Studies in American History 
423 
to have Michigan admitted in time to count her electoral votes, 
so Michigan, altho not yet a state, participated in the election 
of 1836. The Democratic party was in full control in Michi- 
gan and had been organized, under New York methods, for 
several years.^^ The Whigs tried to show that the Van 
Burenites were taking Michigan Territory and giving it to 
Ohio so as to get the Ohio electoral vote. In the state election 
in October, 1835, the entire Democratic ticket was elected 
without opposition, and the constitution overwhelmingly 
adopted. Only 3 members of the state legislature were not 
Democrats.^^ The Democratic party, which remained in con- 
trol in Michigan until 1840, constituted the majority of the 
poor and radical element. It advocated equal rights, equal 
privileges, and was hostile to monopolies, vested interest, and 
moneyed men in politics. It pretended to see the Whigs only 
as “the legitimate progeny of federalism”. As in the other 
states of the Northwest, the Whigs, generally speaking, repre- 
sented the more well-to-do, conservative, and commercial 
classes, and many of the settlers from New York and New 
England, who had the advantages of education and some 
wealth, belonged to that party. It was strongest in east 
central Michigan, and especially in Detroit. 
In Ohio the attacks upon the records of the Democrats had 
not been in vain, and Governor Joseph Vance received a 
majority of over 6,000 in the October election, but the 
Democrats by aid of their apportionment bill succeeded in 
winning a majority of the legislature. 
It is probable that the determination to make Harrison the 
official candidate of the Whig party in Illinois cost enough 
votes from among the White following to lose the state. Had 
Illinois Whigs supported White and secured all the Anti- Van 
Buren votes, Illinois might have joined Ohio and Indiana in 
the decision against Van Buren in 1836. The presidential 
election came in Ohio on November 4 and in Indiana and 
Illinois on November 7. The vote in Ohio was 104,958 for 
and a scoundrel”. When the Democrats revived the old story that Harrison had voted 
to sell the poor debtors, the reply was that the hell-hounds of a rotten and sinking 
party had dug up a stale slander from the grave of bygone years. From Ohio People^s 
Press, in Scioto Gazette, October 6, 1836. 
Homer Webster, History of Democratic Party Organization in the Northivest, 182^- 
1840, p. 81, in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications, XXIV, 1-120. 
4“* The Whig ticket was placed in the field by a convention held in Oakland County. 
The vote for governor was: Mason, 7,508; Biddle, 814. Biddle received 536 of his 
votes from Oakland County. Michigan, Senate Journal, 1835-1836, Document 2. 
