The campaign of exhibited little of the hostility that had marked the race, when candidate Blaine had waged a whirlwind series of public appearances. President Cleveland made only one appearance in Harrison limited his speeches to front porch receptions in Indianapolis for a stream of carefully selected delegations and press reporters. While the two candidates did not personally campaign, their party organizations, in sharp contrast, did.
The tone of the party-sponsored campaign was much more lively. There were posters, political cartoons, speeches, rallies, parades, brass bands, and torchlight demonstrations. The race centered around the tariff issue, with Harrison speaking forcefully for a strong protective tariff, sound currency, pensions for Civil War veterans, and efficiency in office.
A more emotional issue for the electorate was the bloody shirt legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, which remained as an unhealed scar in the American consciousness. Cleveland's promise to return captured Confederate flags to Southern states as a show of national unity in contrast with Harrison's Civil War career sparked into flame the dry kindling of Civil War sectionalism.
The election outcome gave President Cleveland approximately 90, popular votes more than Harrison, but Harrison carried the electoral college to Harrison's victory was based upon two swing states: New York and Indiana. Cleveland probably lost New York because of the anti-Tammany Hall reform measures that he carried out as President. Harrison had failed to carry his home city of Indianapolis, and for years after the election, there was political talk suggesting that his supporters had purchased votes in Indiana to win the state.
In any case, Republicans increased their membership in the House of Representatives by fourteen seats, and they continued to control the Senate by a narrow margin. With the appointments of Republican justices to the Supreme Court, Harrison's party dominated all branches of the federal government for the first time in many years.
In , incumbent Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland in a dramatic turnaround of historic importance. For the first time in the nation's history, the two presidential candidates had both been President. Cleveland's victory, moreover, returned a defeated President to the White House for a second term—a historic first that has never been repeated.
The Democrats also regained control of both chambers of Congress. The seeds of Harrison's defeat in had been planted early in his administration. The Democrats had surged to power in the off-year elections by capturing the House of Representatives. As a senator in Ohio from to , Harrison--who had once been a director of the Cincinnati branch of the United States Bank--took a firmly anti-bank tack, saying he had always been opposed to all banks.
Yet, his position on slavery extension offended his constituents, and not only did he fail in races for the U. Senate in and for governor in receiving no votes in his own county , but his district declined to re-elect him. In the presidential campaign Harrison worked for Clay in Ohio. Clay won Ohio's electoral votes, and in the legislature chose Harrison to be U. Although he was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, his three-year service in the Senate was undistinguished.
In he failed to attain nomination as President John Quincy Adams' running mate and he then accepted appointment as ambassador to Colombia. The period between Harrison's return to the United States in and his election to the presidency in was a fallow one. Harrison was sworn into office on March 4, He fell ill and died of pneumonia on March 26, , making his presidency the shortest in the history of the office.
On March 17, , Harrison called for a special session of Congress to discuss and attempt to resolve "the condition of the revenue and finance of the country. They had ten children.
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Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. This page was current at the end of the official's last term in office covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates. Categories : presidential candidate presidential candidate U. Voter information What's on my ballot? Where do I vote? How do I register to vote? How do I request a ballot? Even before Martin Van Buren took office, it was evident that the nation was on the brink of economic disaster.
Andrew Jackson's war with the Bank of the United States resulted in high inflation, unemployment, and business failures. Van Buren inherited this situation, which became known as the Panic of , and was reluctant to take corrective action.
His mismanagement of this economic crisis, combined with his seemingly uncaring image he lived well and dressed well while the public feared for its economic future , made the President unpopular among the electorate. Not surprisingly, the Whig Party saw many opportunities for advancing a candidate in the election. Well before the campaign, they knew a candidate giving voters a strong contrast with the drab, aristocratic President would win easily.
They held their convention in late , months before the usual time for nomination proceedings. Neither of their leaders—Daniel Webster or Henry Clay—enjoyed broad popular support.
However, William Henry Harrison, a born southerner and war hero, seemed to make a perfect foil for the incumbent.
While Clay led after the first canvassing, he fell short of the needed majority. By the time of the first ballot, Whig delegates had turned to Harrison. Both the President and his party made serious errors in the conduct of their reelection campaign.
Van Buren underestimated the Whigs by assuming that they were a party of wildly diverse philosophies, united only by their hatred of Andrew Jackson; how could they organize a coherent opposition? To the Democrat's surprise, the Whigs organized and attacked Van Buren for being lordly and uncaring toward the nation.
The Democrats then stumbled into a bad trap. One of their newspapers ridiculed Harrison as a dull rustic: "Give him a barrel of hard alcoholic cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and take my word for it, he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin.
This delivered the election into Harrison's hand. The Whigs jumped at this Democrat-drawn contrast with the sophisticated Van Buren and drove it home. They flooded the electorate with posters and badges extolling the virtues of their colorful, down-home "log cabin and hard cider" candidate, the hero of Tippecanoe. In their image remaking of Harrison, the Whigs misrepresented him to the electorate.
Harrison was actually from an established Virginia family, a learned student of classics, and a man who enjoyed luxurious living to the point that he was continually in debt.
But voters wanted to identify with a war hero who shared their down-to-earth values.
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