Martin Van Buren's presidency was reaching the end of its first term, and it was time for a new election. The Whigs were finally more organized. The Democrats, of course, are going to run Van Buren again. The Whigs will run William Henry Harrison, and for the first time I'm going to mention a VP candidate during an election.
Harrison's running mate on his ticket was John Tyler. Now, Harrison was the top Whig of the cluster of them back in 1836. He campaigned on his war record, on a new Bank of the United States, and on following Henry Clay's American system. And in fact, their slogan was Tippy Canoe and Tyler Too.
Tippy Canoe being the battle that Harrison had won back in the Tecumseh War, defeating Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa. Pretty clever little slogan, Tippy Canoe and Tyler Too. That's why I gave you Tyler's name, mostly so the slogan would make sense. Also, because Tyler's going to become very important here shortly.
Now, Harrison wins this handily. Popular vote's pretty close, but the electoral vote was a landslide. And this is largely because of Van Buren's response to the panic, where he didn't really do anything. So now we have William Henry Harrison as president. And something about this slide should really stick out to you.
At 67, Harrison was the oldest person to win the presidential election to this point. He's been supplanted first by Trump and then by Biden. Both of them were older than Harrison at the time of their election.
One month after Harrison's inauguration, he died of pneumonia. Now, the story is very, very commonly, it's been attributed to his very long inaugural address, which is still the longest in American history. However, he did not become sick for three weeks later. So yes, it was cold. And yes, he talked for a very long time.
But going outside in the cold and not wearing a coat is not going to give you a cold. That's not how this works. Colds are usually viruses or bacterial infections, depending on what you're dealing with.
The temperature doesn't necessarily have a ton to do with that. So Harrison is the first president to die in office. So the first Whig presidency is off to a great start.
Again, he was also the oldest to win election, actually, until Reagan in 1980, and then Trump in 2016, and Biden in 2020. I feel like, feels like our politicians keep getting older and older. And that should be not the case. But anyway, so Harrison's gone.
That means the VP is up, John Tyler. Now, there was a lot of conflict and confusion because there really was no precedent for this. The succession for the presidency had not really been established.
This is not officially established until the 25th Amendment all the way in 1965. Would he be? So the questions were, would Tyler be a temporary replacement? Would there be a new election?
But what was decided, both by Congress and the court, was that if Tyler took the oath of office, he would become the president and he would finish out Harrison's term. Here's where this gets even worse for the Whigs. Tyler was an anti-Jackson Democrat, or became an anti-Jackson Democrat, after the threats Jackson made against South Carolina in the nullification crisis.
He believed in the policies of the Democrats. And even Jackson to an extent, but he just thought Jackson was too far. He was too extreme. So why was he on this ticket? Why was he running with the wig Harrison?
To pull votes from the Democrats in the election, which was successful. It was a solid strategy that worked for William Henry Harrison's win, but that severely backfired now. It's always, it's, it's.
A huge risk to put someone from the other party or who shares the other party's values on the ticket because if the president keels over, they're now in charge and your party's essentially lost control of the office. And as president, Tyler will stick to the principles and politics of the Democratic Party, even though he's a Whig president. So when the Whig majority Congress is passing laws and following Clay's American system, He will veto the majority of it.
Yes, he was blocking the policies of his own party. And in fact, Congress will overturn one of his vetoes. And that's the first time that ever occurred. Because remember, the president can veto a law, but Congress also can with a, I think a two thirds vote.
I think it's two thirds. Overturn the veto. That had never happened.
Until Tyler. So in 1842, just a year into him being president, the Whigs will kick him out of the party, but he remained in office. So for the last two years, two and a half years of his presidency, he did not have a party, but he remained in office. And he's going to, he and really major politics in general, there's not going to be a lot getting done on the national level because of all of this mess.
So we bring it to the next election, 1844. Hey, look who's back. It's Clay. Tyler wanted to run again, but he was kicked from the Whigs, and the Democrats weren't going to welcome him back.
Are second chances an Andrew Jackson thing? No. So Henry Clay is going to run for the Whigs, and he's running on the American system. He rarely, if ever, mentioned expansion, American expansion, or Manifest Destiny, which were the hot ticket subjects. And of course, slavery related to that.
The Democrats will run James K. Polk. The clay's top left, Polk is this individual here. He's the picture on the right. Polk went full on into expansionism and particularly the annexation of Texas. But most of what he talked about was annexation.
The third party here, James G. Birney and the Liberty Party. They were an anti-slavery, rather an abolitionist party. We talked about them in the slavery lectures. And Birney is also, if you have the slavery paper assignment, one of your excerpts. Polk won, but this was an incredibly close election, as you can see.
The vote margin between Clay and Polk was actually less than the number of votes that Birney. had got. And Birney and the Liberty Party actually pulled votes away from the Whigs, largely because Clay ignored expansion and slavery. New York here was the key state, as Birney had 15,000 votes cast for him, and Polk only won by 5,000.
Had Clay discussed, historians largely agree, that had Clay discussed expansion and slavery at all. He likely wins New York and therefore wins the election. Here's the actual election map, and I really hope, because I forgot to check, I really hope that I did this.
I did. If the only change between these two maps is watch New York, it's blue for Polk. If Clay talks about expansion and slavery, it probably flips to him, and then he wins. One state.
Really, 15,000 votes. Really, 5,000 votes, actually, was the margin. People say that even under the Electoral College, your vote doesn't matter. I mean, 5,000 people show up. It can and has changed an election, right?
That margin of victory. So this is Clay's third and last run at the presidency. He loses all three. He just couldn't deviate from that American system.
Not one bit. So now we have Polk as president. And he'll be president from 1845 to 1849. Polk, when campaigning, ran on what I call four goals and one promise. He had four goals, and then he made one overarching promise. So those four goals.
Reduce tariffs. Acquire Texas. Acquire the Oregon Territory. And then acquire California and New Mexico from Mexico.
Just to be clear, New Mexico at this point in time wasn't just what we now call New Mexico. It was the four corner states. New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. Yeah, Utah.
And parts of Nevada as well, actually. That whole southwest that isn't California. The promise is that he would only serve one term. So he said, I'm going to serve one term. I'm going to accomplish these four things and then I'm out.
So let's look. He's now president. How does he go through these four goals in one promise? Okay, first goal, reduce tariffs.
Was it an issue? It was a Democratic majority Congress. They reduced the tariff.
Bam, done. Second, the annexation of Texas. Texas annexation occurred in January of 1845. Now, Polk wasn't inaugurated until March of 45. What had happened is during the election cycle, when Tyler realized, oh, I'm not getting nominated, he worked furiously to get Texas annexed as a last-minute win for his presidency and his own legacy.
It was agreed upon and formalized. Technically, the last of the paperwork was signed under Polk later on in, I think, April. But it was really done back here in January.
So it was agreed upon and formalized after Polk had won, but it was before he took office. So Polk, quote unquote, acquires Texas without having to do much himself. And again, a quick note on Texas's, the significance of Texas statehood.
Texas is the... The... only state since the original 13 to not follow the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Texas went from an independent country to a state.
It was never a U.S. territory. Texas also, as part of the annexation agreement and its new state constitution, has the right to divide into five smaller states. Because why not? But it did not and has never had the right to secede. That is a complete and total myth.
I've quite literally read every single Texas Constitution. The Republic of Texas Constitution, the First State Constitution, the Civil War Constitution, the Confederate Constitution, the original Constitution after they came back to the Union, the Constitution that they had to rewrite during Reconstruction, and then the Redeemer Constitution. Texas had six constitutions.
I've read all of them. And at no point do they specifically, not even in the. Confederate constitution, do they have the right to secede in their state constitution?
It's a little more complicated with the Confederate overall one, but outside of that one, Texas has never had the right to secede ever. It's a total myth. Texas becoming a state means the U.S. also inherits the border dispute with Mexico, which will become a very, very big problem, as we'll see.
It also unbalances the free and slave states. There will now be one more slave state. than Free State. And this will also, as I've said before, help lead the U.S. into a crisis over the slavery question.
So this was a big deal in more ways than even I've listed here, as we'll talk about. We're heading on the way to a crisis in 1850, another crisis. So that's, again, his second promise, or second goal, acquire Texas, Polk does really without having to do much himself. The third goal was to acquire Oregon.
This will also, this will become a little complicated, rather. Tension had grown in Oregon between the British and the Americans as U.S. settlers start to pour in. The fur trade was one of the big issues here, and both countries decided they needed to establish a firm border. During the election, the campaign.
The Democrats came up with a slogan, 54-40 or fight, basically saying that the U.S. should acquire the U.S. all the way up to the line of latitude, 54 degrees north, 40 minutes, right here up at the top, the top line, 54-40. And if they didn't get that, they should be prepared to fight Britain. Polk never claimed the whole territory during the election, but he also never really denied the possibility. He sort of just didn't say one way or the other. The British, in response, demanded the whole territory on their end, down to the 42nd parallel.
Right? 42nd line of latitude. I'm sorry, that's just 42nd. It's the 40th parallel.
I guess that's off. One of us is off. It's down here, right? I'm not going to ask you the parallel, right? So this war seemed inevitable, but Polk is going to offer a compromise.
The 49th parallel right here, which was already the northern border between the U.S. and Canada. This was basically the end of the Louisiana Territory. And they're just going to take the line and draw it and skip Ireland.
That's all Canada. But right here, 49th parallel. So this compromise, the 49th parallel, was accepted by both sides.
So war is averted. And Oregon is officially acquired for the U.S. in 1846. So that's goal three done. Goal four is different. Goal four is to acquire California and New Mexico from Mexico. But that is a more complicated issue because lowering tariffs is just lowering tariffs.
Texas was an independent country and Oregon was shared. But this fourth goal is to acquire territory from another country that is entirely their own. And these attempts to acquire this territory and the issues inherited from the annexation of Texas will not only lead this to be complicated, but it will lead to a war.
And that is what we will talk about next.