United States History Student Edition

bills sponsored by Whigs in Congress. His lack of party loyalty outraged many Whigs. When he twice vetoed a bill to renew the Bank of the United States, all but one of his cabinet members resigned. Only Daniel Webster remained as secretary of state. Whig leaders actually expelled Tyler from the party. The biggest success of the Tyler presidency came in the area of foreign relations. In 1842, the United States and Great Britain signed the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. This agreement settled a long dispute over the border between Maine and Canada and set a firm U.S.-Canadian boundary from Maine to Minnesota. Except for opposing Tyler, the Whigs could not agree on their party’s goals. Increasingly, they voted by region—North, South, and West—not by party. Their reluctance to approve the annexation of Western lands led to the Whigs’ loss of the presidency in 1844, when their candidate, Henry Clay, lost to Democrat James Polk. The Whigs elected one more president, Zachary Taylor, in 1848. Taylor also died in office. By then, the Whig Party had become badly divided over the issue of slavery. By the early 1850s, the party had nearly disappeared. Many Northern Whigs left the party and helped form a new political party—the Republican Party that we have today. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Explaining How did the Whigs lose power during the 1840s? LESSON ACTIVITIES 1. Informative/Explanatory Writing The saying, “One man with courage makes a majority,” has often been attributed to Andrew Jackson. Write a paragraph explaining what you think is meant by this quote and how this idea relates to Jackson’s leadership. 2. Interpreting Information With a partner, write campaign slogans for Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison that each man could have used to attract voter support in 1840. Share your slogans with the class, adapting your speech as necessary to convey the “spirit” of the slogans. Explain the meanings and relevance of the slogans to the candidates’ campaigns.

John Tyler became president in 1841 after William Henry Harrison’s death.

These attacks played right into the hands of the Whigs, who adopted the log cabin as the symbol of their campaign. The Whigs presented Harrison as a “man of the people” in contrast to Van Buren, whom they portrayed as a wealthy snob. They blamed Van Buren for the depression and accused him of spending the people’s money on expensive furniture for the White House. A record number of voters turned out to elect Harrison by a wide margin, making him the first Whig president. Inauguration Day, 1841, was bitterly cold. Harrison insisted on delivering his long speech without a hat or coat. He died of pneumonia 32 days later, and John Tyler became the first vice president to gain the presidency due to the death of a sitting president. Whig Party leaders had put Tyler on the ballot with Harrison mainly to attract Southern voters. Now, they regretted that decision, as Tyler opposed many Whig policies and vetoed several

PHOTO: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of Friends of the National Institute, 1859. TEXT: Attributed to Andrew Jackson by Robert F. Kennedy in his Foreward to the Young Readers Memorial Edition of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, p. xiii. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1964.

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