The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor Johnson as an Issue in the National Election Campaign of 1835-1836

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2012-10-09 20:52Z by Steven

The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor Johnson as an Issue in the National Election Campaign of 1835-1836

Civil War History
Volume 39, Number 1, March 1993
pages 5-30
DOI: 10.1353/cwh.1993.0043

Thomas Brown

White American men of the antebellum era abhorred few, if any, things more than the danger of an “amalgamation” of their race with African Americans through interracial sexual relations. But their concerns about miscegenation between whites and blacks were usually not a major factor in national politics. However, in the election of 1836, the Democratic candidate for vice president was Representative Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, who was revealed to be a “practical amalgamator.” The opposition to the Democrats—an assortment of Antimasons, Whigs, and disaffected Democrats supporting three presidential candidates in different parts of the country—exploited Johnson’s candidacy to make the menace of amalgamation into a national political issue. Its attacks compelled the Democrats, in turn, to deal with the issue of Johnson’s private life in a manner designed to minimize the damage to their party, and perhaps even make an asset of a liability. The positions taken in the controversy over Johnson’s miscegenation are of great value and interest, for the spokesmen of the opposing sides had to grapple with…

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