An 1844 James K. Polk political medal, one of two purchases from the DeWitt auction

I received my two purchases from the DeWitt political sale today. I was hoping to buy more, but the prices were so strong, I simply could not compete. The 25% buyers’ fee meant nothing in this sale. The hammer bids didn’t seem to mean much either. While it was true that some pieces were high quality and were once in a lifetime opportunities for some of us. Some of the lots were not that exceptional and yet they brought beyond top dollar. Fortunately I don’t collect textile pieces (ribbons, bandanas and flags) and political cartoons. Those items brought the strongest bids of all.




Here is the piece I wanted more than any other lot in the sale, the James K. Poke medalet with the direct reference to Texas statehood on the reverse. It is listed in DeWitt as JP 1844-5 Texas was a huge issue in the 1844 presidential election. It ruined the political careers of Poke’s opponents and enhanced his chances in the general election.

Martin Van Buren was president from 1837 to 1841. He lost to William Henry Harrison in 1840 largely because of the Panic of 1837 which was the worst economic depression in the 19th century. The Whig Party also conducted a vigorous campaign to get Harrison elected and issued thousands of political tokens on his behalf.

Van Buren was the frontrunner for the 1844 Democratic Party nomination, but as soon as he opposed the admission of Texas, the Democrats walked away from the him. Henry Clay, the 1844 Whig nominee tried to straddle the issue by opposing Texas statehood and then supporting it. Those moves would hurt him in the general election. Polk supported Texas statehood from the beginning.

Why was Texas so controversial? First, admitted Texas as slave state upset the balance between free and slave states in Congress. The Compromise of 1820 had been based around the fact that the admission of Missouri as a slave state was balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state. The tug was war continued over the next 20 + years and beyond until the Civil War. Second, the admission of Texas brought the strong possibility of war with Mexico. The Texans had won their independence from Mexico, and Mexico wanted it back.

The election hinged on the State of New York, as it often did in the 19th century. New York had more electoral votes than any other state. Clay, because his straddle position on Texas, lost votes to a third party abolitionist candidate, which threw the state to Polk.

Therefore you can see how historically important the Texas issue was which explains why I wanted this token. Previously the only piece I had that mentioned Texas was this shell token which as a “T” with a star in the middle of it one the reverse.




If there is any interest, I'll take about my previous encounters with this token over the last 10 years and other aspects of presidential politics during this era.

 

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Fun read. I wonder how long the voting process took back in those days. Trying to gather all the votes had to be crazy.

 

I found this...seems like a plausible answer...maybe @johnmilton can clarify for us as well.

https://www.quora.com/How-long-did-...of-a-presidential-election-in-the-early-1800s

Dave Cunningham:
"Each state did its own counting - so there was no delay at that end. The Electors meet in each state capital in December, so no delays there.

The state then sends their electoral college count to Congress by early January. Lots of time - no delay. Newspapers knew broadly which states voted for which candidates within a week of the November election, even back in the early 1800s, and by 1848, the East Coast pretty much had telegraph communication, and by late 1861, this extended across the continent.

Congress counts the votes in January, and the results would be known essentially immediately. It took several days to notify places far from Washington DC, but the answer was simple:

Inauguration Day was on March 4! This allowed a delegation from Congress to notify the new President-Elect in person. (the January 20th date was first used in 1937)

In a couple of elections (notably 1800) the Congress did have to resolve an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and Burr in 1801, and in the Hayes-Tilden Election of 1876, Congress established an “Electoral Commission” as the Electoral College results were contested.

And we did it all in a timely fashion without the Internet."

 

This was a fun read! I'd certainly enjoy hearing about your prior encounters with this token.

 

Somewhere in my stash I have some stampless folded letters sent to President Polk.

 

@ddddd, there was also another presidential election that was thrown into the House of Representatives after the 1824 election. There Henry Clay helped John Quincy Adams become President after he finished second in the general election. Adams made Clay his secretary of state which was a stepping stone to the presidency in those days. For Andrew Jackson supporters, that became known as "the corrupt bargain."

I can say that Abraham Lincoln knew that he had won in 1860 by the early morning after Election Day. The telegraph was as fast as the modern devices, but you needed an education to use it.