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Understanding 9/11tv 1839 Whig Convention CSPAN January 22, 2017 2:02pm-2:20pm EST
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so successful, it was the first time there was more than one candidate being put >> what makes this convention so special, it was the first time in one candidate being put forward for the nomination for the presidency of the united states. harrisburg, from india, on american history tv, with the help of our comcast cable partners, over the next 90 minutes we will explore the rich and varied history of this capital city located on the susquehanna river traders we tour sites and special collections that help tell the story of harrisburg from its founding to today. we begin our look at the site of the 1839 convention. 2016, talking about how .ontested elections work
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we are in the name of design lutheran church, which is to say the 1839 convention here in harrisburg. was basically a loose conglomeration of all sorts of divergent political views, but agreed on one thing. that under the administration of president andrew jackson, executive power had just gotten way out of control. that is rather name came from. the whigs named themselves after the daysge iii back in of the revolution. so they were against king andrew all of his dominions. otherwise they didn't agree on much. the whigs were made up of the conservative faction in the
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country. that's a little bit of a misnomer because, for example, back then the democrats were the hard money people. the whigs where the soft money people, which is totally reversed right now. were made up of -- it was a whole conglomerate trade you had pro-bank, anti-united hades bank, you anti-slavery. you had anti-masons thrown into the mix. as i've said, the greatest unifying factor of the party was in opposition to the expansion to the executive power. it was the dominant and the government congress, rather than the presidency. the superstar of the whig party was henry clay, who had been
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speaker of the house. -- house. he had been secretary of state was serving in the u.s. 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. the whigs chose harrisburg. number one, it was a little bit, 100 mile nod to getting off the coast line. all the previous conventions had been held in baltimore, the anti-masons held a small one in philadelphia. but this was a little bit of a 100 mile nod to the expansion of the country westward. probably thend most important reason, gets into the electoral map. the whigs, if they were going to have any hope of winning the 184
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0 election, felt they positively had to have pennsylvania in their column. this was a good way to get the ball rolling, as it were, and start making some inroads in pennsylvania which had gone for jackson twice, and van buren once. they decided to come to harrisburg, it was made basically as a point of a map, and then they came to discover that there was only one building in town that was large enough to hold it, and that was designed zionran church, -- the with her in church, which had just been completed. the original church burned down the year before. this particular building had been completed and was able to host teh whig convention. there were over 235 delegates. you had journalists, and back then, politics was the theater. you would have a large number of locals coming in to watch the show.
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looksterior of the church very different than it did back then, although the pew configuration would have been very much the same. officers have had your of the convention sitting up in table,nt, probably at a and your delegates would be in the first rows behind them, and then at the very back you would have to -- you would have the press and local citizenry. the convention was held in the first week of december. it convened on december 4, and was over on december 6. what makes this convention so timeal, it was the first that there was more than one candidate being put forward for the nomination of the presidency of the united states. what this convention in harrisburg was in the first national convention, it definitely was historic in that
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these delegates gathered here basically with a blank sheet of paper, and they had to set the rules and procedures for c hoosing a nominee for the united states, from multiple people. henry clay, the prohibitive front-runner, but there was opposition to that. wasiam henry harrison, who the hero of the battle of to the canoe, and he'd also served in the senate was a territorial governor. he had been one of the whigs regional candidates for president in 1836 when henry clay decided he didn't want to make the run again. largest vote together among all the whig regional candidates. there was a late addition to the person of- in the
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general winfield scott, a career , and justfficer distinguished himself in upstate new york. there was internal strife right canadian border, and scott earned a lot of kudos among the upstate new yorkers for his skillful handling and keeping things on the correct side of the border. those were the three candidates that were put forward at this convention. it was thought it was henry clay's nomination. he came in with a substantial lead in the delegate camp. it had been a straight up-and-down vote with each delegate voting their conscience. clay would probably have walked out of there as a nominee, but the anti-clay porchesthose werep thwartplan, which would
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result in theally nomination of either harrison or scott. sett thing they did was to a rule that rather than everybody sitting out here on the floor, casting their ballots , a committee would be formed where each state could appoint whoo three representatives would go out and decide on the each of those three groups would cast their state's entire votes, which was a recognition of a bit of a herd mentality trends the station, snowball thing that the anti- clay forces thought might come into play on clay's behalf. the second thing that they did is that they passed a rule whereby whoever had the most votes in the state delegation vote.at state's entire
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winnerd have been like a take all primary rather than proportional representation. clay had substantial minority support and a lot of the harrison delegation. basically taking these votes away from him and awarded them to either harrisburg or scott by what became known as the unit rule, that put another pin in ,enry clay's ambitions balloon and eventually would lead to his undoing. there were a total of three ballots with a lot of maneuvering in between. the first ballots, clay ended up with 103 votes. the majority was 128. you can see even with all that chicanery how close he was, , had thestoppable
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rules not been changed. harrison had 91, scott had 57. the second ballot, things started to move a little bit great one of the states that wasn't able to vote on the first ballots was michigan. they had three delegates. the unit and only two of them had arrived by then. , if you had rule is a flat-out tie, nobody gets a vote. -- third michigan delegates they ended up voting for scott. scott's managers were able to coax connecticut away from henry clay. after connecticut switched and michigan voted for scott, scott moved up to 68. clay went down. harrison stated his 91 votes, his delegates stayed solid. it was then that some real
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chicanery came into play. scott's managers had been working on the virginia delegation, which had 20 delegates and change, to try to get them to switch to scott. they were coming close to succeeding. scott was a native son. the new york delegation, which was supporting scott's, went to a gentleman you may remember if anyone saw the movie "lincoln," and gave him a letter from scott talking about how he was anti-slavery. it gaveght was, deniability with the new york bosses.
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i was just trying to move pennsylvania over by showing that scott was anti-slavery. recently he was giving it to thaddeus stevens because that is stevens would know what to do with it. what he did with it was, just happened to take a stroll among the virginia delegation, dropped the weather onto the floor. personalf private, correspondence was discovered by one of the virginia delegates who, being a politician, read it, and passed it along to his other virginia delegates. and that stop the movement of the virginia delegations. at that point, what they would now call pat, scott to the nomination was thwarted. the scott people -- because again, the harrison people were holding firm. there had been no movement at all. they decided to throw their and so to harrison,
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harrison was nominated on the third ballot with 148 votes to 90 and change and scott was down to 16. once harrison was nominated, back in the day, they wanted to find a clay supporter to balance the ticket. they weren't able to do that, because the clay people were in no way happy about the outcome, and were not of the mind to do any cooperating with the harrison vote. while this committee was in one ofownstairs the rooms here at the church, there are about 200 people sitting up here bored out of listening to
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speeches and memorials from the citizens of new jersey and that sort of thing. they were getting kind of restl ess at that point. the convention was about to become a runaway convention, style -- spiraled out of control and all that good work would be for naught. at 9:00 on friday evening, the 6th, they came up and they asked harrison's nomination for president. but no vice presidential nominee was chosen yet. at this point, a virginia delegate by the name of john tyler who served in the senate and it moved into opposition to andrew jackson, was said to burst into tears at the thought that his hero, henry clay, and won the-- had not
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nomination. whether or not he burst into tears is a matter for conjecture. he did something that have everybody turning around saying, hey, we could nominate tyler, which eventually and to become new and too was born. the 1840 election was a watershed election. harrison was running against martin van buren, who was a hand-picked successor too was b. the 1840 election was a watershed election. of andrew jackson. van buren had been elected in 18 36. he was running for reelection. he had the bad luck to have the pretty go south on him, much right after he dropped his right hand from taking the oath of office in 1837. the bubble finally burst. and so there were -- they were really bad of andrew jackson. van buren had been economic tim. which is another factor for
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there being 3 candidates coming forward for the whig nomination, because it looked like it was worth something. it turns out the election was a lot closer than it also appeared. and harrison was very fortunate after the convention and his nomination, a democratic --spaper in baltimore made a took a shot at him, by saying, give him a pension of $1000, he would be content to sit by a coal fire, dragging hard cider and reading moral philosophy for the rest of his days. was outraged except
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for the gentleman in harrisburg by the name of thomas elder, who thought we can use this. and political spin was was outr. the first rally putting harrison it spread like wildfire, and what we would now term energizing the base was definitely born. it was said without much exaggeration, log cabins were everywhere. it asmmentator described one long party. he was lucky because they were so diverse, to have a kind of base energizing. here at the convention, the one thing they didn't it as do is pass -- their views were so diverse, if they tried to pass a platform they might still be here. they were the first real party to go forth to the american people, saying it's going to be rr
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