United States presidential election, 1852

The United States presidential election of 1852 was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852, and featured a contest between Democratic candidate Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire and General Winfield Scott of Virginia on the Whig ticket. Pierce won a lopsided victory over Scott in the Electoral College, although the popular vote was much more evenly split.

The incumbent (Whig) President, Millard Fillmore, was not sufficiently popular within the party, due to his support for and enforcement of the Compromise of 1850, which anti-slavery Whigs opposed; both Scott and Pierce were chosen in the hope that they could appeal to the Northern and Southern wings of their respective parties. Prior to the election, neither man had been especially noteworthy politically, nor had they been strongly associated with either side in the sectional conflicts of the day.

The election was the last in which the Whig Party was a serious contender in national politics, as sectional disputes over the westward extension of slavery would soon cause it to break apart. It was also the last presidential election before the appearance of the Republican Party. For this reason, American political historians often mark 1852 as the end of the "Second Party System," which had begun in 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson.

Democratic Party nomination

Following the controversy over the Compromise of 1850, Democratic leaders sought to reunite the party by nominating a Northern candidate and a Southern running mate, neither of whom had been absolutely opposed to the Compromise. As 1852 began, leading contenders for the nomination included Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, Lewis Cass of Michigan, and Sam Houston of Texas; former Secretary of State James Buchanan of Pennsylvania; and former Secretary of War William L. Marcy of New York. Of these, Douglas and Buchanan were the apparent frontrunners, but each was ultimately unable to unite a majority of the party behind him. With the more obvious candidates canceling each other out, Democrats began seeking a "dark horse," and by March a movement had emerged in favor of Franklin Pierce, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire who had distinguished himself in the Mexican War. To his supporters, Pierce's chief qualifications were that he was much younger than the other candidates (except for Douglas), was personally amiable and had not alienated large sections of the party, and stood for enforcement of the Compromise of 1850 (including the Fugitive Slave Act). At the Democratic convention in Baltimore in early June, Pierce was not initially put forth as a candidate, but once the others failed to gain a majority, he was, as planned, put forward as an alternative, and won on the 49th ballot. William R. King, a former U.S. senator from Alabama, was nominated for Vice-President.

Whig Party nomination

By 1852, the Whigs were even more seriously divided than the Democrats, their Northern wing being much stronger than that of the Democrats. Due to his determination to enforce the Compromise, Millard Fillmore, despite being the incumbent President, faced serious opposition from the party's anti-slavery element, and though he campaigned for nomination (and had the support of many Southern Whigs), he could not command a majority. Current Secretary of State Daniel Webster of Massachusetts made his own bid, but was in poor health (he would in fact die prior to the general election) and found little concrete support outside New England. By late spring, in an effort to repeat its success in 1840 and 1848, Whig leaders had coalesced around a military hero: General Winfield Scott, who had led the successful campaign against Mexico City in the Mexican War. As a career U.S. Army officer, Scott, though a native of Virginia, was not strongly tied to any state or section, and in the past had made comments that seemed to endorse the gradual abolition of slavery; he was therefore acceptable to Northern Whigs, and their Southern counterparts lacked the numbers and organization to effectively oppose him. The Whig convention met in Baltimore two weeks after the Democrats, and after a long deadlock between Fillmore and Scott, the general was finally nominated on the 53rd ballot, with current Secretary of the Navy William A. Graham of North Carolina chosen as Scott's running mate.

The results of the election were:

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1. ↑ A Pictoral History of the U.S. Presidents, by Clare Gibson, Gramercy Books, 2001.