Skip to content

Trace the Roots

Government & LawIndustrial Age

1848 U.S. presidential election

1848

War hero Zachary Taylor wins for the Whigs as the new Free Soil Party makes slavery's spread into the West a national issue.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → Synapsids, the mammal line, split from reptiles → Therapsids, ancestors of mammals → Cynodonts, the ancestors of mammals → First mammals → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → First anthropoid primates → Apes split from monkeys → Great apes split from gibbons → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Egyptian hieroglyphs → The alphabet → Phoenician alphabet → Greek alphabet → Solon's reforms → Athenian democracy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → The Federalist Papers → U.S. Constitution ratified → Washington inaugurated as first president → Hamilton's Report on Public Credit → First Bank of the United States → Jackson vetoes the Second Bank's recharter → 1832 U.S. presidential election → 1836 U.S. presidential election → 1840 U.S. presidential election → 1844 U.S. presidential election → 1848 U.S. presidential election

The story

In 1848 Whig Zachary Taylor, a general made famous by the Mexican-American War, won the presidency with 163 electoral votes to 127 for Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan. Former President Martin Van Buren ran on the new Free Soil ticket and won about 10 percent of the popular vote but no states. It was the first presidential election held on a single day nationwide, November 7, 1848, under an 1845 law.

The war had added a vast territory from Mexico, and the question was whether slavery could spread there. The Wilmot Proviso, which proposed banning slavery in the new land, passed the House and failed in the Senate. Cass offered 'popular sovereignty,' letting settlers decide. Taylor, a Louisiana slaveholder with no political record, took no clear position. Free Soilers, a coalition of antislavery Democrats, Whigs and Liberty Party men, rallied around 'free soil, free speech, free labor and free men.' Van Buren drew enough Democratic votes in New York to hand that state to Taylor. As president, Taylor surprised Southerners by backing California's admission as a free state, then died in July 1850, before Congress passed the Compromise of 1850.

Why it mattered

Made slavery in the western territories the central issue of national politics.
Put Taylor and then Millard Fillmore in office during the crisis settled by the Compromise of 1850.
Launched the Free Soil movement, a forerunner of the Republican Party.

Sources

United States presidential election of 1848 Britannica
Election of 1848: Abolitionism and the Constitution Constituting America

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

Community notes

Loading notes…

Learn more ranked by votes

BookJohn S. D. Eisenhower

Editor's pick

BookDaniel Walker Howe

What Hath God Wrought

Editor's pick

VideoSearch on YouTube

1848 election Zachary Taylor Free Soil Party lecture

Editor's pick

At a glance

When: November 7, 1848
Where: The 30 states
Key people: Zachary Taylor (Whig, elected president)
Lewis Cass (Democratic candidate)
Martin Van Buren (Free Soil candidate)
Millard Fillmore (elected vice president)

163 to 127Taylor's electoral vote margin

about 10 percentpopular vote for Free Soil candidate Van Buren

271earlier events it rests on

2later events that depend on it

Couldn't have happened without

1844 U.S. presidential election1844

ImportantPolk's single-term pledge and his war left an open race in 1848.

Mexican-American War1846

EssentialThe war made Taylor a hero and created the territory whose slavery status defined the race.

Led to

1852 U.S. presidential election1852

More from Industrial Age

Industrial Revolution begins1760 Watt's steam engine1769 American Revolution1775 Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations1776 Declaration of Independence1776 U.S. Constitution1787