1852 United States presidential election

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1852 United States presidential election
Flag of the United States (1851-1858).svg
  1848 November 2, 1852 1856  

296 members of the Electoral College
149 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout69.5% [1] Decrease2.svg 3.3 pp
  Mathew Brady - Franklin Pierce (cropped).jpg Winfield Scott by Fredricks, 1862 (cropped).jpg
Nominee Franklin Pierce Winfield Scott
Party Democratic Whig
Home state New Hampshire New Jersey
Running mate William R. King William A. Graham
Electoral vote25442
States carried274
Popular vote1,607,5211,386,943
Percentage50.8%43.9%

ElectoralCollege1852.svg
Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Pierce/King and Yellow by Scott/Graham. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state.

President before election

Millard Fillmore
Whig

Elected President

Franklin Pierce
Democratic

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1852. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott. A third party candidate from the Free Soil party, John P. Hale, also ran and came in third place, but got no electoral votes.

Contents

Incumbent Whig President Millard Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency in 1850 upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and enforced the Fugitive Slave Law. This earned Fillmore Southern voter support and Northern voter opposition. On the 53rd ballot of the sectionally divided 1852 Whig National Convention, Scott defeated Fillmore for the nomination. Democrats divided among four major candidates at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. On the 49th ballot, dark horse candidate Franklin Pierce won nomination by consensus compromise. The Free Soil Party, a third party opposed to the extension of slavery in the United States and into the territories, nominated New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale.

With few policy differences between the two major candidates, the election became a personality contest. Though Scott had commanded in the Mexican–American War, Pierce also served. Scott strained Whig Party unity as his anti-slavery reputation gravely damaged his campaign in the South. A group of Southern Whigs and a separate group of Southern Democrats each nominated insurgent tickets, but both efforts failed to attract support.

Pierce and running mate William R. King won a comfortable popular majority, carrying 27 of the 31 states. Pierce won the highest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe's uncontested 1820 re-election. The Free Soil Party regressed to less than five percent of the national popular vote, down from more than ten percent in 1848, while overwhelming defeat and disagreement about slavery soon drove the Whig Party to disintegrate. Anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soilers would ultimately coalesce into the new Republican Party, which would quickly become a formidable movement in the free states.

Not until 1876 would Democrats again win a majority of the popular vote for president, and not until 1932 would they win a majority in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

Nominations

Democratic Party nomination

1852 Democratic Party ticket
Franklin Pierce William R. King
for Presidentfor Vice President
Mathew Brady - Franklin Pierce - alternate crop (cropped).jpg
William Rufus King..jpg
U.S. senator from New Hampshire
(1837–1842)
U.S. senator from Alabama
(1819–1844 & 1848–1852)
Pierce/King campaign poster 1852DemocraticCampaignPoster.png
Pierce/King campaign poster

The Democratic Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. Benjamin F. Hallett, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, limited the sizes of the delegations to their electoral votes and a vote to maintain the two-thirds requirement for the presidential and vice-presidential nomination was passed by a vote of 269 to 13. [2]

James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, William L. Marcy, and Stephen A. Douglas were the main candidates for the nomination. All of the candidates led the ballot for the presidential nomination at one point, but all of them failed to meet the two-thirds requirement. Franklin Pierce was put up for the nomination by the Virginia delegation. Pierce won the nomination when the delegates switched their support to him after he had received the unanimous support of the delegates from New England. He won on the second day of balloting after forty-nine ballots. [2] [3]

The delegation from Maine proposed that the vice-presidential nomination should be given to somebody from the Southern United States with William R. King being specifically named. King led on the first ballot before winning on the second ballot. [2]

Whig Party nomination

1852 Whig Party ticket
Winfield Scott William A. Graham
for Presidentfor Vice President
Unsuccessful 1852.jpg
William Alexander Graham - Brady-Handy (cropped 3x4).jpg
3rd
Commanding General of the U.S. Army
(1841–1861)
20th
U.S. Secretary of the Navy
(1850–1852)
Millard Fillmore, the incumbent president in 1852, whose term expired on March 4, 1853 Millard Fillmore by Brady Studio 1855-65-crop.jpg
Millard Fillmore, the incumbent president in 1852, whose term expired on March 4, 1853
Scott/Graham campaign poster Scott Graham.png
Scott/Graham campaign poster

The Whig Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. The call for the convention had been made by Whig members of the United States Congress and thirty-one states were represented. A vote to have each state's vote be based on its electoral college strength was passed by a vote of 149 to 144, but it was rescinded due to disagreements from the Southern states and smaller Northern states. [2]

The party had been divided by the Compromise of 1850 and was divided over the presidential nomination between incumbent president Millard Fillmore, who received support from the South, and Winfield Scott, who received his support from the North. William H. Seward, who had been the main opponent of the compromise in the United States Senate and advised President Zachary Taylor against it, supported Scott. Fillmore offered to give his delegates to Daniel Webster if he received the support of forty-one delegates on his own, but Webster was unsuccessful. Scott won the nomination on the 53rd ballot. William Alexander Graham won the vice-presidential nomination without a formal vote. [2] [4]

Nine southern Whig members of Congress, including Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs, refused to support Scott. [5]

Free Soil Party nomination

The Free Soil Party was still the strongest third party in 1852. However, following the Compromise of 1850, most of the "Barnburners" who supported it in 1848 had returned to the Democratic Party while most of the Conscience Whigs rejoined the Whig Party. The second Free Soil National Convention assembled in the Masonic Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. New Hampshire senator John P. Hale was nominated for president with 192 delegate votes (sixteen votes were cast for a smattering of candidates). George Washington Julian of Indiana was nominated for vice president over Samuel Lewis of Ohio and Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio.

Union Party nomination

The Union party was formed in 1850, an offshoot of the Whig party in several Southern states, including Georgia. As the 1852 presidential election approached, Union party leaders decided to wait and see who was nominated by the two major parties. The movement to nominate Daniel Webster as a third-party candidate began in earnest following the Whig Convention, largely driven by those who had been strenuously opposed to Winfield Scott's nomination for president, among them Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and George Curtis. While Webster was against what he perceived as a "revolt" from the Whig Party and preferred not to be nominated, he let Americans vote for him should the party choose to nominate him.

The Union Party held its Georgia state convention on August 9, 1852, and nominated Webster for president and Charles J. Jenkins of Georgia for vice president. A formal convention was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 15, affirming the nominations made at the state convention in Georgia and rejecting Winfield Scott as nothing more than a military figure. The Webster/Jenkins ticket received nationwide support, particularly among Southern Whigs, but also in Massachusetts and New York, but it was largely perceived by many as nothing more than getting voters who would, in different circumstances, support Scott.

Webster had no real chance of winning the election, but even the new Know-Nothing party endorsed Webster and Jenkins, nominating them without even their own permission. However, Webster died nine days before the election of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 24, 1852.

Native American (Know-Nothing) Party nomination

Around the mid-1830s, nativists were present in New York politics, under the aegis of the American Republican Party. The American Republican party was formed in 1843 in major opposition to Catholicism and Catholic immigrants. In 1845, the party changed its name to the Native American Party. Their opponents nicknamed them the "Know Nothings". The party liked the name, and it became the official nickname of the party until it collapsed in 1860. In 1852, the original presidential nominee planned by the Native American Party was Daniel Webster, the presidential nominee of the Union party. They nominated Webster without his permission, with George Corbin Washington (grandnephew of George Washington) as his vice presidential running mate. Webster died of natural causes nine days before the election, and the Know-Nothings quickly replaced Webster by nominating Jacob Broom for president and replaced Washington with Reynell Coates for vice president. In the future, former president Millard Fillmore would be their presidential nominee in 1856. [6]

Southern Rights Party nomination

The Southern Rights Party was an offshoot of the Democratic party in several Southern states which advocated secession from the Union, electing a number of Congressmen and holding referendums on secession in a number of southern states, none of which were successful.

It was unclear in early 1852 if the Party would contest the presidential election. When the Alabama state convention was held in early March, only nine counties were represented. The party decided to see who was nominated by the two major national parties and support one of them if possible. When Georgia held its state convention, it acted as the state Democratic Party and sent delegates to the national convention.

After the Democratic National Convention, the Party was not sure that it wanted to support Franklin Pierce and William R. King, the Democratic nominees. Alabama held a state convention from July 13–15 and discussed at length the options of running a separate ticket or supporting Pierce and King. The convention was unable to arrive at a decision, deciding to appoint a committee to review the positions of Scott/Graham and Pierce/King with the option of calling a "national" convention if the two major-party tickets appeared deficient. The committee took its time reviewing the positions of Pierce and Scott, finally deciding on August 25 to call a convention for a Southern Rights Party ticket.

The convention assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, with 62 delegates present, a committee to recommend a ticket being appointed while the delegates listened to speeches in the interim. The committee eventually recommended former senator George Troup of Georgia for president, and former governor John Quitman of Mississippi for vice president; they were unanimously nominated.

The two nominees accepted their nominations soon after the convention, which was held rather late in the season. Troup stated in a letter, dated September 27 and printed in the New York Times on October 16, that he had planned to vote for Pierce/King and had always wholeheartedly supported William R.D. King. He indicated in the letter that he preferred to decline the honor, as he was rather ill at the time and feared that he would die before the election. The Party's executive committee edited the letter to excise those portions which indicated that Troup preferred to decline, a fact which was revealed after the election.

Liberty Party nomination

The Liberty Party had ceased to become a significant political force after most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848. Nonetheless, some of those who rejected the fusion strategy held a Liberty Party National Convention in Buffalo, New York. There were few delegates present, so a ticket was recommended and a later convention called. The Convention recommended Gerrit Smith of New York for president and Charles Durkee of Wisconsin for vice president. A second convention was held in Syracuse, New York, in early September 1852, but it too failed to draw enough delegates to select nominees. Yet a third convention gathered in Syracuse later that month and nominated William Goodell of New York for president and S.M. Bell of Virginia for vice president. A slate of electors pledged to Smith received 72 votes in New York. [7]

General election

Fall campaign

Political cartoon favoring Winfield Scott Scott vs Pierce campaign.jpg
Political cartoon favoring Winfield Scott

The Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates. The lack of clearcut issues between the two parties helped drive voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. The decline was further exacerbated by Scott's antislavery reputation, which decimated the Southern Whig vote at the same time as the pro-slavery Whig platform undermined the Northern Whig vote. After the Compromise of 1850 was passed, many of the southern Whig Party members broke with the party's key figure, Henry Clay. [8]

Finally, Scott's status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce was himself a Mexican–American War brigadier general.

The Democrats adopted the slogan: The Whigs we Polked in forty-four, We'll Pierce in fifty-two, playing on the names of Pierce and former president James K. Polk. [9]

Just nine days before the election, Webster died, causing many Union state parties to remove their slates of electors. The Union ticket appeared on the ballot in Georgia and Massachusetts, however.

Results

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of blue are for Pierce (Democratic), shades of yellow are for Scott (Whig), shades of red are for Hale (Free Soil), shades of orange are for Webster (Union), shades of green are for (Independent Democrats), and shades of purple are for Troup (Southern Rights). PresidentialCounty1852Colorbrewer.gif
Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of blue are for Pierce (Democratic), shades of yellow are for Scott (Whig), shades of red are for Hale (Free Soil), shades of orange are for Webster (Union), shades of green are for (Independent Democrats), and shades of purple are for Troup (Southern Rights).

27.3% of the voting age population and 69.5% of eligible voters participated in the election. [10] When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won the electoral college in a landslide; Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont, while the Free Soil vote collapsed to less than half of what Martin Van Buren had earned in the previous election, with the party taking no states. The fact that Daniel Webster received a substantial share of the vote in Georgia and Massachusetts, even though he was dead, shows how disenchanted voters were with the two main candidates.

In the popular vote, while Pierce outpolled Scott by 220,000 votes, 17 states were decided by less than 10%, and eight by less than 5%. A shift of 69,000 votes to Scott in Delaware, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania would have left the electoral college in a 148–148 tie, forcing a contingent election in the House of Representatives.

As a result of the devastating defeat and the growing tensions within the party between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the Whig Party quickly fell apart after the 1852 election and ceased to exist. Some Southern Whigs would join the Democratic Party, and many Northern Whigs would help to form the new Republican Party in 1854.

Some Whigs in both sections would support the so-called "Know-Nothing" party in the 1856 presidential election. Similarly, the Free Soil Party rapidly fell away into obscurity after the election, and the remaining members mostly opted to join the former Northern Whigs in forming the Republican Party.

The Southern Rights Party effectively collapsed following the election, attaining only five percent of the vote in Alabama, and a few hundred in its nominee's home state of Georgia. It would elect a number of Congressmen in 1853, but they would rejoin the Democratic Party upon taking their seats in Congress.

Kentucky and Tennessee were the only slave states that Scott won. None of the future Confederate states elected governors in the 1852 and 1853 gubernatorial elections and the Whigs only won 14 of the south's 65 seats in the U.S. House. The party held no state legislatures in the south except for in Tennessee. [5] The Democrats, who carried all but two northern states, would see a decline in the north following the 1854 elections due to controversy around the Kansas–Nebraska Act. They lost control of all free state legislatures except for two and their seats in the U.S. House from the north fell from 93 to 23. [11]

United States Electoral College 1852.svg

Electoral results
Presidential candidatePartyHome statePopular vote [a] Electoral
vote
Running mate
CountPercentageVice-presidential candidateHome stateElectoral vote
Franklin Pierce Democratic New Hampshire 1,607,51050.84%254 William R. King Alabama 254
Winfield Scott Whig New Jersey 1,386,94243.87%42 William Alexander Graham North Carolina 42
John P. Hale Free Soil New Hampshire 155,2104.91%0 George Washington Julian Indiana 0
Daniel Webster [b] Union [c] Massachusetts 6,9940.22%0 Charles J. Jenkins Georgia 0
Jacob Broom Native American Pennsylvania 2,5660.08%0 Reynell Coates New Jersey 0
George Troup Southern Rights Georgia 2,3310.07%0 John A. Quitman Mississippi 0
Other2770.00%Other
Total3,161,830100%296296
Needed to win149149

Source (Popular Vote):Leip, David. "1852 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.

Popular vote
Pierce
50.84%
Scott
43.87%
Hale
4.91%
Others
0.38%
Electoral vote
Pierce
85.81%
Scott
14.19%

Records

This was the last election in which the Democrats won Michigan until 1932, [d] the last in which the Democrats won Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio [e] or Rhode Island until 1912, the last in which the Democrats won Wisconsin until 1892, the last in which the Democrats won Connecticut until 1876 and the last in which the Democrats won New York until 1868. It was, however, the last election in which the Democrats' chief opponent won Kentucky until 1896, [f] [12] and the last until 1928 in which the Democrats' opponent obtained an absolute majority in Kentucky.

Geography of results

Results by state

Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.

States/districts won by Pierce/King
States/districts won by Scott/Graham
Franklin Pierce
Democratic
Winfield Scott
Whig
John P. Hale
Free Soil
MarginState Total
Stateelectoral
votes
# %electoral
votes
# %electoral
votes
# %electoral
votes
#%#
Alabama 926,88160.89915,06134.12-no ballots11,28026.7744,147AL
Arkansas 412,17362.1847,40437.82-no ballots4,76924.3619,577AR
California 440,72153.02435,97246.83-610.08-4,7496.1976,810CA
Connecticut 633,24949.79630,35945.56-3,1614.73-2,8904.2366,781CT
Delaware 36,31849.8536,29349.66-620.49-250.1912,673DE
Florida 34,31860.0332,87539.97-no ballots1,44320.067,193FL
Georgia 1040,51664.701016,66026.60-no ballots23,85638.1062,626GA
Illinois 1180,37851.871164,73341.77-9,8636.36-15,64510.10154,974IL
Indiana 1395,34052.051380,90144.17-6,9293.78-14,4397.88183,170IN
Iowa 417,76350.23415,85644.84-1,6064.54-1,9075.3935,364IA
Kentucky 1253,49448.32-57,42851.44122660.24--3,934-3.12111,643KY
Louisiana 618,64751.94617,25548.06-no ballots1,3923.8835,902LA
Maine 841,60950.63832,54339.60-8,0309.77-9,06611.0382,182ME
Maryland 840,02253.28835,07746.69-210.03-4,9456.5975,120MD
Massachusetts 1344,56935.07-52,68341.451328,20322.19--8,114-6.38127,103MA
Michigan 641,84250.45633,86040.83-7,2378.73-7,9829.6282,939MI
Mississippi 726,89660.50717,55839.50-no ballots9,33821.0044,454MS
Missouri 938,81756.42929,98443.58-no ballots8,83312.8468,801MO
New Hampshire 528,50356.40515,48630.64-6,54612.95-13,01725.7650,535NH
New Jersey 744,30553.24738,55646.33-3590.43-5,7496.9183,220NJ
New York 35262,08350.1835234,88244.97-25,3294.85-27,2015.21522,294NY
North Carolina 1039,77850.431039,04349.49-no ballots7350.9478,891NC
Ohio 23168,93347.8323152,52343.18-31,7328.98-16,4104.65353,188OH
Pennsylvania 27198,56251.2027179,10446.18-8,4952.19-19,4585.02387,389PA
Rhode Island 48,73551.3747,62644.85-6443.79-1,1096.5217,005RI
South Carolina 8no popular vote8no popular voteno popular vote---SC
Tennessee 1256,90049.27-58,58650.7312no ballots-1,686-1.46115,486TN
Texas 413,55273.0744,99526.93-no ballots8,55746.1418,547TX
Vermont 513,04429.72-22,17350.5258,62119.64--9,129-20.8043,890VT
Virginia 1573,87255.711558,73244.29-no ballots15,14011.42132,604VA
Wisconsin 533,65852.04522,21034.34-8,81413.63-11,44817.7064,682WI
TOTALS:2961,605,94350.832541,386,41843.8842155,7994.93-3,159,640the US
TO WIN:149

States that flipped from Whig to Democratic

Close states

States where the margin of victory was under 1%:

  1. Delaware 0.19% (25 votes)
  2. North Carolina 0.90% (735 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 5%:

  1. Tennessee 1.46% (1,686 votes)
  2. Kentucky 3.12% (3,934 votes)
  3. Louisiana 3.88% (1,392 votes)
  4. Connecticut 4.23% (2,890 votes)
  5. Ohio 4.65% (16,410 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:

  1. Pennsylvania 5.02% (19,458 votes)
  2. New York 5.21% (27,201 votes) (tipping point state)
  3. Iowa 5.39% (1,907 votes)
  4. California 6.19% (4,749 votes)
  5. Massachusetts 6.38% (8,114 votes)
  6. Rhode Island 6.52% (1,109 votes)
  7. Maryland 6.59% (4,945 votes)
  8. New Jersey 6.91% (5,749 votes)
  9. Indiana 7.88% (14,439 votes)
  10. Michigan 9.62% (7,982 votes)

Electoral college selection

Method of choosing electorsState(s)
Each Elector appointed by state legislature South Carolina
Each Elector chosen by voters statewide(all other States)

See also

Notes

  1. The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.
  2. Daniel Webster died on October 24, 1852, one week before the election. However, his name remained on the ballot in Massachusetts and Georgia, and he still managed to poll nearly seven thousand votes. He was also the original candidate of the Native American Party but was replaced on his death by Jacob Broom.
  3. For a detailed discussion of the Union Party formed by Pro-Union Whigs, see Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), Chapters 19 and 20.
  4. In 1892 Democrat Grover Cleveland did win one electoral vote from each of five Michigan congressional districts he carried despite losing the state
  5. In 1892 the direct election of presidential electors meant Grover Cleveland received one Ohio electoral vote
  6. Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell won Kentucky in 1860; however, Bell was surpassed in the popular vote by two Democratic factions and Republican Abraham Lincoln. Apart from this, the Democrats won Kentucky in all ten elections between 1856 and 1892.

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Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, and was the last president to have been a member of the Whig Party while in office. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected the 12th vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in July 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1852 United States elections</span>

The 1852 United States elections elected the members of the 33rd United States Congress. The election marked the end of the Second Party System, as the Whig Party ceased to function as a national party following this election. Democrats won the presidency and retained control of both houses of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1852 United States presidential election in Massachusetts</span>

The 1852 United States presidential election in Massachusetts took place on November 2, 1852, as part of the 1852 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1852 United States presidential election in New York</span>

The 1852 United States presidential election in New York took place on November 2, 1852, as part of the 1852 United States presidential election. Voters chose 35 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1852 United States presidential election in Georgia</span>

The 1852 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 2, 1852, as part of the 1852 United States presidential election. Voters chose 10 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

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.

References

  1. "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 National Party Conventions, 1831-1976. Congressional Quarterly. 1979.
  3. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, Gramercy 1997
  4. Gienapp, William (1984). The Whig Party, the Compromise of 1850, and the Nomination of Winfield Scott. Presidential Studies Quarterly.
  5. 1 2 McPherson 1988, p. 117.
  6. Charles O. Paullin, "The National Ticket of Broom and Coates, 1852." American Historical Review 25.4 (1920): 689–691. online
  7. Dubin, Michael J. (2002). United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 128.
  8. "Franklin Pierce". whitehouse.gov . December 29, 2014 via National Archives.
  9. "Democratic Rallying Song for 1852". The Mountain Sentinel. Ebensburg, PA: 1. October 7, 1852.
  10. Abramson, Aldrich & Rohde 1995, p. 99.
  11. McPherson 1988, p. 129-130.
  12. Counting the Votes; Kentucky Archived November 20, 2017, at the Wayback Machine

Works cited

Further reading

States

Primary sources

Web sites