1852 Whig National Convention

The Congressional Whig caucus, led by North Carolina Senator Willie P. Mangum, a supporter of Scott, met on April 9, 1852, to decide the date and location for the 1852 convention. The party chose to hold the convention in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (now the Maryland Institute College of Art), an assembly hall/auditorium with classrooms on second floor built above arched brick piers for Centre Market (also known as "Marsh Market" from the colonial era Harrison's Marsh area) below on ground level), built 1851, on East Baltimore Street at Market Place/South Frederick Street on the west bank of the Jones Falls (stream – flows into the Patapsco River and Baltimore harbor) during the second week of June. Also later site of "Sanitary Fair" held to support Union Army and Navy soldiers and sailors' domestic and health needs sponsored by U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War and site of famous Abraham Lincoln visit and "Liberty Speech" (or "Baltimore Address") on April 18, 1864. The site often used for numerous assemblies, mass meetings and conventions during the later half of the 19th century, burned during the Great Baltimore Fire of February 1904.[1]

In late 1851 and early 1852, state conventions began to meet to select delegates to the national convention. The party was split between those who felt that Fillmore could not win the election and those who favored the president's nomination. Northern Whigs favored Scott while Southern Whigs tended to prefer Fillmore.

The party was also torn on the issue of slavery. Most in the party wanted to prevent slavery from becoming the dominating issue in the election. However, the Whigs were split on the issue of the Compromise of 1850, proposed and designed by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. President Zachary Taylor, a Southern Whig, had tried to avoid the issue altogether by proposing that California and New Mexico be admitted as free states immediately. After Taylor's death in July 1850, Fillmore, a moderate Whig, had supported Clay's compromise and was instrumental as president in its passage. Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward of New York, (former Governor and Senator), adamantly opposed the compromise because it did not apply the Wilmot Proviso (which banned slavery in any federal territory acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American War) to the western territories.

Northern Whigs launched an effort to associate Scott with the Free Soil wing of the party. Scott did not agree with the Free Soilers, who opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Just days before the convention was scheduled to begin, Southern Whigs warned that they would not support Scott unless he pledged to disavow the Free Soilers and to exclude them from his administration if he was elected.

Encouraged by Fillmore's professed lack of desire to pursue the Whig nomination, Webster launched another campaign for the presidency in 1851.[2] Fillmore was sympathetic to the ambitions of his secretary of state, but he was unwilling to completely rule out accepting the party's 1852 nomination, as he feared doing so would allow Seward to gain control of the party through Scott.[3] Scott had supported the Compromise of 1850, but his association with Seward made him unacceptable to Southern Whigs.[3] As Southerners retained a lingering distrust of Webster, they threw their backing behind Fillmore.[4] Thus, Scott emerged as the preferred candidate of most Northern Whigs, Fillmore became the main candidate of Southern Whigs, and Webster was only able to win backing from a handful of delegates, most of whom were from New England.[5]

On the eve of the convention, The New York Times estimated that Fillmore would have the support of 133 delegates, Scott 120 and Webster 40.

Two weeks before the Whig convention was set to begin, the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce, a northerner from New Hampshire. Supporters of Daniel Webster in the North decided that Scott, not Fillmore, could defeat Pierce in the general election, and several switched their support.

The convention met from June 17 to June 20.

• U.S. presidential nomination convention
• 1852 United States presidential election
• 1852 Democratic National Convention

• Holt, Michael (1999). The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-977203-2.
• Remini, Robert V. (1997). Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04552-8.
• Smith, Elbert B. (1988). The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0362-6.