Page 274 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Election of 1840 10.1
Electoral Vote by State Popular Vote

WHIG
William H. Harrison 234 1,274,624 10.2
DEMOCRATIC
Martin Van Buren 60 1,127,781
294 2,402,405 10.3

10 10.4
OREGON 7 7
COUNTRY IOWA WIS. 14
TERR. TERR. 42
3 4
INDIAN 30 8
TERR. 21 8
5 9 3
23
4 15 10
PART OF MEXICO 15
15
3 11
Disputed 7 11
Area TEXAS 4
REPUBLIC 5 FLA. TERR.

Future Boundary

MAP 10.3 eleCtIoN of 1840

The economy doomed Van Buren’s chances for reelection in 1840. The Whigs
had the chance to offer alternative policies that promised to restore prosperity. They
passed over the true leader of their party, Henry Clay, and nominated William Henry
Harrison, an old military hero who was associated in the public mind with the Battle of
Tippecanoe and the winning of the West. To increase the ticket’s appeal in the South,
they chose John Tyler of Virginia, a states’ rights Democrat, as Harrison’s running mate.
Using the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” the Whigs pulled out all the stops.
They organized rallies and parades, complete with posters, placards, campaign hats and
emblems, special songs, and even log cabins filled with coonskin caps and barrels of
cider for the faithful. Imitating the Jacksonian propaganda against Adams in 1828, they
portrayed Van Buren as a luxury-loving aristocrat and compared him with their own
homespun candidate. There was an enormous turnout on election day—78 percent of Quick Check
those eligible to vote. When it was over, Harrison had parlayed a narrow edge in the Who came together to form the Whig
popular vote into a landslide in the electoral college. (See Map 10.3.) The Whigs also Party, and how did they gain power
won control of both houses of Congress. in 1840?

Heyday of the Second-Party System

10.4 What was the two-party system, and how were the parties different?
A merica’s second-party system came of age in the election of 1840. Unlike the second-party system Historians'

earlier competition between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, the
term for the national two-party
rivalry between Democrats and
rivalry between Democrats and Whigs made the two-party pattern a normal
feature of electoral politics. During the 1840s, the two national parties competed Whigs. The second-party system
on fairly equal terms for the support of the electorate. Allegiance to one party or the other began in the 1830s and ended
in the 1850s with the demise
became a source of personal identity for many Americans and increased their interest and of the Whigs and the rise of the
participation in politics. Republican party.

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