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Part II

History

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Part II.  From The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections, 2nd edition (9 points).  The
following are chapter excerpts from this book, each describing a different election.  They are all in order (as
you read along...).  Find the election, and for each learn:
A.  The two (or three) candidates who ran in the general election and their respective parties
B.  The year of the election
Three of these quotations will appear on the final exam. 
1.  “In the Northeast [the victor] won only Pennsylvania and Vermont; had he lost Pennsylvania’s 25 votes,
the election would have gone to [the loser]. But in this highly sectional election, [the loser] failed to receive
any votes south of Maryland. With Federalist strength increasingly confined to New England, the party
continued to waste away. Thus [the winner] owed his victory to Federalist weakness and to Republican
strength in the South and West. In the South he prevailed because of his popularity and Virginia roots, and in
the West farmers and frontiersmen supported the war because of the British blockade and suspected British
aid to the Indians.”
2.  “The election results shocked Americans. Theirs was a nation that prided itself on its experiment in
republican government, yet they had just witnessed the will of the people being subverted. While no one
urged revising the Constitution or scrapping the electoral college system, [one candidate]’s supporters
wasted no time in formulating a response to the betrayal of their candidate and their political will. The
following October, the [home state] legislature nominated [him] as [a future] presidential candidate.”
3.  “In the South the Whigs ran almost even with the Democrats, a far cry from the runaway victories that [a
previous president] had scored in that region. . . . Whigs owed part of their strength in the South to the issue

of slavery. Abolitionist agitation increased dramatically. . . and southerners became increasingly defensive of
their  ‘peculiar  institution.’    Many  southerners  feared  [the  winner],  a  northerner,  and  distrusted  [his  running
mate] for his relationship with a mulatto woman. The Whigs tried to capitalize on these feelings by portraying
[the  winner]  as  an  antislavery  man,  even  though  in  reality  he  was  no  friend  of  the  abolitionists  and  had  no
plans to interfere with slavery.”
4.    “Ultimately,  it  might  have  been  the  presence  of  this  third  political  party  that  propelled  [the  winner]  to
victory in a tight race. [The third party candidate], a former Kentucky slaveholder turned abolitionist, had run
four years earlier as the candidate. . . . [but] he had attracted little attention and won only 7,000 votes. In 1844
[he] tried again and managed a more impressive showing with 62,000 votes. [His] strength in New York State
was especially significant; there he polled almost 16,000 votes, winning ballots from antislavery voters who
were  disgusted  by  [the  Whig  candidate’s]  equivocation  on  annexation.  [The  Whig  candidate]  consequently
lost the state and its 36 electoral votes; had he received them he would have won with electoral votes. The
presence of the [third party] plus the strength that [the Whig candidate] had inadvertently given it by fudging
the Texas issue might have cost him the presidency in his third and final run for the White House.” 
5.  “[The third party candidate and former president] registered an impressive showing, polling 10 percent of
the national vote. Although he won no states outright, he placed second behind [the winner] in
Massachusetts, Vermont, and his native New York. By forcing [the Democratic candidate] into third place in
those states, [he] helped to deny the Democrats a victory. As it was, both [the two major party candidates]
won the same number of states, 15. [The Democrat] fared well in his native Northwest, where Whigs had
performed poorly since their 1836 genesis as a party. [The Whig] ran much stronger in the southern states
than [another Whig] had four years earlier. He won a slim plurality in popular votes nationwide, 47.4 percent
to 42.5 percent, and his 36-point lead in the electoral college was relatively narrow. For the Union the nature
of his victory seemed to augur well, because his triumph cut across sectional lines and appeared national in
character, since he had won 9 free states and 6 slave states (of the 30 states in the Union, 15 were slave and
15 were free).” 
6.  “Whig dissension and Democratic unity produced a smashing victory for [the Democrat], who at 48
became the youngest man elected president up to that time. [His] victory was especially notable because it was
national in character, attracting votes from both the North and South. In terms of states won and lost, [the Whig
candidate]  suffered  the  worst  defeat  ever  for  the  Whig  Party,  taking  only  four:  Massachusetts,  Vermont,
Kentucky, and Tennessee.”
7.    “[The  Democrat]  had  a  lock  on  the  South.  The  battleground  was  in  the  North,  and  campaigners
concentrated on a handful of swing states that would determine the election: Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New
Jersey, and Pennsylvania. [The victor] won all of these states except Maryland and managed a narrow victory.
But he won only 45 percent of the popular vote nationwide. Although northern defections after the Kansas-
Nebraska Act had weakened the Democrats, they still had the strongest political party in the nation.”