1840 United States presidential election

{{main|1839 Whig National Convention}}

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

|-

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|1840 Whig Party ticket

|-

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#F0DC82; width:200px;"| William Henry Harrison

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#F0DC82; width:200px;"| John Tyler

|- style="color:#000000; font-size:100%; background:#F0DC82;"

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:lightyellow; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:lightyellow; width:200px;"|for Vice President

|-

| File:William Henry Harrison crop.jpg

| File:John Tyler (cropped 3x4).png

|-

| United States Minister for Gran Columbia
(1829)

| U.S. Senator
from Virginia
(1827–1836)
President pro tempore of the Senate
(1835)

|-

| colspan=2 |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.{{cite book |date=1979 |title=National Party Conventions, 1831-1976 |publisher=Congressional Quarterly}}

{{Main|1840 Democratic National Convention}}

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

|-

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|1840 Democratic Party ticket

|-

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#3333FF; width:200px;"| Martin Van Buren

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#3333FF; width:200px;" |None of the above

|-

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:#C8EBFF; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:#C8EBFF; width:200px;"|for Vice President

|-

| File:Martin Van Buren circa 1837 crop.jpg

|-

| 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.

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.

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.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:right"

|+ Convention vote

|-

! Presidential vote

!

! Vice presidential vote

!

|-

| align=left | William Henry Harrison

| 119

| align=left | 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.{{cite book |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |author-link=William B. Hesseltine |date=1962 |page=33 |title=Third-Party Movements in the United States |publisher=Van Nostrand Company}}

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.

File:The times panic 1837.jpg

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.

{{main|William Henry Harrison 1840 presidential campaign}}

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."{{Cite web |title=1840: The Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign · Voices and Votes: Democracy on Delmarva · Nabb Research Center Online Exhibits |url=https://libapps.salisbury.edu/nabb-online/exhibits/show/voices/the-machinery-of-democracy/1840--the-log-cabin-and-hard-c |access-date=2023-01-07 |website=libapps.salisbury.edu}}

File:PresidentialCounty1840ExtentColorbrewer.gif

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|date=September 2022}}

Nonetheless, the election was held in the wake of the Panic of 1837, one of the worst economic depressions in the nation's history,{{Cite web |last=Campbell |first=Stephen |date=2020-11-12 |title=Panic of 1837 |url=https://economic-historian.com/2020/11/panic-of-1837/ |access-date=2023-01-07 |website=The Economic Historian |language=en-US}} and voters blamed Van Buren, seeing him as unsympathetic to struggling citizens. Harrison campaigned vigorously and won.

31.9% of the voting age population and 80.3% of eligible voters participated in the election.{{sfn|Abramson|Aldrich|Rohde|1995|p=99}} This was the first time that a majority of southern voters participated in the election. (A majority in the north had first participated in an election in 1828.){{sfn|Black|Black|1992|p=214}}

Harrison won the support of western settlers and eastern bankers alike. 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.

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.

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.

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 a majority of voters in Mississippi voted against the Democrats until 1872, the last in which a majority of voters in Indiana voted against Democrats until 1860, and the last in which a majority of voters in Maine and Michigan voted against Democrats until 1856. This is the only election in American history in which a majority of voters in Alabama and a majority of voters in Mississippi voted for different candidates.

The 1840 presidential election was the only time 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 when it voted for president and vice-president.{{cite web|url=https://www.270towin.com/1840_Election/|title=1840 Presidential Election|access-date=23 November 2020|website=270toWin}}

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.

File: United States Electoral College 1840.svg

{{Start U.S. presidential ticket box|pv_footnote=^(a)|ev_footnote=}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box row|name=William Henry Harrison|party=Whig|state=Ohio|pv=1,275,583|pv_pct=52.87%|ev=234|vp_name=John Tyler|vp_state=Virginia}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box rowspan|name=Martin Van Buren (incumbent)|party=Democratic|state=New York|pv=1,129,645|pv_pct=46.82%|ev=60|vp_count=3|vp_name=Richard Mentor Johnson (incumbent)|vp_state=Kentucky|vp_ev=48}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box vp subrow|vp_name=Littleton W. Tazewell|vp_state=Virginia|vp_ev=11}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box vp subrow|vp_name=James K. Polk|vp_state=Tennessee|vp_ev=1}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box row|name=James G. Birney|party=Liberty|state=New York|pv=7,453|pv_pct=0.31%|ev=0|vp_name=Thomas Earle|vp_state=Pennsylvania}}

{{U.S. presidential ticket box other|footnote=|pv=13| pv_pct=0.00%}}

{{End U.S. presidential ticket box|pv=2,412,694|ev=294|to_win=148}}

Source (Popular Vote): {{Leip PV source| year=1840| as of=July 27, 2005}}

Source (Electoral Vote): {{National Archives EV source| year=1840| as of=July 31, 2005}}{{cite web|url=https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1840&f=0&off=0&elect=0|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220120070955/https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1840&f=0&off=0&elect=0|archive-date=January 20, 2022|url-status=live|title=1840 Presidential General Election Results |website=Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections}}

^(a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.

{{bar box

|title=Popular vote

|titlebar=#ddd

|width=600px

|barwidth=410px

|bars=

{{bar percent|Harrison|{{party color|Whig Party (United States)}}|52.88}}

{{bar percent|Van Buren|{{party color|Democratic Party (US)}}|46.81}}

{{bar percent|Others|#777777|0.31}}

}}

{{bar box

|title=Electoral vote

|titlebar=#ddd

|width=600px

|barwidth=410px

|bars=

{{bar percent|Harrison|{{party color|Whig Party (United States)}}|79.59}}

{{bar percent|Van Buren|{{party color|Democratic Party (US)}}|20.41}}

}}

PresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Map of presidential election results by county

WhigPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Map of Whig presidential election results by county

DemocraticPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Map of Democratic presidential election results by county

LibertyPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Map of Liberty presidential election results by county

OtherPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Map of "Other" presidential election results by county

CartogramPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of presidential election results by county

CartogramWhigPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of Whig presidential election results by county

CartogramDemocraticPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of Democratic presidential election results by county

CartogramLibertyPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of Liberty presidential election results by county

CartogramOtherPresidentialCounty1840Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of "Other" presidential election results by county

Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–257.

{|class="wikitable"

|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}

|States/districts won by Van Buren

|-{{Party shading/Whig}}

|States/districts won by Harrison/Tyler

|}

• Connecticut
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• New York
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island

• South Carolina

States where the margin of victory was under 1%:

1. Pennsylvania 0.12% (334 votes)
2. Maine 0.46% (422 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 5%:

1. Virginia 1.3% (1,120 votes)
2. Illinois 2.01% (1,867 votes)
3. New York 3.0% (13,268 votes)
4. New Jersey 3.59% (2,317 votes) (tipping point state)
5. Michigan 4.14% (1,837 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:

1. Mississippi 6.86% (2,505 votes)
2. Maryland 7.66% (4,776 votes)
3. Ohio 8.53% (23,375 votes)
4. Alabama 8.76% (5,481 votes)

{{Start electoral college selection}}

{{Electoral college selection row|method=Each Elector appointed by state legislature|states=South Carolina}}

{{Electoral college selection row|method=State's electors chosen as general ticket by plurality of voters statewide|states=The other 25}}

{{End electoral college selection}}

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too"

{{Listen|filename=Tip and Ty first.ogg|title=Abbreviated version|description=First verse and chorus.|format=Ogg}}

{{Listen|filename=Tip and Ty again.ogg|title=Full version|description=All twelve verses.|format=Ogg}}

{{blockquote|

:: 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.

}}

Image:TippecanoeClubRibbonWilliamHenryHarrisonPrezCampaign1840.jpg|Harrison "Tippecanoe Club" ribbon

Image:WilliamHenryHarrisonCampaignRallySilkRibbon09101840.jpg|Ribbon for Harrison political rally

Image:1840 HarrisonConvention DanversMA engr byGGSmith DanversPublicLibrary.png|Ribbon for Danvers, Mass. delegation to Harrison Rally, Bunker Hill, 1840; engraved by George Girdler Smith

Image:DelegateRibbonMassachusettsNatlDemConvention1840.jpg|Delegate badge, Democratic convention

Image:1840 Boston Harrison Club.png|Cover of Boston Harrison Club's Harrison Melodies, 1840Boston Harrison Club. Harrison melodies: Original and selected. Boston: Weeks, Jordan and company, 1840. [https://books.google.com/books?id=vsg9AAAAYAAJ Google books]

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.Foner, Eric (March 1998). [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/74/ "The Amistad Case in Fact and Film"].

• 1840–1841 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1840–1841 United States Senate elections
• History of the United States (1789–1849)
• Second Party System

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last1=Abramson |first1=Paul |last2=Aldrich |first2=John |last3=Rohde |first3=David |title=Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections |publisher=CQ Press |date=1995 |isbn=0871878399}}
• {{cite book|last1=Black |first1=Earl |author-link1=Earl Black (political scientist) |last2=Black |first2=Merle |author-link2=Merle Black |title=The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected |publisher=Harvard University Press |date=1992 |url=https://archive.org/details/vitalsouthhowpre0000blac |isbn=0674941306}}

• Chambers, William Nisbet. "The Election of 1840" in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (ed.) History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (1971) vol 2; analysis plus primary sources
• Cheathem, Mark. R. [https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/coming-democracy The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson] (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)
• Ellis, Richard J. Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation (U of Kansas Press, 2020) [https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-on-john-tyler-tippecanoe-and-tyler-too-11591368355?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1 online review]
• Formisano, Ronald P. "The new political history and the election of 1840", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 1993, Vol. 23 Issue 4, pp. 661–82 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/206278 in JSTOR]
• {{cite book |last=Gunderson |first=Robert Gray |title=The Log-Cabin Campaign |location=Lexington |publisher=University of Kentucky Press |year=1957}}
• {{cite book |last=Greeley |first=Horace | author-link = Horace Greeley |title=Recollections of a Busy Life |url=https://archive.org/details/recollectionsab00greegoog |year=1868}}
• Greeley's description of the 1840 election is posted on Wikisource.
• Holt, Michael F. "The Election of 1840, Voter Mobilization, and the Emergence of the Second American Party System: A Reappraisal of Jacksonian Voting Behavior", in Holt and John McCardell, eds. A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald (1986); emphasizes economic factors; See Formisano (1993) for criticism
• {{cite book |last=Holt |first=Michael F. |year=1999 |title=The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-505544-6}}
• Leahy, Christopher J. President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU, 2020), a major scholarly biography; [https://www.amazon.com/President-without-Party-Life-Tyler/dp/0807172545/ excerpt] also [https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-on-john-tyler-tippecanoe-and-tyler-too-11591368355?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1 online review]
• Shade, William G. "Politics and Parties in Jacksonian America", Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 110, No. 4 (Oct. 1986), pp. 483–507 [https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20120312030146/http://dpubs.libraries.psu.edu/DPubS?verb=Display&version=1.0&service=UI&handle=psu.pmhb/1172617006&page=record online]
• Zboray, Ronald J., and Mary Saracino Zboray. "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts", Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 277–315 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3124448 in JSTOR]

• Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977) [https://archive.org/details/guidetopolitical0000ches online]
• Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. National party platforms, 1840-1964 (1965) [https://archive.org/details/nationalpartypla00port online 1840-1956]

{{Commons}}

• [https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/elections/election1840.html Presidential Election of 1840: A Resource Guide] from the Library of Congress
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20101122161441/http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=553 "The Campaign of 1840: William Henry Harrison and Tyler, Too"] high school level lesson plans and documents
• [http://geoelections.free.fr/USA/elec_comtes/1840.htm 1840 popular vote by counties]
• [http://www.countingthevotes.com/1840/ Election of 1840 in Counting the Votes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171213010150/http://www.countingthevotes.com/1840/ |date=December 13, 2017 }}

{{William Henry Harrison}}

{{Martin Van Buren}}

{{1840 United States presidential election}}

{{USPresidentialElections}}

{{State Results of the 1840 U.S. presidential election}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Presidency of William Henry Harrison

Category:William Henry Harrison

Category:Martin Van Buren

Category:John Tyler

Category:Richard Mentor Johnson