Andrew Jackson Becomes a Presidential Candidate: 1822

As Charles Sellers tells it, the idea that Andrew Jackson might seriously be considered as a candidate for the presidency was the result of a stunning miscalculation by pro-bank politicians in Tennessee.

Before the Panic of 1819, the Tennessee political landscape was dominated by territorial governor William Blount and, after Blount’s death in 1800, John Overton. These men “embraced the new entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the postwar [i.e., post-War of 1812] boom and controlled the state’s two banks.”

The Panic of 1819, however, caused widespread hardship and disruption in the state of Tennessee, which in turn “provoked a massive public outcry” against banks and the “moneyed aristocracy.” In 1821, a Radical faction opposed to the Blount/Overton group backed William Carroll for governor. “With voters ‘in a perfect ferment,’” Carroll, “who blamed the depression on the banks and wished he ‘had never seen one in the state,'” trounced his Blount/Overton opponent by a margin of 4–1.

Desperate to regain power, the Blount/Overton group searched for a solution – and thought they found it in Andrew Jackson. “Blount’s son-in-law Pleasant M. Miller suggested to Overton that only Andrew Jackson could defeat Carroll for reelection in 1823.”

It seemed like a good fit at the time. There were strong personal ties between Jackson and members of the Blount/Overton group (Jackson “and Overton had been close friends since first entering public life under Blount’s aegis back in territorial days”), and “the general had quarreled violently with several of the now triumphant Radicals.” In addition, Jackson detested the Radicals’ presidential candidate, William H. Crawford, whose congressional supporters had attacked Jackson’s invasion of Florida.

Apparently, Jackson rejected the suggestion that he run for governor in 1823. Overton then suggested to Miller that they could achieve their aims by nominating Jackson for president. “Miller immediately fell in with” Overton’s absurd counterproposal. The idea that Jackson could be a serious presidential contended was ludicrous. But it would serve the purpose of stirring up “a state of excitement” in “publick opinion” that would allow the Blount/Overton group to recapture the governorship and state legislative seats in upcoming elections.

And so Jackson’s name was floated for the presidency in early 1822:

Early in 1822, the Blount/Overton newspapers began puffing Jackson as a presidential candidate, and that summer the [Tennessee] legislature formally nominated him.” None of the Tennessee politicians who hatched Jackson’s nomination thought he could be a serious contender nationally, and most of them thought his candidacy could be dropped once this became evident and once it served its local purpose.

“The politicians,” Sellers notes, “were in for a shock.” The Tennessee nomination unleashed “a ‘contagion’ of popular enthusiasm for Jackson” that engulfed states from North Carolina to Pennsylvania.

In our next episode, the Overton group unsuccessfully tries to stuff the genie back in the bottle.

Was Millard Tilting at Windmills in 1856?

Some time ago, I wrote a series of posts about Millard Fillmore's run for the presidency on the American Party (Know Nothing) ticket in 1856. It occurred to me that I should round off that discussion by addressing one additional issue. Millard wound up receiving only 21% of the vote and a grand total of eight -- count 'em, eight -- electoral votes. All of which raises the question, What was he thinking? Was the guy delusional, living in some sort of fantasy world imagining that he could win?

The answer to these questions is "no." After the Republicans coopted the northern wing of the American Party, it became clear that Millard's task was to deny either of the other candidates a majority of the electoral college votes. As David M. Potter observed, "If Fillmore could carry a few southern states, he might throw the election into the House of Representatives, where there would be a good chance of his being chosen."

In fact, Fillmore came extremely close to achieving that goal. James Buchanan carried 174 electoral votes: 60 more than John C. Fremont's 114, but only 25 more than the absolute majority of 149 (out of 296 total) required to avoid throwing the election into the House.

Millard almost got those 25 additional votes. Professor Potter again: "[A]lthough Fillmore appeared to be overwhelmingly beaten, a percentage change of less than 3 percent of the popular vote (or of 8,016 votes) in Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana would have given Fillmore enough electoral votes to throw the contest into the House of Representatives."

Here are the figures for the three key states:

ST (EV) Total Buchanan Fillmore Difference

KY (12) 142,058 74,642 52.5% 67,416 47.5% 7,226

LA (6) 42,873 22,164 51.7% 20,709 48.3% 1,455

TN (12) 133,582 69,704 52.2% 63,878 47.8% 5,826

If Millard had been able to add the thirty electoral votes of these three states to his column, Buchanan would have wound up with 144 -- five fewer than the 149 he needed. (The above figures indicate that a shift of 7,256 votes would have been sufficient to change the results, rather than Professor Potter's 8,016 votes. I'm not sure where the discrepancy lies.)

Another Stupid 10 Worst Presidents List

At American Presidents Blog, "M" points out an article in U.S. News and World Report listing and discussing "The 10 Worst Presidents," created by "averag[ing] the results of five major and relatively recent [scholarly] presidential polls."

How stupid are historians? Let me count the ways. In no particular order, here are six examples of idiocy I can come up with without breaking a sweat:

1. I have blogged before about Millard Fillmore (No. 5), here and here. I will not repeat myself, except to say that he was a fine man and a good president. Placing him five slots from the bottom is ludicrous.

2. The historians compound the felony by listing both President Fillmore -- apparently because he endorsed the Compromise of 1850 -- and Zachary Taylor (No. 10) -- apparently because he didn't. Fillmore may have "averted a national crisis and postponed the outbreak of the Civil War," but he did so "at an unconscionable price." As for Taylor, "[s]ome think his opposition to what became the Compromise of 1850 -- which began to undo the Missouri Compromise -- might have precipitated the outbreak of the Civil War." Stupid. Pick one or the other, guys, not both -- and you would still be wrong.

3. Only an idiot would include William Henry Harrison (No. 8) on a Worst Presidents List. He died after only a month in office. Duh!

4. Any Worst Presidents List that omits Jimmy Carter is not worthy of the name.

5. The article's own description of the administration of Ulysses S. Grant (No. 7) constitutes an admission that he doesn't belong on the list:

[Grant] now receives plaudits for his aggressive prosecution of the radical reform agenda in the South. His attempts to quash the Ku Klux Klan (suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and ordering mass arrests) and his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 may have produced only short-lived gains for African Americans, but Grant's intentions were laudable. He also worked for the good of American Indians, instituting the reservation system as an imperfect, last-ditch effort to protect them from extinction. Grant's reputation may continue to rise as a result of sympathetic studies and because of a renewed appreciation of his own memoir, considered to be the best ever produced by a former president.

In other words, in many ways Grant was one of the best, not one of the worst, presidents of his era -- but we'll put him on the list anyway. Moronic.

6. As usual, Herbert Hoover (No. 9) gets included because he didn't cure the Depression. Historians, it seems, resolutely refuse to talk to economists. It is pretty well recognized these days that it was FDR who transformed the Depression into the Great Depression by employing counterproductive remedies that caused a second "depression within a depression." See, for example, Gene Smiley's book, Rethinking the Great Depression. Hoover winds up on the list because of FDR's incompetence.