Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Cass/Butler, Orange denotes those won by Taylor/Fillmore. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
The United States presidential election of 1848 was an open race. PresidentJames Polk, having achieved all of his major objectives in one term and suffering from declining health that would take his life less than four months after leaving office, kept his promise not to seek re-election.
The Whigs in 1846-47 had focused all their energies on condemning Polk's war policies. They had to quickly reverse course. In February 1848 Polk surprised everyone with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War and gave the U.S. vast new territories (including California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico). The Whigs in the Senate voted 2-1 to approve the treaty. Then in the summer the Whigs nominated the hero of the war, Zachary Taylor. While he did promise no more future wars, he did not condemn the war or criticize Polk, and Whigs had to follow his lead. They shifted their attention to the new issue of whether slavery could be banned from the new territories. The choice of Taylor was almost in desperation--he was not clearly committed to Whig principles, but he was popular for leading the war effort. The Democrats had a record of victory, peace, prosperity, and the acquisition of both Oregon and the Southwest; they appeared almost certain winners unless the Whigs picked Taylor. Taylor's victory made him one of only two Whigs to be elected President before the party ceased to exist in the 1850s; the other Whig to be elected President was William Henry Harrison, who had also been a general and war hero, but died a month into office.
Mexican-American War General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, spurred by his successes on the battlefield but who had never voted in an election himself, was openly courted by both the Democratic and Whig parties. Taylor ultimately declared himself a Whig, and easily took their nomination, receiving 171 delegate votes to defeat Henry Clay, Winfield Scott, Daniel Webster and others. After Webster turned down the vice presidential candidacy, Millard Fillmore received the party's nomination for Vice President.
A third party, the Free Soil Party, was organized for the 1848 election to oppose further expansion of slavery into the western territories. The party was led by Salmon P. Chase and John Parker Hale. Former President Martin Van Buren defeated Hale by a 154-129 delegate count to capture their nomination, while Charles Francis Adams, the son and grandson of two other presidents, was chosen as the vice presidential nominee.
Across the land Whig campaigners like Abraham Lincoln talked up Taylor’s “antiparty” opposition to the Jacksonian commitment to the spoils system and yellow-dog partisanship. In the South they stressed he was a Louisiana slaveholder, while in the North they highlighted his Whiggish willingness to defer to Congress on major issues (which he subsequently did not do). Democrats repeated, as they had for many years, their opposition to a national bank, to high tariffs, and to federal subsidies for local improvements. The Free Soilers branded both major parties lackeys of the Slave Power, arguing that the rich planters controlled the agenda of both parties, leaving the ordinary white man out of the picture. They had to work around Van Buren well-known reputation for compromising with slavery. The Whigs had the advantage of highlighting Taylor's military glories. With Taylor remaining vague on the issues, the campaign was dominated by personalities and personal attacks, with the Democrats calling Taylor vulgar, uneducated, cruel and greedy, and the Whigs attacking Cass for graft and dishonesty. The division of the Democrats over slavery allowed Taylor to dominate the Northeast.[1]
Political cartoon about the election campaign, titled "Shooting the Christmas Turkey"
"Grand Presidential sweep-stakes" - political cartoon of the three main candidates
Results
"Cock of the walk" - Zachary Taylor as victor
With the exception of South Carolina, which left the selection of electors to its legislature, the election of 1848 marked the first time in which every state in the union voted for President and Vice President on the same day: November 7, 1848. Taylor won election over Cass, capturing 163 of the 290 electoral votes cast. However, Taylor won barely more than 47% of the popular vote, mainly because of the 10% the Free Soil Party had won.
* Massachusetts law provided that the state legislature would choose the Electors if no slate of Electors could command a majority of voters statewide. In 1848, this provision was triggered.
Blue, Frederick J. The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848–54 (1973).
Boritt, G. S. "Lincoln's Opposition to the Mexican War," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society Vol. 67, No. 1, Abraham Lincoln Issue (Feb., 1974), pp. 79-100 in JSTOR
Earle, Jonathan H. Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1828–1854 (2004).
Eyal, Yonatan. "The 'Party Period' Framework and the Election of 1848", Reviews in American History Volume 38, Number 1, March 2010, in Project Muse
Graebner, Norman A. "Thomas Corwin and the Election of 1848: A Study in Conservative Politics." Journal of Southern History, 17 (1951), 162-79. in JSTOR
Hamilton, Holman. Zachary Taylor: Soldier in the White House (1951)
Holt; Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. (1999). online edition
Morrison, Michael A. "New Territory versus No Territory": The Whig Party and the Politics of Western Expansion, 1846-1848," Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 25-51 in JSTOR
Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: Volume I. Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 (1947).
Rayback, Joseph A. Free Soil: The Election of 1848. (1970).
Silbey, Joel H. Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848 (2009). 205 pp.
![Artwork for "Fort Harrison March," a campaign song for Zachary Taylor's presidential campaign which recalled his triumph at the Siege of Fort Harrison in 1812.[2]](/en/File:Fort_Harrison_March.jpg)
