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Subject: H-Net Review [H-Nationalism]: Smith on Ellis, 'Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation'
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Richard Ellis. Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the
Making of a Partisan Nation. Lawrence University Press of Kansas,
2020. 453 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2945-9.
Reviewed by Laura Smith (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Published on H-Nationalism (October, 2020)
Commissioned by Evan C. Rothera
The US presidential election of 1840 is one of the most widely
recognized elections of the nineteenth century, but as Richard J.
Ellis explains, it is often recognized for the wrong reasons. Ellis
effectively challenges the conventional image of the 1840 election as
one filled with campaign revelry but little substance. Instead, he
emphasizes the power of the economy in driving the Democrats from the
White House for the first time in the twelve-year history of the
party. The election of William Henry Harrison ("Old Tip"),
representing the Whig Party's first presidential election victory,
also represented voters' rejection of President Martin Van Buren
("The Sly Fox") and his fellow Democrats, who were blamed for
mishandling the economy.
Ellis consistently demonstrates the role of the economy in
determining election success by comparing the 1840 results with
previous elections. These include the understudied presidential
elections of 1832 and 1836 as well as the congressional,
gubernatorial, and state elections that occurred in between and
directly following the 1836 and 1840 presidential elections. Ellis
weaves evidence and analysis from individual states into his
overarching narrative and seamlessly explains the notoriously complex
state politics of New York. At its heart, _Old Tip vs. The Sly Fox
_is a quantitative study that employs a vast amount of statistical
evidence to support its analysis. Ellis himself cites Michael Holt's
_The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics
and the Onset of the Civil War_ (1999) as his inspiration to pay
special attention to the economy as well as state and congressional
elections (p. xvii). Ellis further supports his argument through
evidence garnered from manuscripts and newspapers, which are common
sources for analyzing antebellum US elections and political history
more broadly.
Ellis points to the unprecedented nationwide voter turnout that the
1840 election inspired as evidence of enthusiasm amongst both Whig
and Democratic voters, placing it within the context of rising voter
turnout in congressional and state elections that occurred during the
Panic of 1837, rather than in a vacuum as previous historians have
done. Indeed, within this broader context, Ellis describes the impact
of the 1840 election in determining voters' long-term prioritization
of presidential elections, evident in the consistently high turnout
rates throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.
Ellis's greatest contribution to our understanding of the 1840
election is the powerful way in which he disputes the analysis of
other historians. He convincingly places policy divergences at the
center of the 1840 campaign. Following Robert Gray Gunderson's
long-standing work on 1840, published in 1957, many historians have
downplayed Harrison's campaign speeches, but not Ellis.[1] In keeping
with his focus on the substance of the election, Ellis demonstrates
Harrison's consistent espousal of Whig policies, while Van Buren
reiterated his policies in his letter writing. Yet Ellis takes aim at
Donald B. Cole's characterization of slavery, and specifically, Van
Buren's appeals to the slave South, as dooming his reelection.[2] As
Ellis details, the result of the 1840 election was not a reflection
of sectionalism, as both Harrison and Van Buren made open appeals to
slaveowners.
A significant portion of the book explores the lead-up to and the
actions of the national party nominating conventions. Ellis shines a
light on Henry Clay's loss of the nomination to Harrison, effectively
dispelling reiterations of both political intrigue and the acceptance
of the "unit rule" method for state delegates to vote for their
preferred candidate, which Ellis explains was roundly challenged by
Clay's supporters. Concerning the all-important decision to nominate
states' rights Virginian John Tyler for vice president, Ellis
explains the lack of reliable contemporaneous sources and moves on to
focus on the conclusion of the Whig convention.
Ellis rightly questions the validity of popular tales of Clay's
reaction to Harrison's nomination and identifies Clay's actions that
unified the Whig Party as a central reason for the party's success.
Additionally, Ellis discards the historiographical consensus that the
simultaneous meetings of the Democratic convention and a rally of
young Whigs in Baltimore reflected a successful Whig strategy to
disrupt the demoralized Democrats. As Ellis details, it was the
Democrats who overlooked this scheduling conflict, which did not
deter them from eliciting excitement over their own party's prospects
in November, excitement that was apparent throughout the campaign and
evident in the record turnout that reflected how "both parties
successfully mobilized voters" (p. 250).
In several respects, Ellis's monograph on the 1840 election is
especially timely, as Ellis openly recognizes. This is evident, for
example, in his citing of John Quincy Adams's "prescient concern
about the corrosive effects of an extreme partisan enmity that casts
defeat in the most ominous hue and justifies victory at almost any
cost" (p. 220). Indeed, Ellis directly compares the Jacksonian
rhetoric of 1840 with that of Donald Trump during the 2016 election
(p. 159). In the same vein, unlike many American antebellum political
historians, Ellis does not shy away from the term "populism," arguing
that, for Van Buren, "Populism could be placed in the service of
party building" and mentioning Andrew Jackson's "populist appeals"
(pp. 19, 276). While Ellis's terminology is well placed, the
development of populism in antebellum American political history
lacks in-depth study and as such, requires a clear definition to be
given within the context of 1840. Hopefully, Ellis's brief mentions
of populism will inspire greater analysis of the phenomena and
association of the term with Jacksonian America.
The term "partisan nation," included in the book's subtitle, also
lacks a clear definition. The consistency of Ellis's argument enables
the reader to piece together that "partisan nation" refers to the
establishment of "party loyalty and party organization" over
sectionalism (p. 159). In discussing the consolidation of
partisanship, Ellis misses an opportunity to analyze the impact of
the election on democratization. Ellis skirts democratization,
despite providing evidence that is ripe for such analysis. Ellis
rightly notes the role of the Anti-Masons in instituting national
party nominating conventions and the flow of Anti-Masons into the
Whig fold and therefore the Whig contribution to "popular" politics,
a historiographical intervention that is also supported by Mark R.
Cheathem's 2018 The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in
the Age of Jackson (p. xv). In the context of conventions, Ellis
further describes the Whigs as "democratic pioneers," yet does so by
diminishing the Anti-Masonic precedent and ignoring the fact that the
choice of vice presidential nominee made at the 1832 National
Republican convention was similarly unplanned (pp. 130-131, 175). The
participation of women in the Whig campaign and the role of popular
music provide further evidence of democratization, culminating in the
festivities and speeches that Clay cited as "democratic
accountability" (pp. 222-223, 225).
Participation in national conventions and state suffrage laws are
integral to analyzing democratization. Repeatedly, Ellis states that
southerners possessed a "greater distrust or discomfort with the idea
of a national convention," yet he does not reconcile this with the
"oft-expressed antipathy to nominating conventions" in Illinois (pp.
136, 135). Southern states, such as Virginia, lagged behind their
northern and western counterparts in expanding the suffrage, and
democracy in the South was also impeded by the influence of powerful,
partisan groups like the Richmond Junto. While Ellis mentions the
impact of the Richmond Junto in Jackson's 1828 lopsided win of
Virginia, he does not question whether the "huge majorities" Jackson
received from the South in both 1828 and 1832 actually reflected his
popularity outside of the political elite (pp. 22, 9). This context
is pertinent to 1840 in understanding the voter turnout and
explaining the origins of Whig support in the South.
While Ellis provides significant short-term context, some long-term
context is absent. For example, Ellis cites Van Buren as innovating
presidential campaigning by public letter, yet in July 1832, Jackson
had utilized his veto message of the rechartering of the Second Bank
of the United States to much the same rhetorical effect, with
Democrats widely distributing and publicizing the document (p. 205).
Additionally, the economic "boom times" that Ellis describes
overlooks the regional disparities that occurred during Jackson's
tenure in office, with tremors of economic instability during his
Bank War being particularly felt in more rural western states that
remained in need of investment for infrastructure (pp. 27-28).
Overall, Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox powerfully dispels the common image
of the 1840 election as simply a frivolous festivity not only by
including detailed state-by-state evidence but also by clearly
challenging the work of other historians. While Ellis could have made
his argument even stronger by defining key terms and including more
long-term context, he makes a persuasive case for understanding the
Whig's electoral success as a reflection of the impact of the
economy. It is apparent that Van Buren's defeat was not for lack of
trying and although he lost reelection, his concept of national
parties that overcame sectional divisions was alive and well.
Notes
[1]. Robert Gray Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1957).
[2]. Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political
System (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2004).
Citation: Laura Smith. Review of Ellis, Richard, _Old Tip vs. the Sly
Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation_.
H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. October, 2020.
URL:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55622
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
