William Henry Harrison defeats Martin Van Buren…
November 1840 CE
President Van Buren's loss is due in part to the poor economic conditions caused by the Panic of 1837.
Van Buren had easily won renomination for a second term at the 1840 Democratic National Convention, but he and his party had faced a difficult election in 1840.
Van Buren's presidency has been a difficult affair, with the U.S. economy mired in a severe downturn, and other divisive issues, such as slavery, western expansion, and tensions with Great Britain, providing opportunities for Van Buren's political opponents—including some of his fellow Democrats—to criticize his actions.
Although Van Buren's renomination was never in doubt, Democratic strategists began to question the wisdom of keeping Richard Mentor Johnson on the ticket.
Even former president Jackson had conceded that Johnson was a liability and insisted on former House Speaker James K. Polk of Tennessee as Van Buren's new running mate.
Van Buren had been reluctant to drop Johnson, who is popular with workers and radicals in the North and added military experience to the ticket, which might, it was thought, prove important against likely Whig nominee William Henry Harrison.
Rather than re-nominating Johnson, the Democratic convention had decided to allow state Democratic Party leaders to select the vice-presidential candidates for their states.
Van Buren had hoped that the Whigs would nominate Clay for president, which would have allowed Van Buren to cast the 1840 campaign as a clash between Van Buren's Independent Treasury system and Henry Clay's support for a national bank.
However, rather than nominating longtime party spokesmen like Clay and Daniel Webster, the 1839 Whig National Convention had nominated Harrison, who had served in various governmental positions during his career and had earned notoriety for his military leadership in the Battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812.
Whig leaders like William H. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens believed that Harrison's war record would effectively counter the popular appeals of the Democratic Party.
For vice president, the Whigs had nominated former Senator John Tyler of Virginia.
Clay, although deeply disappointed by his defeat at the convention, had nonetheless thrown his support behind Harrison.
Whigs had presented Harrison as the antithesis of the president, whom they derided as ineffective, corrupt, and effete.
Whigs had also depicted Van Buren as an aristocrat living in high style in the White House, while they used images of Harrison in a log cabin sipping cider to convince voters that he was a man of the people.
They had thrown such jabs as "Van, Van, is a used-up man" and "Martin Van Ruin" and ridiculed him in newspapers and cartoons.
Issues of policy were not absent from the campaign; the Whigs had derided the alleged executive overreaches of Jackson and Van Buren, while also calling for a national bank and higher tariffs.
Democrats had attempted to campaign on the Independent Treasury system, but the onset of deflation had undercut these arguments.
The enthusiasm for "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," coupled with the country's severe economic crisis, made it impossible for Van Buren to win a second term.
Harrison won by a popular vote of 1,275,612 to 1,130,033, and an electoral vote margin of 234 to 60.
An astonishing eighty percent of eligible voters go to the polls on election day.
Van Buren actually wins more votes than he had in 1836, but the Whig success in attracting new voters more than cancels out Democratic gains.
Additionally, Whigs win majorities for the first time in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
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Northern North America
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