Clay and Van Buren prepared for their impending battle in the usual way, consulting with trusted colleagues, keeping in touch with key leaders of their party in the states, and planning the direction that their campaign would take. All seemed as it should be. But everyone’s expectation as to the nature of the campaign turned out to be only partly accurate. A range of divisive matters over domestic policy—and then, most critically, about Texas—got in the way with a force that threw off all of their confident expectations.

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What upset their calculations and provoked a [Democratic] party revolution was that all of the hesitations about Van Buren and the resistance to his renomination in 1844 could be effectively woven together and dramatically focused by what Silas Wright referred to as “this Texas mania.” The contentious issue proved strong enough, in conjunction with the other elements already in play, to tip the balance against the ex-president and lead to his replacement by a more electorally and ideologically attractive candidate.

Candidates for national office often received letters from party members seeking a statement about some policy matter or other. The responses to such letters were used as the basis for newspaper editorials in the party press to enlighten, stimulate, and reassure the faithful and were quoted by local speakers in electoral rallies on behalf of the candidate. Van Buren had received a number of interrogatories seeking his views on Texas annexation, which, the writers claimed, were not widely known. . . .

. . .

At the outset of the campaign both parties worked hard to remind voters of where they stood on the annexation issue in those areas of the nation where they believed that it had particular prominence and importance. On most policy matters, as noted, they presented their views always within the prevailing partisan framework. Expansion, too, was approached in this way. Democrats emphasized that all their arguments about bringing Texas into the Union reflected their normal political directions, discourse, and visions. Whatever the sectional elements that appeared in the campaign concerning the annexation of slaveholding territory, they tried very hard to domesticate them and proceed to mobilize the Democratic electorate as they always had.

The Whigs also worked hard to approach matters in normal partisan terms. Most of them continued to echo their long-standing position that the addition of Texas was unnecessary to America’s needs and a potentially dangerous error. But whatever the partisan quality to the general debate over expansion, North-South differences came into play among Whigs as well in reaction to the sectional heat raised by Calhoun’s linking of annexation with the security of slavery. Northern Whigs were particularly harsh about “the reckless folly” of acquiring Texas. Many of them expressed strong anti-slavery sentiments when they discussed the issue. They focused a great deal of attention on the sectional machinations of Tyler and Calhoun and, now, the rash pro-slavery expansionism of Polk and the post-Van Buren Democrats.

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In the absence of public opinion polls, it is not immediately apparent what impact the Texas issue had on popular voting in 1844. Some historians suggest that pro-Texas sentiment increased the Democratic vote in the South and that Clay’s Alabama letters may have cost him support among northern Whigs who went to the Liberty Party instead. Certainly, those party leaders who wished to believe in the power of the Texas issue, taking the pulse of the voters in election rallies, convinced themselves that annexation was popular among enough people to have made a difference. But the election turned out to be about many things: the elements comprising the ongoing battle between Whigs and Democrats with their competing visions of appropriate policies, as well as the impact on some voters on the Texas issue as framed by Calhoun. When all of it is tallied, most of the popular voting largely followed the electorate’s already established commitments to one party or the other, while the positions taken about Texas and Oregon probably did not change as many minds on election days as the head of the campaign rhetoric, and the hopes and worries of party leaders, suggested would happen.