Ohio Governor Robert Lucas served as
the Chairman and President of the 1832 Democratic National Convention
held in Baltimore, Maryland, from May 21 to May 23, 1832. This
distinction was one of the highlights of Lucas's governorship. He had
served as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio
State Senate before becoming governor, and he was a staunch
Jacksonian.
In fact, one source ironically
describes Governor Lucas as “a man much like Andrew Jackson in
appearance - tall and slender, with a sharp nose, thin lips, heavy
eyebrows over deep-set eyes, and heavy gray hair combed back from a
high forehead.” In addition to his political service, Lucas was a
wealthy landowner, surveyor, and a merchant who had built “one of
the finest houses in southern Ohio set on farm of 437 acres.” Lucas
was undoubtedly a man with a commanding presence.
* Note of Interest -- Lucas had been
opposed in one state election by an illiterate Pennsylvania Dutchman
names Delawder, whom he beat easily. According to the local
historian, Delawder explained his defeat by saying he “was making a
pooty good race, when that tam big General Lucas came along riding on
his horse and the tam fools voted for him.” It was said “this
(presentation by Lucas) was a not inappropriate style for a
politician of the victor of New Orleans.”
A strong, self-reliant personality made
Robert Lucas one of the most esteemed pubic servants of his day.
Although he was a man of strong impulses, he was also a man of strict
integrity. His experience in the War of 1812 helped make Lucas an
exceptional leader. Stern and unbending in his policies, Lucas made
an excellent statesman and governor of not one, but two states.
The Convention of 1832
This was the first national convention
of the Democratic Party of the United States; it followed
presidential nominating conventions held previously by the small
minority Anti-Masonic Party (in September 1831) and the National
Republican Party (in December 1831).
In this convention, the Democratic
Party formally adopted its present name. The party had previously
been known as “Republican Delegates from the Several States.”
By the time of the convention, Lucas
had achieved national prominence. Biographer Benjamin F. Shambaugh in
Robert Lucas: Iowa Biographical Series (1907) relates the
following:
“The activity of Lucas in
support of Andrew Jackson in the late twenties, together with his
long and faithful career in the halls of the General Assembly had
brought him, in 1830, to a place of distinct prominence in the
Democratic politics of the State of Ohio.
“To Robert Lucas belongs the
distinguished honor of presiding over the first national convention
ever held by the Democratic party of the United States. In the
campaign of 1832 for the first time in the history of American
politics the various parties pursued the policy of holding national
conventions to nominate candidates. The Congressional caucus had
passed away, and the nomination by local legislatures and mass
meetings failed to give the requisite backing for a party candidate.”
Of Lucas' appointment, Shambaugh writes
…
“Judge Overton of Tennessee had
been agreed upon as the presiding officer of the convention. He had
been a lifelong friend and supporter of Andrew Jackson, and had
succeeded him as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. Upon his
name being proposed as chairman pro tem. however, his colleague John
H. Eaton, Jackson's late Secretary of War, arose and remarked that
Judge Overton was sick and unable to attend that morning; he thanked
the convention for the honor conferred upon his friend, and closed
his remarks by moving that General Robert Lucas of Ohio should be
chosen chairman pro tem. in place of the Judge. The motion was
unanimously earned and Lucas was conducted to the chair.
“The first day of the
convention passed in organization and preliminaries. Tuesday morning
the saloon of the Athenaeum (original
site of the convention) was found too small to
accommodate the convention and the members met in the Universalist
church in St. Paul Street. Here the business of the convention began
in earnest. Mr. King of Alabama, from the committee appointed to
nominate officers, presented the name of General Robert Lucas as
permanent chairman. The nomination was approved by the convention and
Lucas took the chair.
“After expressing his deep
appreciation of the honor which they had bestowed upon him, Lucas
paid tribute to the party they
represented, whose object was to preserve the pure principles of
Republicanism and to secure to the people the free and uninfluenced
enjoyment of their rights and privileges. He emphasized the
importance of the session and the propriety of sacrificing all
personal feelings and local preferences for the sake of the cause in
which they were engaged, which was to preserve the harmony and
advance the prosperity of the great Republican party throughout the
Union. He expressed a consciousness of his inability to
perform the duty assigned to him in a manner corresponding with his
wishes; but feeling no doubt of the support and kindness of the
convention, he accepted the appointment.”
The purpose of the convention was to
choose a new running mate for incumbent President Andrew Jackson of
Tennessee, rather than employ previous methods of using a caucus of
Congressional representatives and senators.
In 1830, Vice President John C. Calhoun
(Jackson's first term VP) had fallen out of President Jackson's favor
because of many things:
Jackson's troops had invaded Florida,
captured a Spanish fort at St. Marks, took control of Pensacola, and
deposed the Spanish governor. He also executed two British citizens
whom he accused of having incited the Seminoles to raid American
settlements.
2. The Petticoat affair in which Calhoun's wife, Floride was a central figure further alienated Jackson from the Vice President and his supporters. Floride led other cabinet members' wives in socially ostracizing John Eaton, the Secretary of War, and his wife Peggy over disapproval of the circumstances surrounding their marriage and what they considered her failure to meet the moral standards of a cabinet wife.
With the encouragement of President
Jackson, who liked them both, Peggy and Eaton had married on January
1, 1829, shortly after her husband's death, although according to
custom, it would have been proper for them to wait until the end of
a longer mourning period.
3. The final blow to the relationship came when Calhoun sank Van Buren's nomination to be Minister to England by casting a tie-breaking vote in the United States Senate.
Calhoun resigned from the vice
presidency on December 28, 1832 (seven weeks after the presidential
election) and became a Senator of South Carolina, where he continued
to be a proponent of the doctrines of nullification in opposition to
Jackson.
* Note of Interest -- The Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 was
a confrontation between South Carolina and the federal government. It
ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828
and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the
sovereign boundaries of the state. Nullification claimed that a state
had a right to nullify federal laws within its own borders. This
debate foreshadowed the slavery controversy that would become the
most divisive national political issue in U.S. history.
Calhoun was a native South Carolinian.
For Southerners like him, the tariffs were intolerable since they
artificially raised the prices of imports. Calhoun was appalled at
this legislation, which appeared to benefit only Northern industry
while gouging Southerners.
Early in 1831 Jackson decided to remake
his cabinet. In April Martin Van Buren resigned his place as
Secretary of State with the understanding that he was to be made
Minister to England. In resigning, he admitted his candidacy for the
office of President and laid his resignation to the fact that a
cabinet minister with those ambitions would be open to the charge of
manipulating politics to his own private ends.
Receiving the appointment as Minister
to England, Van Buren soon left for his new post. Congress, however,
was not in session when the appointment was made, and he arrived in
London in September of 1831 without having had the action of
President Jackson confirmed by the Senate.
In England, Van Buren entered upon a
field of work for which he was eminently fitted. His ingratiating
manners and fascinating personality at once brought him friends and
social enjoyments. He made contacts with many of the leading
representatives of Europe.
But Van Buren's enemies at home were
not idle. His nomination, sent by President Jackson to the Senate in
December, was rejected after a series of formal speeches by Webster,
Clay, and others condemning the late Secretary of State. As President
of the Senate, Vice President Calhoun had “the extreme pleasure”
of casting the decisive vote against his enemy. Thomas Benton in his
Thirty Years in the United States Senate tells us that Calhoun
afterwards remarked: "It will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He
will never kick sir, never kick."
Instead, Calhoun and his friends had
overreached themselves. They had placed Van Buren in that
uncomfortable but eminently advantageous position of a man publicly
wronged. The reaction against the movement of Calhoun, Clay, and
Webster soon made itself felt in America; and it was everywhere
acknowledged that Martin Van Buren had, by that short-sighted blow,
been thrust upon the people as the inevitable Vice Presidential
nominee. Only by this compliment could his party defend him from the
action of their enemies.
As President of the convention, Robert
Lucas, together with the four Vice Presidents, drafted a letter on
May 22, 1832, and sent it to Van Buren, announcing his nomination.
Upon his return from Europe, Van Buren, on August 3, 1832, cheerfully
consented to come before the American people as a candidate for the
office of Vice President of the United States.
Martin Van Buren won more than
two-thirds of the total delegates' votes. The convention endorsed the
prior nominations in various areas of the United States of Jackson
for the presidency. The convention concluded by adopting a resolution
calling for an address or report from the delegations to their
constituents.
The address described what they claimed
were political similarities between Andrew Jackson and Thomas
Jefferson and it defended the policies of Jackson's administration.
It characterized Van Buren as a strict constructionist and welcomed
his nomination.
The address denounced the National
Republicans as Federalists under a new designation. The address also
denounced the Nullifiers. And, they declared their own party held
the middle ground between the positions of the National Republicans
and the Nullifiers.
Historian Shambaugh relates the end of
the historic convention ...
“Before adjourning Robert Lucas
and the four Vice Presidents received the thanks of the convention
for the prompt, impartial and dignified manner in which they had
presided over its deliberations. It was then ordered that immediately
upon adjournment tlie members would proceed to visit the venerable
Charles Carroll, the only survivor of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence. With prayer by the Reverend Mr. Wallace, the meeting
ended and the Democratic party closed with the greatest of harmony
its first national convention.”
The 1832 conventions played a crucial
role in making organized parties a fixture of the U.S. political
system. The Democratic convention adopted rules that succeeding
conventions retained well into the 20th century. One rule based each
state’s convention vote on its electoral vote, an apportionment
method that remained unchanged until 1940. The 1832 convention also
adopted the procedure of having one person from each delegation
announce the vote of his state.
The Election
Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren
defeated their main competitors, Henry Clay and John Sergeant of the
National Republican Party, by a large electoral vote margin in the
election of 1832. The electors of Pennsylvania supported Jackson, but
cast their votes for William Wilkins for the vice presidency.
Governor Robert Lucas was a force who
wielded considerable power in national politics. Ohio was a very
important state in Andrew Jackson's election strategy. Jackson won
Ohio's 21 Electoral Votes by a margin of 2.98% over Henry Clay. Lucas
undoubtedly played a major part in Jackson's victory.
Most Ohioans initially welcomed Andrew
Jackson's election. During his time in office, Jackson continued to
force American Indians to forsake their land east of the Mississippi
River for land west of the river. Many of Ohio's small farmers and
industrial workers believed that land seized from the natives would
open up new opportunities. Land prices would hopefully fall, allowing
working-class residents the chance to either own or expand their
landholdings. Ohioans also welcomed Jackson's attack on the Bank of
the United States due to the Panic of 1819 and the Banking Crisis of
that same year. Jackson succeeded in destroying the National Bank,
but new economic problems arose in the late 1830s.
Sources
“1932
Democratic Convention.” Library of Congress. Main Reading Room.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/main/polcon/democraticindex.html
Richard F. Grimmett, Richard F. (2009).
St. John's Church, Lafayette Square: The History and Heritage of the
Church of the Presidents, Washington, DC. Minneapolis, MN:
Mill City Press.
“How Iowa Became a Territory.”
Stories of Iowas For Boys and Girls. Chapter XXXI
James C. Humes. (1992). My Fellow
Americans: Presidential Addresses that Shaped History.
William Nester.
(2013). The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power,
1815-1848. Washington, DC: Potomac Books.
John C. Parish.
Edited by Benjamin F. Shambaugh. Robert Lucas. Iowa Biographical
Series. The State Historical Society of Iowas. 1907.
Donald John
Ratcliffe. The Politics of Long Division: The Birth of the Second
Party System in Ohio, 1818-1828. 2000.
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