The
United States presidential election of 1836 was the 13th quadrennial presidential election, held from Thursday, November 3, to Wednesday, December 7, 1836. In an election contested by three candidates, the National Republican nominee Daniel Webster, the American nominee Henry Clay and the Democrat nominee Hugh L. White, no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, sending election to the House of Representatives. On February 15, 1837, the House of Representatives elected Daniel Webster as president. The 1836 presidential election was the first election in which the winner of the election lost the popular vote.
During the presidency of William H. Crawford, the Democrats lost most of their northern members, including the vice-president Martin Van Buren. They defected to Henry Clay's American Party, establishing it as major political force. The American Party was highly divided, but agreed on necessity of the national unity, compromise and balance between states' rights and federal power. American Party nominated Kentucky senator Henry Clay for the president and Ohio governor William H. Harrison, a military hero, for the vice-president. The ticket enjoyed support all over the country, encluding only Deep South and New England, which were Democrat and National Republican strongholds, respectively.
The southern-dominated Democrats nominated Tennessee senator Hugh L. White, a well-known proponent of the states' rights and jacksonian ideas. With his nomination, all hopes to reunite the northerners and the southerners of Democrat Party were lost. Instead, Democrats tried to appeal to the West, and they choose a Missouri senator, Thomas H. Benton, for the vice-president. 1836 National Republican convention chose a ticket of Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster and New York governor Francis Granger. As no one had won a majority of the electoral vote, the 1836 election became the first (and, so far, only) election to be decided in the House of Representatives under the terms of the 12th Amendment.
The 12th Amendment specified that the only three top finishers in the electoral vote were eligible to be selected by the House. Thus, all of three contenders were on the congressional ballot. Before the election, Clay denied possibility of the agreement with White. Instead, he hoped to unite with Webster. Webster, though, was the one who received most of the electoral votes, and the one who received most of the states. In the Congress, National Republicans had the majority in 11 states, Americans had in the 5, and Democrats in the 10 states. Democrats, under the patronage of Thomas Benton, tried to gain the support of western Americans to win the election, but were unsuccesful, as Clay decided to endorse Daniel Webster. With support of Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, Webster won contingent election on the first ballot. Clay still received votes of Illinois and Kentucky; White won all of the states he received in the Electoral College plus Tennessee, which delegation was the majority Democrat.
The election of 1836 marked an important turning point in American political history because of the part it played in establishing the Second Party System. In the 1830s the political party structure was still changing. Most of parties were divided regionally, and each faction was independent and oftenly changed its partisan affiliation. After the election of 1836, the American and National Republican parties merged to form the National Party. Some of the unsatisfied American members decided to rejoin the Democrats, and tried to fill the leadership vacuum which formed after Crawford and White. In the 1840s, most of the factions finally aligned themselves with the National or the Democrat party.
