Antebellum Politics in Tennessee

Paul H. Bergeron

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813187877
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tennessee played a critical and vital role in national politics in the mid-nineteenth century. Two Tennesseans, for example, served as president and two others were presidential candidates. Such prominence be-speaks the importance of politics in the state's antebellum culture. For the first time in its history Tennessee developed a two-party system, one that was vigorous and exciting.
In his study Paul H. Bergeron examines the development of this two-party competition by focusing on statewide contests. Two-party politics in Tennessee was marked by intense and evenly balanced competition, so much so that the outcome of virtually every election was un-certain. In such an environment each party worked diligently to stir the voters; that they were successful is indicated by the exceedingly high levels of turnout for elections.
Paul H. Bergeron, the first scholar to study the development of the two-party system in Tennessee, presents a detailed narrative of this period coupled with a quantitative analysis of electoral behavior. He relates the peculiarities of Tennessee's experiences to other states during the antebellum decades. Bergeron also offers fresh insights and information on Tennessee's defections from Jacksonianism in the pre-Civil War period. His book is an important contribution to the growing list of state studies, north and south, that are steadily building a greater appreciation of the complexities of politics in Jacksonian America.

Notes

CHAPTER I

1. For a brief review of Tennessee in the territorial period, see Paul H. Bergeron, Paths of the Past: Tennessee, 1770-1970 (Knoxville, 1979), pp. 19-26.

2. Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, 1966), pp. 223-24. McCormick is incorrect in asserting that John Sevier became an integral part of the William Blount faction.

3. Ibid., p. 226; Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk Jacksonian, 1795-1843 (Princeton, 1957), pp. 68, 69; Thomas P. Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee: A Study in Frontier Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1932), pp. 292-93.

4. Sellers, Polk: Jacksonian, pp. 70-71; Abernethy, Frontier to Plantation, p. 238.

5. Sellers, Polk: Jacksonian, pp. 88-91; McCormick, Second Party System, pp. 226-27; Abernethy, Frontier to Plantation, pp. 241-42.

6. Sellers, Polk Jacksonian, pp. 137, 197.

7. Ibid., pp. 136, 140, 197.

8. Ibid., pp. 173, 179, 196, 200. For a detailed treatment of individual and group reaction to nullification, see Paul H. Bergeron, “Tennessee’s Response to the Nullification Crisis,” Journal of Southern History, XXXIX (1973), 23-44.

9. Sellers, Polk Jacksonian, pp. 137-38, 198-99. James S. Chase seriously questions the likelihood that Eaton and Overton wanted to block a possible Van Buren nomination; curiously enough, the only information about this alleged plot came from the pen of fellow Tennessean William B. Lewis. See Chase, Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention, 1789-1832 (Urbana, 1973), pp. 270-71. In his discussion of the 1832 Democratic convention, Richard B. Latner makes no mention of the reported efforts by Eaton and Overton to thwart Van Buren’s nomination. See Latner, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (Athens, Ga., 1979), pp. 129-37.

10. Voter participation in Tennessee in 1828 was close to 50 percent but dropped in 1832 to 28.8 percent. See McCormick, Second Party System, p. 227; Richard P. McCormick, “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics,” American Historical Review, LXV (1960), 292.

11. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819-1848 (Baton Rouge, 1948), p. 316.

12. The statewide population in 1830 was 681,904; by 1860 it had increased to a total of 1,109,801. It should be pointed out that although East Tennessee had 26.9 percent of the state population in 1860, it had only 25.6 percent in 1850. These census data are gleaned from U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Fifth Census of the United States, 1830 (Washington, 1832), pp. 109-10; Seventh Census, 1850 (Washington, 1853), pp. 564-67; Eighth Census, 1860 (Washington, 1864), pp. 456-59.

13. Nashville Union, Oct. 25, 1852.

CHAPTER II

1. To arrive at the percentages shown in Table 2.1, I amassed electoral data from several different sources. For all of the presidential contests I followed the information provided in W. Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955), pp. 742-62. For the 1835, 1837, 1841, 1843, 1845, 1853, 1857, and 1859 gubernatorial races I used returns found in the Tennessee House Journal or the Senate Journal For the 1847, 1849, 1851, and 1855 elections I utilized the data provided in Mary E.R. Campbell, The Attitude of Tennesseans toward the Union, 1847-1861 (New York, 1961), pp. 265-74. For the 1839 governor’s race I used the figures found in the Nashville Republican Banner, Aug. 3-12, 1839, and the Knoxville Register, Oct. 22, 1839. There are some minor discrepancies between my statewide percentages and those found in Anne H. Hopkins and William Lyons, Tennessee Votes: 1799-1976 (Knoxville, 1978), pp. 23-41.

2. I am grateful to Donald L. Winters of Vanderbilt University for his assistance with the linear regression test and with the Democratic mean and standard deviation statistics cited below. The 1839 election saw the most significant increment in Democratic percentage (nearly a full 12 percentage points) during the entire period. Polk’s victory in that year seems to stand out as an exception to the slow and gradual growth of Democratic strength.

3. For Tables 2.3, 2.5, and 2.7 the same sources of election statistics cited for the preparation of Table 2.1 were used.

4. For another map of the thirteen districts, see Stanley B. Parsons, William W. Beach, and Dan Hermann, United States Congressional Districts, 1788-1841 (Westport, Conn., 1978), p. 363.

5. To derive the correlation coefficients, I utilized the Spearman rho rank-order correlation test. This particular test was used, because there are few samples involved and because I am comparing data for one year (voting strength) with data for a period of years (black population, 1835-41). The Spearman correlation coefficients for the other four elections are: 1836 = +.143; 1839 = –.176; 1840 = –.148; and 1841 = –.137.

6. Brian G. Walton, “The Second Party System in Tennessee,” East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications, no. 43 (1971), pp. 20-21. I am puzzled at Walton’s classification of the Ninth District as a West Tennessee district, for it was composed of five Middle and two West Tennessee counties.

7. Ibid., pp. 22-23, 24-27.

8. This table is based upon data gleaned from The Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 (Washington, 1853), pp. 573-74. Following the decision of Parsons et al. in Congressional Districts, I have included free blacks in with the slave population figures. It is important to note the omission of the six counties that appear on the 1850 census but were not in existence at the time of the congressional redistricting in 1842: Decatur (1846), Grundy (1844), Hancock (1844), Lewis (1843), Macon (1842), and Scott (1849). These six counties had an aggregate population in 1850 of 27,727 and a total slave population (including free blacks) of 2,811. According to state law—which seems to have been observed sometimes and disregarded at other times—counties created after congressional redistricting were to continue to vote with their parent counties in statewide elections until the next reapportionment of the districts.

9. The Spearman coefficients are: 1843 = +.036; 1844 = –.082; 1845 = +.009; 1847 = +.036; 1848 = +.091; 1849 = +.091; 1851 = +.127.

10. Districts 1, 2, and 3 were East Tennessee districts; districts 4, 5, 6, and 8 were in Middle Tennessee; and districts 9 and 10 were West Tennessee districts. The Seventh District contained both Middle and West Tennessee counties.

11. This table is based upon data from the Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, 1864), pp. 466-67. As with the other two tables on population data by congressional districts, this table includes free blacks in with the slave population figures. Five counties were created after the 1852 redistricting and before the 1860 census was taken: Cheatham (1856), Cumberland (1856), Putnam (1854), Sequatchie (1857), and Union (1853). Together they had a total population of 27,513 and a slave population (including free blacks) of 3,205. They are omitted from Table 2.8, since they were supposed to vote with their parent counties until the next redistricting.

12. The Spearman coefficients are: 1852 = +.285; 1853 = –.164; 1855 = –.164; 1856 = –.042; 1857 = –.055; 1859 = +.273.

13. Occasionally in the newspapers one can find voting returns for civil districts or precincts.

14. Lowrey, “Tennessee Voters during the Second Two-Party System, 1836-1860: A Study in Voter Constancy and in Socio-Economic and Demographic Distinctions” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alabama, 1973), pp. 28, 33. See his Table 1-1, pp. 29-32, for the listing of counties and their increases or decreases in Democratic percentages.

15. Ibid., pp. 36-37. To arrive at the correlation coefficients, Lowrey used the Pearsonian product moment test.

16. Ibid., pp. 34, 35, 36.

17. Walton, “Second Party System,” pp. 23-24.

18. Lowrey, “Tennessee Voters,” pp. 38-39. My admittedly less sophisticated analysis of the electoral behavior of the congressional districts (1852-59) gives a somewhat different picture, so far as voter consistency in the 1850s is concerned.

19. Ibid., pp. 195, 196, 198-99, 201-2. Since Burnham, Presidential Ballots, reports election returns for 73 counties in 1844, it is not clear why Lowrey deals with only 70.

20. Ibid., pp. 206-9.

21. Ibid., pp. 203-5; Wooster, Politicians, Planters, and Plain Folk: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Upper South, 1850-1860 (Knoxville, 1975), p. 51. As Lowrey points out, all Tennessee counties experienced increases in land value during the ten years from 1850 to 1860; hence his division into three categories of increase: rapid, moderate, and slight.

CHAPTER III

1. In early 1836 one of Polk’s regular correspondents insisted that it had been Bell’s intention all along to overthrow the Jacksonian party and become head of the White movement in the state so that Bell might become “the greatest man in Tennessee.” See George Gammon to James K. Polk, Jan. 28, 1836, in Herbert Weaver, et al., eds., Correspondence of James K. Polk (5 vols. to date; Nashville, 1969–), III, 464.

2. For examples of letters exchanged in 1833 relative to Polk’s ambitions to be chosen speaker, see ibid., II, 99ff.

3. Details of the 1834 speakership race are in Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk: Jacksonian, 1795-1843 (Princeton, 1957), pp. 234-42; Joseph H. Parks, John Bell of Tennessee (Baton Rouge, 1950), pp. 69...