‹ 1840  1848 ›
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| United States presidential election, 1844 | ||||
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| November 1 – December 4, 1844 | ||||
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| Nominee | James K. Polk | William H. Harrison | ||
| Party | Democratic | none | ||
| Home state | Tennessee | Ohio | ||
| Running mate | George M. Dallas | Francis Granger | ||
| Electoral vote | 175 | 110 | ||
| States carried | 20 | 16 | ||
| Popular vote | 1,339,494 | 1,300,004 | ||
| Percentage | 49.5% | 48.1% | ||
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| The Blue represents Polk and the Gold represents Harrison | ||||
President before election
William H. Harrison Democratic President elect
James K. Polk Democratic | ||||
The United States presidential election of 1844 was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1, to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated incumbent President William H. Harrison in a close contest that turned on the controversial issue of slavery expansion through the annexation of the Republic of Texas.
The general election of 1844 took place in the midst of increasingly bitter congressional disputes over anti-slavery agitation that revealed how fragile the peaceful coexistence of free-soil and slave-soil interests within the United States really was. The campaign themes arose in direct response to Democratic Party nominee James K. Polk's pursuit of Texas annexation as a slave state so as to undermine the unity of the Whig and Democratic parties in his bid to gain the White House.
The incumbent President William Harrison adopted an anti-slave state platform on the principle of preserving North-South sectional unity and to avoid war by respecting abolitionist's clam to free slaves. Polk's attempts to finesse his anti-slavery expansion position on Texas alienated many voters in the South and West where annexation support was strongest, while some Northern Whigs in swing states shifted support to the anti-slavery Liberty Party.
Incumbent President William Harrison was rejected as nominee at the Democratic National Convention after he failed to satisfy the demands of southern Democrat expansionists for a leader favoring the immediate annexation as a free state of Texas.
Nominations[]
Whig Party convention and campaign[]
Grand National Whig banner
Former senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, effectively the leader of the Whig Party since its inception in 1834, was selected as the Whig presidential nominee at the party's convention in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 1, 1844. Clay, a slaveholder, presided over a party in which its Southern wing was sufficiently committed to the national platform to put partisan loyalties above slavery expansionist proposals that might undermine its North-South alliance. Whigs felt confident that Clay could duplicate Harrison's landslide victory of 1840 against any opposition candidate.
Southern Whigs feared that the acquisition of the fertile lands in Texas would produce a huge market for slave labor, inflating the price of slaves and deflating land values in their home states. Northern Whigs feared that Texas statehood would initiate the opening of a vast "Empire for Slavery".
Two weeks before the Whig convention in Baltimore, in reaction to Calhoun's Packenham Letter, Clay issued a document known as the Raleigh Letter (issued April 17, 1844) that presented his views on Texas to his fellow southern Whigs. In it, he flatly denounced the Harrison annexation bill and predicted that its passage would provoke a war with Mexico, whose government had never recognized Texas independence. Clay underlined his position, warning that even with Mexico's consent, he would block annexation in the event that substantial sectional opposition existed anywhere in the United States.
Unfortunately Clay died in a carriage accident hours before the Whig convention in Baltimore officially ending both the Clay and Whig campaign.
Democratic Party campaign[]
President William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison, President of the United States from 1837-1844 was the presumptive Democratic presidential contender in the spring of 1844. With Martin Van Buren withdrawing his bid for the presidency in January 1844, the campaign was expected to focus on domestic issues. All this changed with the uprising of the annexation of Texas. Having to decide rather to annex Texas as a free or slave state was regarded to Harrison as an attempt to sabotage his bid for the White House by exacerbating the already strained North-South Democratic alliance regarding slavery expansion.