Another Chance, Kinda

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that "There are no second acts in American lives." He obviously hadn't been paying attention to American politics, because there are plenty of second acts there; even George Washington's presidency is a second act, following the first act of his generalship in the Revolutionary War (fun fact: Washington retires to Mount Vernon after the war's end pretty much convinced he's going to die soon, since all his male relatives passed away early on; he doesn't, and become president).

Martin van Buren is a great example of a second act. 1840 sees van Buren lose the presidency to William Henry Harrison, thereby becoming the first single-term president whose name isn't Adams. In 1844, he's convinced he can come back and win again, but even though he has a slight majority at the Democratic convention, he can't get the necessary two-thirds of delegates because he opposes immediate annexation of the newly-independent Texas. His support collapses, and on the eighth ballot, James K. Polk gets the nomination.

Polk wins, which would shut van Buren out of the Oval Office for eight years except for the fact that Polk pledges to serve a single term. So in 1848, the Little Magician is back with a brand new party: The Free Soil Party. The annexation of Texas aggravates the slavery question: will the US allow slavery in these new territories? The two major parties are both in favor of managing slavery--in fact, early on, the abolitionist movement is seen as a group of crazy agitators--but they keep wanting to push it out west. And while there are plenty of people in the parties who oppose slavery (John Quincy Adams, for example), both parties favor the Union over everything else. Preserving the fragile coalition of states must take precedence.

But not for the Free Soil party. It opposes the westward expansion of slavery, and draws upon the members of the Whig and Democratic parties who find themselves under-represented by their leaders. For the 1848 election, they put up van Buren, as well as JQA's son, Charles Francis Adams for their presidential ticket.

They lose, as you might imagine. You don't have to be a member of the the United States Marijuana Party to know that single-issue parties traditionally don't do so well in American politics. But the Free Soilers do have a major effect on the election of 1848: they take away enough votes in New York (MvB's state) from Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee and hand it to Zachary Taylor, the Whig nominee. New York's 36 electoral votes puts the victory into Taylor's hands.

It might not have been the second act he wanted, but Martin van Buren managed to decide a presidential election one more time.