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294 members of the Electoral College 148 electoral votes needed to win | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Turnout | 80.2% [1] 23.8 pp | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Presidential election results map. Yellow denotes states won by Harrison/Tyler and Blue by Van Buren. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1840 United States presidential election was the 14th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 30 to Wednesday, December 2, 1840. Economic recovery from the Panic of 1837 was incomplete, and Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent President Martin Van Buren of the Democratic Party. The election marked the first of two Whig victories in presidential elections, but was the only one where they won a majority of the popular vote. This was the third rematch in American history, which would not occur again until 1892.
In 1839, the Whigs held a national convention for the first time. The 1839 Whig National Convention saw 1836 nominee William Henry Harrison defeat former Secretary of State Henry Clay and General Winfield Scott. Van Buren faced little opposition at the 1840 Democratic National Convention, but controversial Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson was not re-nominated. The Democrats thus became the only major party since 1800 to fail to select a vice presidential nominee.
Referencing vice presidential nominee John Tyler and Harrison's participation in the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Whigs campaigned on the slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." With Van Buren weakened by economic woes, Harrison won a popular majority and 234 of 294 electoral votes. Voter participation surged as white male suffrage became nearly universal, [2] and a contemporary record of 42.4% of the voting age population voted for Harrison. [3] Van Buren's loss made him the third president to lose re-election.
The Whigs did not enjoy the benefits of victory. The 67-year-old Harrison, the oldest U.S. president elected until Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, died a little more than a month after inauguration. Harrison was succeeded by John Tyler, who unexpectedly proved not to be a Whig. While Tyler had been a staunch supporter of Clay at the convention, he was a former Democrat, a passionate supporter of states' rights, and effectively an independent. As President, Tyler blocked the Whigs' legislative agenda and was expelled from the Whig Party, subsequently the second independent (after Washington) to serve as president. Van Buren would be the last incumbent President to lose his reelection bid in a general election until Grover Cleveland in 1888.
1840 Whig Party ticket | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
William Henry Harrison | John Tyler | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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for President | for Vice President | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
U.S. Senator from Ohio (1825–1828) | U.S. Senator from Virginia (1827–1836) President pro tempore of the Senate (1835) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The first national convention of the Whig Party was called for by members of the party in Congress and it was attended by almost 250 delegates in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Henry Clay, William Henry Harrison, and Winfield Scott ran for the party's presidential nomination. The delegations of each state balloted separately before meeting together with the other representatives of the states. Clay initially led on the first ballot, but Harrison won on the final ballot with 148 votes compared to Clay's 90 votes and Scott's 16 votes after supporters from Scott switched to Harrison. John Tyler was selected as a factional and geographical balance to Harrison. [4]
1840 Democratic Party ticket | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Martin Van Buren | None | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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for President | for Vice President | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
8th President of the United States (1837–1841) | N/A | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Democratic members of the New Hampshire General Court made a call for the 1840 Democratic National Convention which was held in Baltimore, Maryland in May 1840. Delegates from twenty-two states attended the convention, but the sizes of the delegations varied with New Jersey having fifty-nine delegates to cast its eight votes while Massachusetts only had one delegate to cast its fourteen votes. [4]
A committee was formed to make recommendations for the nominations and the committee supported Van Buren for renomination which was approved by acclamation. However, the vice-presidential nomination was left vacant due to opposition to Vice President Richard M. Johnson's personal life. [4]
After the negative views of Freemasonry among a large segment of the public began to wane in the mid-1830s, the Anti-Masonic Party disintegrated. Many leaders began to move to the Whig party. Remaining leaders met in September 1837 in Washington, and agreed to maintain the party. The third Anti-Masonic Party National Convention was held in Philadelphia on November 13–14, 1838. By this time, the party had been almost entirely supplanted by the Whigs. The delegates unanimously voted to nominate William Henry Harrison for president (who the party had supported for president the previous election along with Francis Granger for vice president) and Daniel Webster for vice president. However, when the Whig National Convention nominated Harrison with John Tyler as his running mate, the Anti-Masonic Party did not make an alternate nomination and ceased to function and was fully absorbed into the Whigs by 1840.
Presidential vote | Vice presidential vote | ||
---|---|---|---|
William Henry Harrison | 119 | Daniel Webster | 119 |
James G. Birney, Myron Holley, Joshua Leavitt, and Gerrit Smith proposed the creation of an anti-slavery party. In July 1839, two resolutions proposed by Holley at the American Anti-Slavery Society's meeting in Cleveland, called for the creation of an abolitionist party. They failed. Nevertheless, the supporters nominated Birney and Francis Julius LeMoyne as a presidential ticket at a meeting in Warsaw, New York. However, Birney declined the presidential nomination as he preferred a nomination to be made by a regular body of abolitionists and LeyMoyne also declined the vice-presidential nomination. Smith and Holley made a call for an abolitionist nominating convention to be held on April 1, 1840, in Albany, New York. 121 delegates attended the delegation and selected a presidential ticket of Birney and Thomas Earle. which was accepted. It took the name Liberty Party. [5]
Birney was unable to campaign during the election as he was in England until November. The Liberty Party received opposition from followers of William Lloyd Garrison and abolitionist Whigs. The Liberty Party received 7,453 votes. [5]
In the wake of the Panic of 1837, Van Buren was widely unpopular, and Harrison, following Andrew Jackson's strategy, ran as a war hero and man of the people while presenting Van Buren as a wealthy snob living in luxury at the public expense. Although Harrison was comfortably wealthy and well educated, his "log cabin" image caught fire, sweeping all sections of the country.
Harrison avoided campaigning on the issues, with his Whig Party attracting a broad coalition with few common ideals. The Whig strategy overall was to win the election by avoiding discussion of difficult national issues such as slavery or the national bank and concentrate instead on exploiting dissatisfaction over the failed policies of the Van Buren administration with colorful campaigning techniques.
Harrison was the first president to campaign actively for office. He did so with the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too". Tippecanoe referred to Harrison's military victory over a group of Shawnee Native Americans at a river in Indiana called Tippecanoe in 1811. For their part, Democrats laughed at Harrison for being too old for the presidency, and referred to him as "Granny", hinting that he was senile. Said one Democratic newspaper: "Give him a barrel of hard cider, and ... a pension of two thousand [dollars] a year ... and ... he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin." [6]
Whigs took advantage of this quip and declared that Harrison was "the log cabin and hard cider candidate", a man of the common people from the rough-and-tumble West. They depicted Harrison's opponent, President Martin Van Buren, as a wealthy snob who was out of touch with the people. In fact, it was Harrison who came from a family of wealthy planters, while Van Buren's father was a tavernkeeper. Harrison however moved to the frontier and for years lived in a log cabin, while Van Buren had been a well-paid government official.[ citation needed ]
Nonetheless, the election was held in the wake of the Panic of 1837, one of the worst economic depressions in the nation's history, [7] and voters blamed Van Buren, seeing him as unsympathetic to struggling citizens. Harrison campaigned vigorously and won.
This was the first time that a majority of southern voters participated in the election, unlike in the north which has occurred in 1828. [8]
Harrison won the support of western settlers and eastern bankers alike. The extent of Van Buren's unpopularity was evident in Harrison's victories in New York, the president's home state, and in Tennessee, where Andrew Jackson himself had come out of retirement to stump for his former vice-president.
Of the 1,179 counties/independent cities making returns, Harrison won in 699 (59.29%) while Van Buren carried 477 (40.46%). Three counties (0.25%) in the South split evenly between Harrison and Van Buren.
This was the first time a Democratic president lost re-election, as well as the first of only two times (the other being 1980) that a Democratic president lost re-election and lost the popular vote.
Harrison's victory won him precious little time as chief executive of the United States. After giving the longest inauguration speech in U.S. history (lasting about 1 hour and 45 minutes, in cold weather and rain), Harrison served only one month as president before dying of pneumonia on April 4, 1841. This was also the first election in U.S. history in which a candidate won more than a million popular votes.
This was the last election where Indiana voted for the Whigs. It was also the only election where the Whigs won Maine, Michigan, and Mississippi. The election was also the last time that Mississippi voted against the Democrats until 1872, the last in which Indiana did so until 1860, and the last in which Maine and Michigan did so until 1856. This is the only election in American history in which Alabama and Mississippi voted for different candidates.
The 1840 presidential election was the only U.S. presidential election in which four people who either had been or would become a U.S. President (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk) received at least one vote in the Electoral College. [9]
Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote(a) | Electoral vote | Running mate | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Count | Percentage | Vice-presidential candidate | Home state | Electoral vote | ||||
William Henry Harrison | Whig | Ohio | 1,275,583 | 52.87% | 234 | John Tyler | Virginia | 234 |
Martin Van Buren | Democratic | New York | 1,129,645 | 46.82% | 60 | Richard Mentor Johnson | Kentucky | 48 |
Littleton W. Tazewell | Virginia | 11 | ||||||
James K. Polk | Tennessee | 1 | ||||||
James G. Birney | Liberty | New York | 7,453 | 0.31% | 0 | Thomas Earle | Pennsylvania | 0 |
Other | 13 | 0.00% | — | Other | — | |||
Total | 2,412,694 | 100% | 294 | 294 | ||||
Needed to win | 148 | 148 |
Source (Popular Vote):Leip, David. "1840 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved July 27, 2005.Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration . Retrieved July 31, 2005. [10]
(a)The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.
Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–257.
States/districts won by Van Buren |
States/districts won by Harrison/Tyler |
William Henry Harrison Whig | Martin Van Buren Democratic | James G. Birney Liberty | Margin | State Total | ||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
State | electoral votes | # | % | electoral votes | # | % | electoral votes | # | % | electoral votes | # | % | # | |||||
Alabama | 7 | 28,515 | 45.62 | - | 33,996 | 54.38 | 7 | no ballots | -5,481 | -8.76 | 62,511 | AL | ||||||
Arkansas | 3 | 5,160 | 43.58 | - | 6,679 | 56.42 | 3 | no ballots | -1,519 | -12.84 | 11,839 | AR | ||||||
Connecticut | 8 | 31,598 | 55.55 | 8 | 25,281 | 44.45 | - | no ballots | 6,317 | 11.10 | 56,879 | CT | ||||||
Delaware | 3 | 5,967 | 54.99 | 3 | 4,872 | 44.89 | - | no ballots | 1,095 | 10.10 | 10,852 | DE | ||||||
Georgia | 11 | 40,339 | 55.78 | 11 | 31,983 | 44.22 | - | no ballots | 8,356 | 11.56 | 72,322 | GA | ||||||
Illinois | 5 | 45,574 | 48.91 | - | 47,441 | 50.92 | 5 | 160 | 0.17 | - | -1,867 | -2.01 | 93,175 | IL | ||||
Indiana | 9 | 65,302 | 55.86 | 9 | 51,604 | 44.14 | - | no ballots | 13,698 | 11.72 | 116,906 | IN | ||||||
Kentucky | 15 | 58,488 | 64.20 | 15 | 32,616 | 35.80 | - | no ballots | 25,872 | 28.40 | 91,104 | KY | ||||||
Louisiana | 5 | 11,296 | 59.73 | 5 | 7,616 | 40.27 | - | no ballots | 3,680 | 19.46 | 18,912 | LA | ||||||
Maine | 10 | 46,612 | 50.23 | 10 | 46,190 | 49.77 | - | no ballots | 422 | 0.46 | 92,802 | ME | ||||||
Maryland | 10 | 33,528 | 53.83 | 10 | 28,752 | 46.17 | - | no ballots | 4,776 | 7.66 | 62,280 | MD | ||||||
Massachusetts | 14 | 72,852 | 57.44 | 14 | 52,355 | 41.28 | - | 1,618 | 1.28 | - | 20,497 | 16.16 | 126,825 | MA | ||||
Michigan | 3 | 22,933 | 51.71 | 3 | 21,096 | 47.57 | - | 321 | 0.72 | - | 1,837 | 4.14 | 44,350 | MI | ||||
Mississippi | 4 | 19,515 | 53.43 | 4 | 17,010 | 46.57 | - | no ballots | 2,505 | 6.86 | 36,525 | MS | ||||||
Missouri | 4 | 22,954 | 43.37 | - | 29,969 | 56.63 | 4 | no ballots | -7,015 | -13.26 | 52,923 | MO | ||||||
New Hampshire | 7 | 26,310 | 43.88 | - | 32,774 | 54.66 | 7 | 872 | 1.45 | - | -6,464 | -10.78 | 59,956 | NH | ||||
New Jersey | 8 | 33,351 | 51.74 | 8 | 31,034 | 48.15 | - | 69 | 0.11 | - | 2,317 | 3.59 | 64,454 | NJ | ||||
New York | 42 | 226,001 | 51.18 | 42 | 212,733 | 48.18 | - | 2,809 | 0.64 | - | 13,268 | 3.00 | 441,543 | NY | ||||
North Carolina | 15 | 46,567 | 57.68 | 15 | 34,168 | 42.32 | - | no ballots | 12,399 | 15.36 | 80,735 | NC | ||||||
Ohio | 21 | 148,157 | 54.10 | 21 | 124,782 | 45.57 | - | 903 | 0.33 | - | 23,375 | 8.53 | 273,842 | OH | ||||
Pennsylvania | 30 | 144,010 | 50.00 | 30 | 143,676 | 49.88 | - | 340 | 0.12 | - | 334 | 0.12 | 288,026 | PA | ||||
Rhode Island | 4 | 5,278 | 61.22 | 4 | 3,301 | 38.29 | - | 42 | 0.49 | - | 1,977 | 22.93 | 8,621 | RI | ||||
South Carolina | 11 | no popular vote | no popular vote | 11 | no popular vote | - | - | - | SC | |||||||||
Tennessee | 15 | 60,194 | 55.66 | 15 | 47,951 | 44.34 | - | no ballots | 12,243 | 11.32 | 108,145 | TN | ||||||
Vermont | 7 | 32,445 | 63.90 | 7 | 18,009 | 35.47 | - | 319 | 0.63 | - | 14,436 | 28.43 | 50,773 | VT | ||||
Virginia | 23 | 42,639 | 49.35 | - | 43,757 | 50.65 | 23 | no ballots | -1,120 | -1.30 | 86,394 | VA | ||||||
TOTALS: | 294 | 1,275,583 | 52.87 | 234 | 1,129,645 | 46.82 | 60 | 7,453 | 0.31 | - | 145,938 | 6.05 | 2,412,694 | US | ||||
TO WIN: | 148 |
States where the margin of victory was under 1%:
States where the margin of victory was under 5%:
States where the margin of victory was under 10%:
- Rockabye, baby, Daddy's a Whig
- When he comes home, hard cider he'll swig
- When he has swug
- He'll fall in a stu
- And down will come Tyler and Tippecanoe.
- Rockabye, baby, when you awake
- You will discover Tip is a fake.
- Far from the battle, war cry and drum
- He sits in his cabin a'drinking bad rum.
- Rockabye, baby, never you cry
- You need not fear of Tip and his Ty.
- What they would ruin, Van Buren will fix.
- Van's a magician, they are but tricks.
Method of choosing electors | State(s) |
---|---|
Each Elector appointed by state legislature | South Carolina |
Each Elector chosen by voters statewide | (all other States) |
In the 1997 film Amistad , Van Buren (played by Nigel Hawthorne) is seen campaigning for re-election. These scenes have been criticized for their historical inaccuracy. [12]
Martin Van Buren was an American lawyer, diplomat, and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he served as New York's attorney general and U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York before joining Andrew Jackson's administration as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to Great Britain, and ultimately the eighth vice president when named Jackson's running mate for the 1832 election. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836 against divided Whig opponents. Van Buren lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an important anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election.
William Henry Harrison was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. Harrison died just 31 days after his inauguration as president in 1841, making his presidency the shortest in U.S. history. He was also the first U.S. president to die in office, causing a brief constitutional crisis since presidential succession was not then fully defined in the United States Constitution. Harrison was the last president born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies and was the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.
The 1836 United States presidential election was the 13th quadrennial presidential election, held from Thursday, November 3 to Wednesday, December 7, 1836. In the third consecutive election victory for the Democratic Party, incumbent Vice President Martin Van Buren defeated four candidates fielded by the nascent Whig Party.
The 1844 United States presidential election was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1 to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk narrowly defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest turning on the controversial issues of slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas. This is the only election in which both major party nominees served as Speaker of the House at one point, and the first in which neither candidate held elective office at the time.
The 1848 United States presidential election was the 16th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1848. In the aftermath of the Mexican–American War, General Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party defeated Senator Lewis Cass of the Democratic Party.
The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The 1888 United States presidential election was the 26th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1888. Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison, a former U.S. senator from Indiana, defeated incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland of New York. It was the third of five U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not win the national popular vote, which would not occur again until the 2000 US presidential election.
The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.
The 1839 Whig National Convention was a presidential nominating convention held from December 4 to December 8 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was the first national convention ever held by the Whig Party, and was organized to select the party's nominee in the 1840 presidential election. The convention nominated former Senator William Henry Harrison of Ohio for president and former Senator John Tyler of Virginia for vice president.
"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", originally published as "Tip and Ty", was a popular and influential campaign song of the Whig Party's colorful Log Cabin Campaign in the 1840 United States presidential election. Its lyrics sang the praises of Whig candidates William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, while denigrating incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren.
The presidency of Martin Van Buren began on March 4, 1837, when Martin Van Buren was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1841. Van Buren, the incumbent vice president and chosen successor of President Andrew Jackson, took office as the eighth United States president after defeating multiple Whig Party candidates in the 1836 presidential election. A member of the Democratic Party, Van Buren's presidency ended following his defeat by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in the 1840 presidential election.
The Liberty Party was an abolitionist political party in the United States prior to the American Civil War. The party experienced its greatest activity during the 1840s, while remnants persisted as late as 1860. It supported James G. Birney in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844. Others who attained prominence as leaders of the Liberty Party included Gerrit Smith, Salmon P. Chase, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry Bibb, and William Goodell. They attempted to work within the federal system created by the United States Constitution to diminish the political influence of the Slave Power and advance the cause of universal emancipation and an integrated, egalitarian society.
John Tyler was an American politician who served as the tenth president of the United States from 1841 to 1845, after briefly holding office as the tenth vice president in 1841. He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with President William Henry Harrison, succeeding to the presidency following Harrison's death 31 days after assuming office. Tyler was a stalwart supporter and advocate of states' rights, including regarding slavery, and he adopted nationalistic policies as president only when they did not infringe on the states' powers. His unexpected rise to the presidency posed a threat to the presidential ambitions of Henry Clay and other Whig politicians and left Tyler estranged from both of the nation's major political parties at the time.
The 1844 Democratic National Convention was a presidential nominating convention held in Baltimore, Maryland from May 27 through 30. The convention nominated former Governor James K. Polk of Tennessee for president and former Senator George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania for vice president.
The 1840 Democratic National Convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland, from May 5 to May 6. The Democratic Party re-nominated President Martin Van Buren by acclamation, but failed to select a nominee for vice president. Van Buren is the only major party presidential nominee since the ratification of the 12th Amendment to seek election without a running mate. Dragged down by the unpopularity of the Panic of 1837, Van Buren was defeated by the Whig Party's ticket in the 1840 presidential election.
The 1840 United States elections elected the members of the 27th United States Congress, taking place during the Second Party System. In the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, the Whigs become the fourth party in history to win control of the presidency and both houses of Congress; the Whigs would never again accomplish this feat. The election also marked the first time since the 1834 elections that the Democratic Party did not control the presidency and both chambers of Congress.
In 1840, William Henry Harrison was elected President of the United States. Harrison, who had served as a general and as United States Senator from Ohio, defeated the incumbent president, Democrat Martin Van Buren, in a campaign that broke new ground in American politics. Among other firsts, Harrison's victory was the first time the Whig Party won a presidential election. A month after taking office, Harrison died and his running mate John Tyler served the remainder of his term, but broke from the Whig agenda, and was expelled from the party.
National conventions of the Free Soil and Liberty parties met in 1847 and 1848 to nominate candidates for president and vice president in advance of the 1848 United States presidential election. The conventions resulted in the creation of the national Free Soil Party, a union of political abolitionists with antislavery Conscience Whigs and Barnburner Democrats to oppose the westward extension of slavery into the U.S. territories. Former President Martin Van Buren was nominated for president by the Free Soil National Convention that met at Buffalo, New York on August 9, 1848; Charles Francis Adams Sr. was nominated for vice president. Van Buren and Adams received 291,409 popular votes in the national election, almost all from the free states; his popularity among northern Democrats was great enough to deny his Democratic rival, Lewis Cass, the crucial state of New York, throwing the state and the election to Whig Zachary Taylor.
The 1844 presidential campaign of James K. Polk, then both the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives and governor of Tennessee, was announced on May 27, 1844 in Baltimore, Maryland, however Polk had originally sought the vice-presidential nomination. At the 1844 Democratic National Convention on May 27, seven ballots were held before Polk was proposed as a compromise candidate and won on the ninth ballot.
The history of the United States Whig Party lasted from the establishment of the Whig Party early in President Andrew Jackson's second term (1833–1837) to the collapse of the party during the term of President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857). This article covers the party in national politics. For state politics see Whig Party.