Ohio History Journal
VERNON L. VOLPE
The Ohio Election of 1838: A Study in
the Historical
Method?
Historians are not immune from
occasionally making minor errors
such as misreading the results of a
state election. Unfortunately, due
to the nature of the craft, one
historian's lapse may assume the status
of historical "fact" once it
finds its way into the secondary literature,
where the original slip suddenly takes
on a life of its own. Through
sheer repetition by other scholars, a
historical myth is created that
is extremely difficult to refute for the
burden of proof now shifts to
the naysayer, though the original claim
may have had little to recom-
mend it in the first place. The way
historians have interpreted the
importance of abolitionist voters to the
results of the 1838 state elec-
tion in Ohio is one such example.
Perhaps the first mistake historians
made in treating the Ohio elec-
tion of 1838 was to exaggerate its
drama. According to turn-of-the-
century historian Theodore Clarke Smith,
news of the election-eve
arrest of John B. Mahan "thrilled
through Ohio like an electric
shock" and especially brought
"every abolitionist to a high pitch of
excitement."1 Mahan was a Brown
County Methodist preacher
charged by Kentucky authorities with
aiding the escape of fugitive
slaves. Shortly before Ohio voters went
to the polls in October 1838,
Governor Joseph Vance acceded to
Kentucky's request and "deliv-
ered up" Mahan to be placed in jail
across the Ohio River. Public
outcry over the Mahan affair, Ohio
historian Francis P. Weisenburger
affirmed, "reacted against the
popularity of Vance."2
Vernon L. Volpe is Visiting Assistant
Professor of History at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
1. Theodore Clarke Smith, The Liberty
and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (New
York, 1897), 30. Smith named the
Cincinnati Philanthropist as his source, apparently
without considering the stake the
abolitionist paper held in the matter. See the discus-
sion below.
2. Francis P. Weisenburger, The
Passing of the Frontier, Vol. 3 of The History of the
State of Ohio, Carl Wittke, ed. (Columbus, 1941), 350. As it turned
out, Mahan had not
been in Kentucky recently and thus could
not be held. The judge's charge to the jury
86 OHIO HISTORY
When Governor Vance and his fellow Whigs
suffered a stunning
defeat in the subsequent state election
(Vance's 6,000 vote margin in
1836 turned into a 5,700 vote deficit in
1838), historians made a sec-
ond and more serious miscalculation in
attributing the results almost
exclusively to abolitionist voters.
Again Theodore Clarke Smith was
primarily responsible for creating this
misconception. "No one
seemed inclined to doubt," Smith
reported in his otherwise capable
study of antislavery politics in the Old
Northwest, that the Whig de-
feat was due "entirely to abolition
votes." That "even Whig papers
asserted it as undeniable fact"
Smith believed cinched the case.3
Later historians were content to repeat
the claims of their predeces-
sors, while being somewhat more vague on
the role abolitionism
played in the Whig debacle. John Bach
McMaster simply stated that
"the extradition of Mahan became a
political issue, and Governor
Vance was defeated."4 This
view of the 1838 Ohio election has re-
mained unchallenged for nearly ninety
years, showing up in at least
two well-respected recent studies.5
In reaching these conclusions Smith and
other historians have
relied heavily on the explanation of
Whig party newspapers (and pri-
marily only those in the southern half
of the state) for their defeat.
As they saw the Democrats win the
Governor's chair, take control of
both houses of the Ohio legislature, and
also gain a majority of the
state's Congressional delegation, Whigs
admittedly wailed loudly as
they tore their hair and rent their
clothing: "Routed! Horse and
Foot! We, the Whigs of Ohio are beaten,
and that most essentially.
We have no mitigating circumstances-no
saving clauses-no consola-
tion." While finding no
consolation, the Whig Ohio State Journal
nonetheless found a scapegoat for their
defeat in Ohio abolitionists:
is in the Liberator, December 7,
1838. See also Niles' National Register, December 1,
1838.
3. Smith, 30.
4. John Bach McMaster, A History of
the People of the United States, From the
Revolution to the Civil War, vol. 6: 1830-1842 (New York, 1906), 499-500. In
addition to
Weisenburger, those who followed Smith
and McMaster included Hermann R. Muel-
der, Fighters for Freedom: The
History of Antislavery Activities of Men and Women As-
sociated with Knox College (New York, 1959), 331, and Stanley Cooper Harrold, Jr.,
"Gamaliel Bailey, Abolitionist and
Free Soiler" (Ph.D. dissertation, Kent State Uni-
versity, 1975), 44. Joel Goldfarb,
"The Life of Gamaliel Bailey, Prior to the Founding of
the National Era: The Orientation
of a Practical Abolitionist" (Ph.D. dissertation, Uni-
versity of California-Los Angeles,
1958), 147-151, 156, at least admitted the results were
"mixed."
5. Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for
Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States,
1837-1860 (New York, 1976), 18-19, and Lawrence Friedman, Gregarious
Saints: Self
and Community in American
Abolitionism, 1830-1870 (New York,
1982), 236.
|
The Ohio Election of 1838 87 |
|
|
|
That party at this time hold the balance of political power in a number of the counties of the State, sufficient to decide the party complexion of the Legisla- ture. ... In the late contest, they threw their weight against the former [the Whigs] and thus secured the triumph of the latter [the Democrats]. . . . We are well satisfied that the course pursued by the abolitionists changed the result in a significant number of counties to give the assembly to the adminis- tration.6 Some Whig editors warned that this new power of political abolition- ism endangered not only the Union, but also the Whig party: "We are not yet ruined, but we are on the very brink, staring danger in the face."7 Before accepting these Whig complaints historians should have considered the reliability of their sources. Nineteenth-century party editors were not in the business of providing dispassionate, objective analyses of election results.8 Their main task was to console the party
6. Ohio State Journal, October 24, 1838. Party presses that cited abolitionism for the Whig defeat included the Guernsey Times, Belmont Chronicle, and Akron Bal- ance. Philanthropist, October 23, 1838; Ohio State Journal, November 2, 4, 1838. 7. Cincinnati Republican in the Philanthropist, November 6, 1838. 8. For a criticism of historians' methods in analyzing election results, see Lee Benson, "An Approach to the Scientific Study of Past Public Opinion," Public Opinion Quarterly, 31 (Winter, 1967), 556, 560-65. For a discussion of nineteenth-century party |
88 OHIO HISTORY
faithful and explain how hallowed
political principles could lose to
the political cant of unscrupulous
opponents. No sooner were the
votes counted than party managers must
begin to look to the next
election. In 1838 Whig editors where
abolitionism was weak were no
doubt anxious to dump responsibility
for their loss at the feet of the
abolitionists. Not only did they blame
abolitionists for their 1838 de-
feat, but Whigs used this charge to
motivate party supporters to pre-
vent the catastrophe from happening
again.9
Another source for historians' views on
the 1838 results was the
Cincinnati abolitionist press, the Philanthropist,
capably edited by
Gamaliel Bailey. Not surprisingly,
editor Bailey was happy to claim
credit for defeating the entire Whig
party in the state, if for nothing
else than to prove the growing power of
Ohio abolitionism. In fact
Bailey had taken more than just a passing
interest in the 1838 cam-
paign. As chief spokesman for Ohio
abolitionists, the editor had em-
braced the newly-announced abolitionist
policy of questioning candi-
dates for political office to determine
their views on slavery-related
issues.10 To this end he
encouraged abolitionist voters to cast Demo-
cratic ballots in 1838 in order to
reelect Thomas Morris to the United
States Senate. (Morris held some
antislavery opinions, but Bailey's
embrace only encouraged Democrats to
pass over Morris for reelec-
tion. See the discussion below.) Most
importantly, Bailey thought
the Mahan case "as great an
outrage as the murder of Lovejoy," and
seized on the surrender of an Ohio
citizen to a slaveholding state to
call for the defeat of Governor Vance
and the Whigs.11 Taking full
advantage of the Mahan
"outrage," Bailey went so far as to circulate
125 extra copies of the Philanthropist
among the state's major party
presses.12
In 1838 all participants recognized
that the Ohio race carried mean-
ing beyond the borders of the state.
Shortly after the Ohio contest
voters would go to the polls in New
York, where abolitionists hoped
to deliver a rebuke to Whig
gubernatorial candidate William H.
editors, see S. B. McCracken, "The
Press of Michigan-A Fifth Year View," Michigan
Pioneer Historical Collections, 18 (1891), 382-87.
9. See, for example, the Cincinnati Republican
in the Philanthropist, November 6,
1838, and the Akron Balance in
the Ohio State Journal, November 11, 1838. In 1839
some Whig papers again blamed their
defeat on abolitionists. Troy Times and Wilming-
ton Whig in ibid., October 23, 1839.
10. Philanthropist, March 27, June 12, 1838.
11. Bailey to James Birney, October 28,
1838, in Dwight L. Dumond, ed., Letters of
James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, vol. I (reprint ed., Gloucester, Mass., 1966), 475.
12. Goldfarb, 147-48.
The Ohio Election of 1838 89
Seward for his evasive replies to their
inquiries. As the Democratic
replies were virtually insulting, the
abolitionist favorite in New York
was Luther Bradish, the Whig candidate
for lieutenant governor.
Gerrit Smith and other New York
abolitionists hoped Bradish
would poll more votes than Seward,
thereby proving the political in-
fluence of abolitionists. As Ohio voters
would go to the polls first, ab-
olitionists looked to the Buckeye State
to demonstrate the power of
political abolition and to encourage New
Yorkers to greater efforts.13
Once the Ohio results were known, Bailey
would indeed crow to
eastern abolitionists: "you see ...
what our Western boys can
do."
14
The secondary accounts mistakenly imply
that contemporaries
were agreed on the causes of Whig defeat
in 1838. In fact the Demo-
cratic state paper dismissed Whig
charges as "ridiculous," noting
that Vance's total surpassed any other
on the ticket and arguing that
as few in the state knew anything of it,
the Mahan incident hardly
cost the Whig governor "a single
vote."15 Several Whig papers, espe-
cially on the Western Reserve, did not
attribute their defeat to aboli-
tionism. Even those that stressed
abolitionism also mentioned other
factors such as banking issues and Whig
lethargy that worked
against them.16
An article in the influential Cincinnati
Gazette recalled that the
Whigs actually increased their vote
total over 1836 (although Demo-
crats polled even more) and credited the
Democratic margin of victo-
ry to the "cry against Banks."
In a few counties the Mahan case may
have been important, the Whig paper
admitted, yet the Democrats
made their greatest gains in counties
where abolitionists were few but
13. Niles' National Register, November
3, 1838; Emancipator, November 1, 1838;
Liberator, November 2, 1838; Sewell, 17-18.
14. Bailey to Birney, October 28, 1838,
in Birney Letters, 472-76; Philanthropist, Oc-
tober 23, 30, 1838. The Emancipator, November
1, 1838, and the Liberator, November
2, 1838, did point to the Ohio results
to encourage New York abolitionists.
15. Ohio Statesman, October 30, 1838. The Democratic party organ had not
made
the Mahan case an abolition issue,
October 5, 1838. The Statesman estimated only
about a third of the state's voters knew
of the Mahan case. This is possible as many
Whig papers avoided mentioning the issue
for fear of hurting their party's chances.
The Ohio State Journal did
mention the case only to defend Vance's actions and to
proclaim the opposition charges, "A
MERE PETTY ELECTIONEERING MOVE."
October 2, 9, 31, 1838.
16. The Philanthropist did not
include these in its excerpts. November 6, 1838; Ohio
State Journal, October 29, November 2, 1838.
90 OHIO
HISTORY
"hostility to banks" was
strong.17 The parties were so closely bal-
anced in Ohio, the Gazette reasoned,
that the result could well have
depended on "vigilance" (or
party turnout).18
In the face of conflicting testimony
from contemporary sources, his-
torians required more reliable evidence
to document their claims
about the 1838 results. Election returns
seem to be a fairly obvious
choice, but few historians chose to
study this data carefully, though
the Gazette suggested this
approach held the most promise. Careful
examination of the county election
results as well as what township
returns are available casts grave doubts
on the view that in 1838 abo-
litionists almost single-handedly turned
the Ohio Governor's man-
sion as well as the statehouse over to
the Democrats.19
Before crediting the abolitionists'
boast to political power in 1838,
we should consider that just two years
later in the presidential race of
1840 the abolitionist Liberty party
polled only 903 votes in the state,
far short of the 5,000 ballots
historians seem to concede them in the
1838 election.20 Not until
1842 would Ohio abolitionists cast over
5,000 votes, and then for an independent
and highly-respected abo-
litionist candidate. It seems
unreasonable to expect that abolitionists
who were so hesitant to abandon their
political loyalties (in most
cases Whiggish) for abolition candidates
would do so for the doubt-
ful policy of supporting Democrats,
often considered hostile to aboli-
tion and its supporters. According to
abolitionist Henry B. Stanton,
the overwhelming majority of
abolitionists were indeed Whig parti-
sans who "would wade to their
armpits in moulten lava" to defeat
Van Buren Democrats.21
17. This
article was reprinted in the Painesville Telegraph, November 15, 1838.
See
also, November 8, 1838. The New York Journal
of Commerce (which was hostile to
abolitionism) presented a similar
analysis of the Ohio result. This was reprinted in the
same issue of the Liberator (November
2, 1838) that some historians used to document
the role of abolitionism in the Whig
defeat. For example, McMaster, 449-50.
18. The Ohio State Journal attributed
its defeat in 1839 to the failure of Whig voters
to go to the polls: October 15, 1839.
Joshua Giddings later also blamed Whig neglect at
the polls for the 1838 result. Giddings
to Allen, November 15, 1840, in Painesville Tele-
graph, December 10, 1840. Some might argue abolitionists who
stayed at home
brought the Whig decline, but no
evidence has ever been presented to support the
view that turnout among antislavery
voters was lower than that of other Whigs. Among
Western Reserve townships, at any rate,
the Vance vote in 1838 correlated very highly
with that of 1836, suggesting no pattern
of abolitionist defections or refusals to vote.
19. Ohio township returns were once
thought to have been "lost." Actually many
are readily available in newspapers,
some of which regularly printed township results,
or in manuscript form available in
various archival collections such as that at the OHS.
20. Smith thought the transfer of 5,500
votes in the governor's race seemed "a fair
measure." Other historians are
understandably vague on this point.
21. Stanton to Birney, March 21, 1839,
in Birney Letters, 541-43.
The Ohio Election of 1838 91
Recent research has stressed that party
loyalties were rooted in
quite durable cultural concerns. Rare
was the independent voter will-
ing to "turn his coat" and
vote for the opposing party.22 Abolitionists
proved nearly as tightly-bound to party
as other voters; in launching
an abolition third party one of the
chief obstacles encountered by its
supporters was the confining
"bands of political party."23 During the
1840 canvass the Philanthropist admitted
abolitionists of the Western
Reserve were hesitant to embrace the
Liberty party primarily due to
their strong Whig loyalties: "for
them to declare independence of
party, is like plucking out the right
eye."24
Abolitionists were not
evenly-distributed over the Ohio country-
side. Settlement patterns meant that
abolitionists were concentrated
in particular regions of the state such
as the Western Reserve, while
Liberty party returns suggest
independently-minded abolition voters
generally lived in specific
communities.25 Yet in 1838 the Whig de-
cline was general throughout the state,
including those counties
where virtually no abolitionists lived.26
Indeed, as Table 1 shows,
Vance tended to hold his own in
counties with a strong abolition ele-
ment. These counties held the
abolitionists who were most willing to
abandon party attachments to support
independent candidates in
1840, and thus they held those who were
most likely to vote on abo-
lition grounds in 1838. In Ashtabula,
perhaps the banner abolition
county in the state, Vance actually
improved over his 1836 total
(which correlated at +.72 with his 1838
township percentages) and
even ran slightly ahead of the abolition favorite for
Congress, Joshua
Giddings, then president of the
Jefferson Anti-Slavery Society.27
Democrats took control of the Ohio
Senate by winning just three
22. Lee Benson's The Concept of
Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case
(Princeton, New Jersey, 1961) has been
most influential on this point. For a recent
discussion, see Thomas B. Alexander,
"The Dimensions of Voter Partisan Constancy
in Presidential Elections from
1840-1860," in Essays on American Antebellum Politics,
1840-1860, Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushma, eds. (College
Station, Texas,
1982), 70-121.
23. Nathan Thomas to William M.
Sullivan, June 6, 1839. Thomas Papers, Bentley
Historical Library, University of
Michigan.
24. August 13, 1840.
25. See my "Forlorn Hope of
Freedom: The Liberty Party in the Old Northwest"
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Nebraska, 1984), 257-300.
26. Politician's Register, 1839, 18-19.
Recall that this was precisely the view of the
Gazette article and the Journal of Commerce.
27. Ashtabula Sentinel, February
3, October 20, 1838.
92
OHIO HISTORY
Table
1
Leading
Liberty Counties in 1840 and 1842 and Whig Percentage of
Vote
for Governor in 1838
County
1836 Whig % 1838 Whig % Change
Ashtabula 70 % 73.5% + 3.5%
Lorain 49 52 + 3.0
Trumbull 50 50.7 + .7
Geauga
& Lake 70.7 60 - 10.7
Medina 60 56 - 4.0
Athens 56.7 59.7 + 3.0
Cuyahoga 57.2 58.3 + 1.1
Harrison 46.2 48.1 + 1.9
Portage
& Summit 54.8 51.8 - 3.0
State
% 51.1% 48.6% - 3.1%
Sources:
The Politician's Register (New York: H. Greeley, 1840),
pp.
23-24; Politician's Register, 1841, pp. 20-21; Whig Almanac,
1844,
p. 52. Due to the scarcity of
abolition votes in 1840 the
counties
were ranked according to the Liberty vote for governor in
1842.
seats,
none of which can safely be attributed to abolitionist voting
strength.28 The Whigs
lost some five hundred votes in Montgomery
County
(Dayton), yet in 1840 the abolition third party ticket received
just
seven and in 1842, forty-five votes in Montgomery. Political aboli-
tionists
were also few in Delaware, Marion, Union and
Crawford
counties,
casting a total of thirty-one abolition votes in 1840 and two
hundred
in 1842.29 In Trumbull County David Tod, future Civil War
governor
of Ohio, edged his Whig rival for the state senate by less
than
one hundred votes. (In this strong antislavery county Vance
managed
to improve slightly on his 1836 performance and to do as
well
as Giddings.) Trumbull was always fiercely contested between
Whigs
and Democrats, and well before the campaign controversy
Giddings
admitted Tod would be a formidable candidate.30 Town-
28. Ohio
State Journal, October 16, 26, 1838; "Legislature of Ohio, Session of
1838-
1839,"
Painesville Telegraph, January 3, 1839, October 18, 1839.
29. Politician's
Register, 1841, 20-21; Whig Almanac, 1844, 52. For a list of
antislavery
societies
in Ohio in 1838, see Philanthropist, September 4, 1838.
30.
Giddings to Milton Sutliff, September 10, 1838, Sutliff Papers, Western Reserve
The Ohio Election of 1838 93
ship returns show that most voters cast
a party ticket with Tod's slim
margin of victory apparently not related
to abolitionist sources. (Whig
township percentages for governor,
Congress and the state senate
were perfectly correlated.)31
Table 2 lists the counties in which
Democrats gained seats in the
lower house of the Ohio legislature in
1838. (Whig candidates turned
out Democrats in three others.) On the
whole these were not counties
with large numbers of abolitionists.
None were located on the West-
ern Reserve where abolitionism was
strongest. (In Ashtabula County
for example, the Liberty party polled
11.5 percent of the total vote in
1842.) In Clinton and Highland the Whig
decline was serious and the
Quaker abolitionists in this area may
have responded to the fugitive
slave issue.32 In Brown,
Mahan's home county, Mahan's captor
(Governor Vance) gained slightly over
his 1836 total. The paucity of
abolition votes in these counties in
1840 suggests they could have
had only minimal impact on the
legislative races of 1838.33
A superior test for whether
abolitionists abandoned their party
loyalty and voted for Democratic
candidates is to examine township
returns in those areas where
abolitionists actually lived. Geauga
County provides an ideal opportunity to
examine this question, for in
1839 abolitionists there supported an
independent antislavery tick-
et.34 Geauga was one Reserve
county where the Whig decline in 1838
was notable (see Table 1), yet this may
not have been due to antislav-
ery voters.35 Table 3
indicates Whig losses in 1838 were not more se-
vere in those townships which provided
the most support for the an-
tislavery ticket in 1839 and the Liberty
party thereafter. Over 40
percent of Chester voters supported the
antislavery ticket in 1839,
Historical Society.
31. Western Reserve Chronicle, October
18, 1836, October 16, 1838. The Chronicle
said Tod's margin came from illegal
votes cast by canal workers.
32. Philanthropist, November 4,
1840. Township returns from these two counties
would help settle this question.
33. Belmont and Fayette were two
counties where abolitionists were said to have in-
fluenced the outcome. Whigs held on to
the seat in Fayette and the Democrats actual-
ly lost one in Belmont due to normal
rotation. Vance held his own over 1836 in Fayette
but lost his small advantage in Belmont.
Philanthropist, October 30, 1838; Ohio State
Journal, October 16, 17, 23, 1838; Politician's Register,
1840, 23.
34. See my discussion in "Forlorn
Hope of Freedom," 107-09.
35. The Vance margin also decreased in
Portage, another Reserve county where an-
tislavery was relatively strong. See the
township returns in Eric Cardinal, "The Devel-
opment of an Anti-Slavery Political
Majority: Portage County, Ohio, 1830-1856" (MA
Thesis, Kent State University, 1973),
127-41. If Cardinal's figures are correct (some
were evidently transposed), then some
antislavery voters may have voted for Demo-
cratic candidates in Charlestown
township.
94
OHIO HISTORY
Table
2
Whig
to Democratic Representative Districts in 1838
and
Liberty Vote in 1840 and 1842
1840
Liberty 1842
Liberty
County Vote
& % Vote &
%
Adams 15
( .6%) 40 (2.1%)
1. [
Brown 28
( .7) 108
(2.8)
Scioto 1(
.1) 2(
.2)
2.
Carroll 8(
.2) 54
(1.8)
Clinton 9
(.3) 67
(2.4)
[ Highland 12 (
.3) 87 (2.1)
4.
Delaware 19
( .5) 113
(2.7)
Crawford 2 (
.1) 10 (
.5)
5. [
Marion 7(
.3) 36(1.4)
Union 3
(.2) 39
(2.8)
6.
Hamilton 44
( .4) 147
(1.1)
7.
Montgomery 7
(.1) 45 (
.7)
8.
Pickaway 0 15 ( .4)
Sandusky 0 7 ( .4)
Seneca 6(
.2) 35
(1.1)
State
average =
0.3% = 2.1%
Sources:
Politician's Register, 1841, pp. 20-21; Whig Almanac,
1844,
p. 52. Returns for 1840 are from the
presidential contest and
for
1842 the governor's race.
which
suggests few of these would have gone over to the Democrats
in
1838, since the Democratic candidate received less than 20 percent
of
the total vote. Chester township did cast fewer Whig votes in 1838
but
still remained the leading Whig township in the county!36
Vance's
total in 1838 equalled that of Joshua Giddings (and they
were
nearly perfectly correlated at +.99) and was well above that of
Whig
senatorial candidate Benjamin Wade in 1839. (Wade won anti-
slavery
support in 1839 but was opposed by anti-abolitionists.) Actu-
36.
In Chester 102 of the 103 Whig voters who supported Vance for governor desert-
ed
one of the regular Whig nominees in favor of the rival antislavery candidate
for state
representative.
All 24 Democratic voters voted the party ticket for governor, Congress-
man
and representative. Painesville Telegraph. October 18, 1838.
The Ohio Election of 1838 95
Table 3
Antislavery Geauga Townships and 1838 Whig Vote for Governor
1839 Antislavery 1836 1838 Total
Township Ticket
% Whig % Whig % Change
Huntsburgh (42.7%) 62.9% 65.3% + 2.4%
Chester (41.1) 95.9 81.1 -14.8
Troy (33.3) 71.2 71.0 - .2
Russell (30.9) 50.8 46.4 - 4.4
Claridon (26.6) 70.5 70.7 + .2
Bainbridge (24.0) 74.0 64.9 - 9.1
Montville (23.9) 63.5 54.4 - 9.1
County
average = (14.9) 71.1 60.0 -11.1
Weak Antislavery Geauga Townships and Whig Vote for Governor
1839 Antislavery 1836 1838 Total
Township Ticket
% Whig % Whig % Change
Mentor (1.3%) 80.3% 71.0% - 9.2%
Burton (1.7) 90.3 71.4 -18.9
Newbury (2.5) 71.8 55.4 - 16.4
Parkman (2.8) 69.4 48.4 -21.0
Auburn (3.0) 48.4 54.5 + 6.1
Concord (5.2) 74.6 52.2 - 22.4
Thompson (8.8) 83.7 69.2 - 14.5
Sources: Painesville Telegraph, October 14, 1836, October 18,
1838, October 15, 1839. Total votes for the 1839 antislavery ticket
ranged from 219 to 602. The percentages given are those for
Thomas Richmond, a popular candidate for representative but
whose total vote (482) fell in the middle.
ally, Table 3 suggests Vance lost more support in those Geauga town-
ships where few antislavery ballots were cast in 1839.
On the Western Reserve, home to many Ohio abolitionists, anti-
96 OHIO HISTORY
slavery voters were little tempted to
turn to the Democrats in 1838.
Reserve abolitionists generally did not
approve of editor Bailey's sup-
port of Democratic candidates.37 Here
the Democratic party was a
despised minority, rightly considered
merely a federal office hold-
er's party, while many Whig candidates
were known to be friendly to
the abolition cause and had returned
favorable replies to abolitionist
questions.38 In an era of
straight-ticket voting, for abolitionists to
vote as historians have suggested would
have been rather difficult
and truly remarkable. Whig
abolitionists in Ashtabula County, for
example, would have had to scratch
Vance's name from the head of
the ticket, vote for Joshua Giddings in
the regular and in a special
election,39 replace their
Whig representatives with Democratic ones,
and then vote for local Whig candidates
if they wished. The voting
returns do not suggest many did so.
Most abolitionists on the Reserve did
not desert the Whig party,
not only because they realized Whig
candidates were more favorable
to their cause, but also because Whigs
were uncertain of the possibil-
ity of abolitionist defections and did
their utmost to prevent them.
Two of the leading Whig papers on the
Reserve, the Painesville Tele-
graph and the Ashtabula Sentinel, on which many
abolitionists de-
pended for their information, did not
even report the Mahan case un-
til after voters had gone to the polls.40
Morris' chances of reelection
were dismissed and the Whig Central
Committee of Geauga County
reported he had "sold out his
property in Ohio, and is about to re-
move to Illinois."41
Above all, Whig leaders stressed the need to
37. Philanthropist, August 13,
1839.
38. Painesville Telegraph, January
7, March 19, 1840. For Joshua Giddings' replies,
see ibid., September 27, 1838, and Ashtabula
Sentinel, September 29, 1838. For those
of others, Philanthropist, October
23, 1838; Emancipator, October 11, 1838. In the
Ohio Senate Benjamin Wade of Ashtabula
had presented abolitionists' petitions, sup-
ported repeal of the Black Laws and
opposed the annexation of Texas. Seabury Ford
of Geauga supported a House bill to make
cities and towns liable for the damage done
by mobs. Ohio State Journal, January
3, 23, February 8, 11, 26, 1838, January 23, Feb-
ruary 13, March 29, 1839; Painesville
Telegraph, January 5, February 2, 1838.
39. In a special election to select a
successor to retired Congressman Elisha Whittle-
sey, voters were required to enter their
names in a separate poll book and their ballot in
a separate box. Ashtabula Sentinel, October
6, 1838.
40. Both Whig papers defended Vance's
actions and dismissed the whole affair as
a Democratic election trick. Painesville
Telegraph, October 11, 1838; Ashtabula Senti-
nel, October 13, 1838. The election was held on October 9.
The Secretary of the
Geauga Anti-Slavery Society reported
that only one copy of the Philanthropist, was
taken by the society and this was read
"only by few." Philanthropist October 30,
1838. But see also the report of Asa
Smith, agent for the Trumbull County Anti-Slavery
Society, for the numbers of antislavery
papers taken there, ibid., December 18, 1838.
41. Painesville Telegraph Extra, October,
1838.
The Ohio Election of 1838 97
elect a Whig senator and urged
antislavery voters not to respond to
Democratic ploys.42 Giddings
impressed upon his abolition support-
ers the importance of "system and
arrangements" to bring out their
political friends on election day.43
These exertions evidently were re-
warded for most Reserve abolitionists
remained in Whig ranks in
1838.
Following the 1838 elections Ohio
Democrats did not act as if they
owed control of the state to the
abolitionists. Rather than moving to
secure an alliance, state Democrats took
immediate steps to repudiate
their supposed coalition partners. The
Democratic Statesman
showed little concern with the questions
of an "abolition nigger com-
mittee," but instead railed against
a post-election "marriage" be-
tween Whiggery and abolitionism, united
in a "foul scheme," the
state Democratic paper said, to turn
"the whole slave population of
the South loose upon us."44 With the opening of the legislature,
Democrats used their majority control in
the lower house to pass res-
olutions presented by anti-abolitionist
representative Daniel Flood.
Not only did these
Democratically-sponsored resolutions declare
Congress had no power over slavery in
the states, but they went on to
denounce the schemes of the
abolitionists as "wild, delusive and fa-
natical" which had a "direct
tendency to destroy the harmony of
the Union."45 The
Democrats also went on record against repeal of
the Black Laws and the rights of blacks
and mulattoes to petition the
legislature. The uproar over the Mahan
case ended with an ironic
twist as Ohio Democrats managed to pass
a more stringent fugitive
slave law, at the request of commissioners
from Kentucky.46
Throughout the session, Ohio Democrats
proved to be bitter ene-
mies of abolition while Reserve Whigs
demonstrated they generally
deserved the support abolitionists gave
them in the last election.47
Editor Bailey's warm endorsement of
Thomas Morris during the
42. R. W. Taylor to Levi Sutliff,
September 19, 1838, Sutliff Family Papers, Sutliff
Museum, Warren (Ohio) Public Library. Painesville
Telegraph, October 4, 1838.
43. Giddings to Milton Sutliff,
September 10, 1838, Sutliff Papers. A slightly differ-
ent copy of this letter is in the
Whittlesey collection, WRHS.
44. Ohio Statesman, November 20,
30, 1838, January 14, 1839.
45. Ibid., January 14, 16, 1838; Philanthropist,
January 22, 29, 1839; Weisenburger,
pp. 381-82.
46. Ohio Statesman, February 25,
27, 1839; Charles B. Galbreath, "Ohio's Fugitive
Slave Law [of 1839]," Ohio
Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 34 (April, 1925),
216-40. For Whig opposition see, Painesville
Telegraph, February 7, 1839.
47. Ohio State Journal, January
16, 1839.
98 OHIO HISTORY
campaign only ensured the antislavery
Democrat would lose his seat
in the United States Senate. Once the
election was over, Ohio Demo-
crats quickly repudiated Morris and
other antislavery Democrats, go-
ing on to declare them "a rotten
branch that should be lopped
off."48 To replace
Morris, Ohio Democrats selected Benjamin Tap-
pan, a Van Buren Democrat known to hold
safe views on the slavery
issue (this despite the fact he was the
brother of the New York abo-
litionist leaders, Arthur and Lewis
Tappan). Ohio abolitionists who
accepted responsibility for having
helped elect Tappan, albeit indi-
rectly, were no doubt horrified when he
refused to present to the
Senate abolitionist petitions from Ohio
citizens.49 Even the Philan-
thropist was forced to admit that Ohio's new Democratic Senator
"manifested a decided opposition to
the designs and proceedings of
the Abolitionists." Although
Bailey had celebrated the Democratic
victory in 1838, post-election reality
finally compelled the abolitionist
editor to admit that the "Van Buren
party, is distinctively, the slav-
ery party."50
Previous historical opinions about the
1838 results are not substan-
tiated by the available evidence. There
is no reason to believe that
abolitionists, or the Mahan case for
that matter, unduly influenced
the Ohio election of 1838. The original
error might have been avoid-
ed by careful application of the rules
of historical evidence, including
critical evaluation and use of sources.
Equally important in this in-
stance was the failure to consult other
relevant sources, especially
election results even on the county
level. Repetition of the error could
have been avoided by cautious use of
secondary accounts, which
typically bend their interpretation of
events to suit the author's par-
ticular purpose. In this case Smith
sought to trace the growing power
of antislavery opinion preceding the
Civil War, which led him to ex-
aggerate abolitionist influence in the
election of 1838.51
Those Whig journals that downplayed the
role of abolitionism may
have been correct in attributing their
defeat instead to a combination
48. Weisenburger, 384-85.
49. Congressional Globe, 26th Congress, 1st Session, 160; Benjamin Tappan to
Lewis
Tappan, November 21, 1839. Tappan Papers, OHS.
50. Philanthropist, February 18,
1840; January 29, 1839.
51. For criticism of this common
approach, Lawrence J. Friedman, "Historical
Topics Sometimes Run Dry: The State of Abolitionist
Studies," The Historian, 43 (Feb-
ruary, 1981), 177-94 and Joel Silbey,
"The Civil War Synthesis in American Political
History," Civil War History, 10
(June, 1964), 130-40.
The Ohio Election of 1838 99
of banking issues and Whig lethargy.
Party turnout may indeed hold
the key, as the various issues involved
in the campaign may have so
confused and dispirited Whig voters (and
not just those who were
abolitionists) that enough of them
stayed home to hand Democrats
the election. Perhaps the explanation is
a simple one: in time of eco-
nomic distress and uncertainty following
the Panic of 1837, voters
turned out the party then in command of
the state government. Such
occurrences are not unknown.
The ironic part about the 1838 Ohio
election is that many contem-
poraries convinced themselves that
abolitionism had indeed played
a critical role in the Whig defeat, and
it is in these misperceptions
that the real significance of the
election lies.52 On the Western Re-
serve, for example, antislavery Whigs
worked harder to reforge their
links with area abolitionists by
reminding them who their true
friends were.53 Other Ohio Whigs used the apparent
strength of an-
tislavery sentiment to help replace
slaveholder Henry Clay with Wil-
liam Henry Harrison on the 1840 ticket.54
Perhaps most pathetic, abolitionists
proceeded to act as if they in-
deed possessed decisive political power.
When the election after-
math in Ohio demonstrated that the
questioning tactic and the bal-
ance of power strategy were not
effective, some abolitionists strove to
create an independent abolitionist party
for 1840.55 This despite the
fact that the election outcome in Ohio
and New York actually proved
that abolitionism was too weak to wield
much political power. In New
52. One lasting consequence of the Mahan
case was that in the future governors
sought to avoid Vance's fate. In 1843
Illinois Governor Thomas Ford refused Mis-
souri's request for the extradition of
abolitionist Richard Eels in a similar fugitive slave
case. (Ford nonetheless expressed his state's
abhorrence of the "fanatical and mis-
guided sect called Abolitionists.")
Ford to Governor of Missouri, Thomas Reynolds,
April 13, 1843, in Governors'
Letterbooks, 1840-1853, Evarts Boutell Greene and
Charles Manfred Thompson, eds.
(Springfield, Illinois, 1911), 69-78. See also, Western
Citizen, February 9, 1843, May 1, 1846.
53. Benjamin Wade to Milton Sutliff,
December 8, 1838, Sutliff Papers, WRHS;
Wade to Samuel Hendry, December 16,
1838, Joel Blakeslee Papers, WRHS. Some-
times these attempts have been
misinterpreted to mean that the abolitionists had in-
deed deserted the Whigs in October.
Friedman, 236.
54. Ohio State Journal, October 31, 1838. Actually Ohio Whigs preferred
Harrison
before the results of the 1838 campaign
were known. Thomas Corwin to Allen Trimble,
January 22, 1838, Trimble Family Papers,
WRHS; Corwin to [?], February 2, 1838,
Corwin to Thomas Ewing, March 3, 1838,
Vertical File Material, OHS.
55. It is often said the abolitionist
tactic of questioning "failed" in Ohio in 1838.
This is fully correct only if one
accepts the traditional interpretation of the election re-
sults. Most abolitionists did not vote
for hostile Democratic candidates. On the Re-
serve of course the tactic worked (with
some exceptions); supportive Whig candidates
were sent to Congress and to Columbus.
100 OHIO HISTORY
York the abolitionist endorsement may
have cost Whig candidate
Bradish more votes than it gained him.56
In the words of the Jour-
nal of Commerce, abolitionists in New York failed to demonstrate
their political influence, "unless
in the defeat of the candidates to
which they gave their preference."57
Actually it was not abolitionism, but
anti-abolitionism that entered
politics with full force following the
1838 Ohio contest. In campaigns
to come Whig editors would raise the
abolition specter to spur their
supporters to the polls. Democratic
editors too grasped the opportu-
nity by inventing a foul alliance
between Whiggery and "federal abo-
lition." Both parties would exploit
popular fears of abolition, but anti-
abolitionism proved especially strong in
the ranks of the Democracy.
As Democrats faced a popular western
hero in the coming presiden-
tial campaign they would try to pin the
charge of abolitionism on
their Whig rivals and thereby seek the
support of anti-abolitionist
voters in both North and South.58
Anti-abolitionism did not have time to
develop during the 1838
Ohio campaign (events moved too
quickly), but by 1839 it had sur-
faced in local elections in at least two
Ohio counties, and by the time
of the 1840 presidential campaign it was
clear that anti-abolitionism
was more popular and thus more
politically-powerful than was sympa-
thy for the slave or concern for equal rights.59
Even more than the
wounded Whigs, abolitionists were the
losers, not the winners of the
Ohio contest in 1838.
56. Benson, Jacksonian Democracy, 112;
John R. Hendricks, "The Liberty Party in
New York State, 1838-1848" (Ph.D. dissertation,
Fordham University, 1959), 55.
57. Liberator, November 2, 1838.
58. For anti-abolitionism in the 1840
presidential contest see my "Forlorn Hope of
Freedom," 158-74, on my forthcoming
article in Civil War History.
59. In fact the 1839 struggle in Geauga
and Ashtabula counties demonstrated that
anti-abolitionist voters were more willing to desert
their party than abolitionists had
been in 1838. Even in these heavily
abolitionist counties, in 1839 Benjamin Wade went
down to defeat as a result of an alliance between
Democrats and anti-abolition Whigs.
Volpe, 104-10.