantial minority and a lot of the harrison delegation. basically, by taking these votes away from him and awarding them ,o either harrisburg or scott that put another pin in henry clay's ambitions, and eventually
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would lead to his undoing. there were a total of three ballots with a lot of maneuvering in between. ballot, clay ended up with 103 votes. was 128.ity almost unstoppable have the rules not been changed. the second ballot, things started to move a little bit. one of the states that was not able to vote on the first ballot was michigan because they had three delegates, and only two of them had arrived by then. they viewed it as a flat out high.
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nobody gets the vote. michigan ended up voting for scott. scott's managers were able to henryonnecticut away from clay. after connecticut switched and michigan voted for scott, scott moved up to 68. harrison stayed with his 91 votes and it was then when real chicanery came into play. scott's managers had been working on the virginia 20egation, which had delegates and change, to try to get them to switch to scott. they were coming close to succeeding. scott was a native son. henry clay was losing steam. that would be a good place to go. at that point, a friend of harrison's in the new york
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delegation, which was supporting went to a gentleman you may remember -- if anybody saw , lincoln stevens of pennsylvania -- and gave him a letter to scott, talking about how he was anti-slavery. york deniability with the new york bosses. basically, he was giving this to thaddeus stevens because that he is stevens would know what to deal with it. what he did with it was just happen to take a stroll among the virginia delegation, dropped of the letter onto the floor, and they had some private correspondence discovered by one whohe virginia delegates,
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being a politician, of course, read it. and that stopped the movement of the virginia delegation cold. at that point, what they would now call scott's path to the -- wasion was sorted thwarted. the harrison people were holding firm. there is a no movement. they decided to throw their support to harrison, and so harrison was nominated on the tord ballot with 148 votes scott.change for once harrison was nominated, obviously back in the day, they wanted to find a clay supporter to balance the ticket. they were unable to do that.
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the clay people were in no way, shape, or form happy about the outcome and were not about to do any cooperating with the harrison folks. probablyittee was downstairs in one of the rooms here at the church. about 200 people sitting up here bored out of listening to speeches and memorials from citizens of new jersey and that they wereding, and getting kind of restive at that point. the convention was about to become a runaway convention and spiral out of control and just all of that good work would be for not. so, finally at 9:00 on friday , the sixth, they came up
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and announced harrison's nomination for president, but no vice presidential nominee was chosen yet. virginiaoint, delegate, john tyler, who had moved into a position with andrew jackson was said to have burst into tears at the thought clay had not henry won the nomination. he did something that had everybody turning around saying, hey, we could nominate tyler. which eventually they did and "tippecanoe and
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tyler too" was born. lim henry harrison was running for reelection. -- martin van buren was running for reelection. he had the bad luck to have the economy goes south on him, pretty much as soon as he dropped his right hand from taking the oath in 1837, the burst.finally there were really bad economic times. there were three candidates coming forward with the nomination. out the election was a lot closer than it appeared. fortunateon was very nomination, a democratic newspaper in
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him,more took a shot at saying if you gave him a pension would be sitting by a fire, drinking hard cider and reading moral philosophy for the rest of his days. everybody was outraged, gentleman in -- i harrisburg who said we could use this and political spending was born. the first political rally, putting harrison forward as the log cabin and hard cider candidate was held down the street. it spread like wildfire. it was said without much exaggeration that log cabins were everywhere.
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one commentator described it as a one-room party. they were so diverse. one thing they did not do was plasse -- was passed a platform. they were so diverse, if they had tried to pass a platform, they might still be here. they were the first real party to go forth to the american .eople "tippecanoenner of and tyler too." featuringekend we are the history of hers for, pennsylvania with our cable partners. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3.
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when world war i began in august 1914, the british royal navy imposed a naval blockade to restrict maritime trade with germany and other central powers. the blockade lasted throughout the war. next, u.s. army command and general staff college history professor john kuehn on his book. this 50 minute illustrated presentation is a part of a two-day symposium hosted by the national world war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. >> it is my pleasure to kuehn.uce dr. john he has served as a professor of military history inlet north, kansas. after retiring from the navy in 2004 and earning his phd in 2007,
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