Sold – Harrison Reports on Prospects For His Nomination by the Whig Party For the 1840 Election

The Jacksonian era was one of adversity for Harrison, the military hero who had been a supporter of Henry Clay and former President John Quincy Adams, and opposed President Andrew Jackson. Having aspirations for the presidency, he promoted his candidacy by touring the country during 1835-6. This was the first time a person had campaigned for president himself, rather than through his friends. Anniversary celebrations of the battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames glorified his military career, friendly editors publicized his political availability, and local Whig conventions in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, and Indiana pledged their support.

The Whig Party was formed in 1833 in opposition to the policies of President Jackson and the Democratic Party, and was composed of supporters of Clay, Adams, Webster, and others who favored favored a strong national government and a program of modernization and economic protectionism. It absorbed the old National Republican Party and even brought in some anti-Jackson southerners like John Tyler. In 1836, the Whigs had not yet coalesced as a party and could not agree on a standard bearer. So Whig state conventions nominated a number of persons for president. These included Webster, Sen. Hugh L. White, and Harrison. President Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Martin van Buren, won the election, with the disorganized Whig candidates splitting the anti-Democratic vote. Of these, Harrison performed the best, picking up 73 electoral votes.

The Whigs were determined not to repeat their mistake of 1836, and for the 1840 election planned a national convention in December 1839 to select a single nominee, As 1839 dawned, Harrison was again in campaign mode, lining up support and maneuvering to be that nominee. This time his main opponent would be Henry Clay, the foremost Whig in the nation. One of Harrison’s allies was prominent Pennsylvania Whig Charles Macalester, a partner in the banking firm of Gaw, Macalester and Company, director of the Second Bank of the United States, and an active philanthropist who donated the land in Minneapolis on which Macalester College is situated. In this letter, Harrison reports on his prospects

Autograph Letter Signed, North Bend, Ind., January 24, 1839, to Macalester. “I duly received your letter of the 9th instant. If I had followed the dictates of my feeling I should have written you frequently but really I am kept to busily driving the quill that I have not time enough to attend to my home affairs as I ought to do.  I knew of Mr. C’s going to Philadelphia and I was convinced that his visit was for the purposes you suggest.  However!  from the tenor of the letters I have lately received his former most sanguine friends have nearly given up all hopes of his being nominated as the opposition candidate unless, as they say, some decisive movement is made in his favor to the South.  The most authentic source from which this information is received is from Col. Charles Todd of KY who saw their letters.  They say that all the non holding slave states (with the exception of New York,) have combined against him.  Todd adds that one of the Kentucky delegation has just written to him that he believes that even the majority of New York members now in Congress are in my favor.  An other Kentucky member in  a letter to myself says that from the fact of their having a large mass of the votes in that who will not under any circumstancees vote for Clay, He cannot be elected but that I can beat C with great ease. His expression "sweep N.Y. clean of Van Burenism," I have such a magazine of this kind of information that I could not issue the third of it without fatiguing you.  I will conclude therefore with one other item only.  A letter received today from the highly talented editor of the Missourian now in Washington informs that in a conversation with two of the most influential Tennesseans though they declared their preference for Mr. C they add that they were convinced that he could not now ("if he wished it") push me off. I cannot give you a stronger evidence of my friendship than by giving you the above detail which I know you will consider confidential. 

Some one told me lately that you were soon expected in this quarter.  I hope it maybe so as I want your advice upon a very important matter to me. Several of the large Capitalists of Connecticut have been down here looking round at my property.  M.J. Williams (one of them) who said smilingly that he would give me more money for 2 or 300 acres of my land than would be sufficient to make me independant…for the rest of my life. …The price however will be large and it is on this subject as well as the details of the matter that I am extremely anxious to have your advice and assistance.  If I should be the opposition candidate, I must have not only a clear exchequor but one simple  in its operations. This I have been ample means of effecting if the matter can be managed properly…I thank you for the compliment to "The discource."  I am fearful I shall become a little vain if I get many more, such as I have already received. Mr. N.P. Tallmage and his relative Gov. James Tallmage have both proposed a very flattering encomniums on it. I have just seen in the National Gazette a most favorable notice of Greens Straw Cutter for sale at Landreth’s and at Hirst and Dreess both in Chestnut St. I have wanted one for a long time and have been waiting to find out which is best.  As this is said to exceed the "Yankee Notion" will you have the goodness to send me one as soon as it can be got out with the bill our friend Buck.” A search of auction records does not disclose any other letter of Harrison from the 1839 campaign, in the run-up to the nomination on December 4, having appeared in at least three decades. It is also interesing to note that Harrison, who was always chronically in debt, was hoping that a real estate scheme would get him rich quick, even as he was on the doorstep of the presidency.

At the national Whig convention in Harrisburg on December 4, the delegates rejected their acknowledged leaders, Webster and Henry Clay, and nominated Harrison. No platform was adopted, and advisers told Harrison to keep his lips "hermetically sealed" on the issues of slavery, the tariff, and the U. S. Bank. To gain support in the South, the Whigs nominated John Tyler, a former senator from Virginia, for the vice presidency. Northern and Southern Whigs were urged to rally behind "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too." This was the famous Log Cabin Campaign, the first modern presidential campaign, and it brought victory to the Whigs. But all their plans and hopes were dashed when Harrison died just one month after his inauguration.