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1848 United States elections — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-08T16:03:51.869Z
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1848 United States elections — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_72efeb5befda (Metraipolis archive dc_72efeb5befda, sha256 2cc3a12c88705f6e95d90db9694687823f60e2e3ac3bc13cbb17415ed567b2e9)

BibTeX

@misc{dc72efeb5befda,
  title = {1848 United States elections — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_72efeb5befda; sha256 2cc3a12c88705f6e95d90db9694687823f60e2e3ac3bc13cbb17415ed567b2e9},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Elections were held for the 31st United States Congress and the presidency of the United States. The election took place during the Second Party System, nine months after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican–American War. With the issue of slavery (and its extension into western territories) dividing the nation, the Free Soil Party established itself as the third most powerful party in Congress. California joined the union before the next election, and elected its first congressional delegation to the 31st Congress. The Whigs won the presidency, but the Democrats won a plurality in the House and retained control of the Senate. In the presidential election, the Whig General Zachary Taylor defeated the Democratic former senator Lewis Cass of Michigan and the Free Soil candidate, former President Martin Van Buren. Taylor won most of the Northeastern United States and several states in the Southern United States, giving him a fairly comfortable majority in both the electoral and popular vote. One-term incumbent Democratic President James K. Polk chose to retire rather than seek re-election (becoming the first elected president to do so), and Cass defeated Supreme Court Justice Levi Woodbury and Secretary of State James Buchanan on the fourth ballot at the 1848 Democratic National Convention. Van Buren, the former Democratic president, ran against Cass for political reasons (Cass was a prominent supporter of slavery) and possibly for personal reasons (Cass helped defeat Van Buren's 1844 bid for the Democratic nomination). Taylor was recruited by the Whigs to replicate the success of the Whig's only previous successful candidate, General William Henry Harrison, and he easily triumphed over other Whig candidates. Taylor's win made him the last president to win election as neither a Democrat nor a Republican. In the House, Democrats picked up a small number of seats, taking the plurality. The Whigs lost a small number of seats but remained the second largest party, while the Free Soil Party picked up a handful of seats. The House elected Democrat Howell Cobb as Speaker after sixty-three ballots. In the Senate, the Whigs won minor gains, cutting into the Democratic majority. This is the only time after the formation of political parties that the presidency and at least one house of Congress flipped control to different parties in the same election, as well as the only time that a party flipped a chamber of Congress despite losing the presidency.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (deposito sistematico; retro-catalogo: tutte le voci di Wikipedia in inglese, in ordine alfabetico).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «1848 United States elections» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections
Wikidata Q18356872 (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18356872
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1848_United_States_elections?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1368025481, consultata il 2026-10-08T15:27:43.300Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: fa58062c891d9b39e8f3d0adaef749069b1b8d96c557ab5dbf1aeae0d239dadf