1846 - Vote Tally from a Landmark Antislavery Congressional Election

Description

1846 - Vote Tally from a Landmark Anti-Slavery Congressional Election
1846 - Vote Tally from a Landmark Anti-Enslavement* Congressional Election
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Description
1846 - Vote Tally from a Landmark Anti-[enslavement]* Congressional Election​​
A “true copy” of votes cast at a New Hampshire town meeting for a Congressional representative in a bitterly fought election that broke “dams and dykes” allowing a “tide of anti-[enslavement]* feelings . . . [to] wash . . . down from . . . northern mountains upon the [enslavement]*-cursed south.”
Attested to by John Brown, Town Clerk
Bridgewater, New Hampshire: 1846. Unbound. This partially printed document summarizes the vote taken “at a legal town meeting . . . at Bridgewater in the county of Grafton on Tuesday, march tenth, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-six . . . for one person to represent this State in the Congress of the United States.” Addressed to the Secretary of the State of New Hampshire and struck with a circular Haverhill, N.H. postmark. In nice shape.
Bridgeport’s tally for this election was 78 votes for Democrat John Woodbury; 50 votes for the Independent Democrat John Hale, and 22 votes for Whig Ichabod Goodwin. Very good. Item #009430
The New Hampshire election for the 29th U.S. Congress was bitter and hotly contested. John P. Hale, a Democrat representing the state in the 28th Congress supported the Democrat James K. Polk in the 1844 presidential election. Subsequently he was re-nominated for his Congressional seat without opposition.
However, before the election was held, Hale publicly opposed Polk’s proposed annexation of Texas based upon his anti-enslavement* convictions, after which he was branded a traitor to the Democratic Party and his name was stricken from the ticket by party chairman, Franklin Pierce, who substituted John Woodbury instead.
Hale then ran for re-election as an independent against Woodbury and the Whig candidate, Ichabod Goodwin, in the first vote for the 29th Congress held in March of 1845. None of them captured enough votes to win.
Hale, however, subsequently embraced his new anti-enslavement* mantle and set out to convert all of New Hampshire to the abolitionist cause. He traveled relentlessly throughout the state in what was dubbed the “Hale Storm of 1845”.
The state voted again in September and November of 1845 and once more in March 1846 with the same result, the Congressional seat went unfilled for the rest of the term.
However, Hale’s campaign was otherwise incredibly successful. anti-enslavement* Whigs and Independent Democrats won control of the state legislature and governorship. Instead of heading to Congress, Hale was eventually elected to the state legislature where he served as Speaker until he was elected to be one of New Hampshire’s U.S. Senators the following year.
Of his election to the Senate, John Greenleaf Whittier proclaimed
“He has succeeded, and his success has broken the spell which has hitherto held reluctant Democracy in the embraces of [enslavement]*. The tide of anti-[enslavement]* feeling, long held back by the dams and dykes of party, has at last broken over all barriers, and is washing down from your northern mountains upon the [enslavement]*-cursed south, as if Niagara stretched its foam and thunder along the whole length of Mason and Dixon's line. Let the first wave of that northern flood, as it dashes against the walls of the capitol, bear thither for the first time an anti-[enslavement]* senator.” (For more information see “Hale, John Porter” in Appleton’s' Cyclopædia of American Biography.
A “true copy” of a significant document attesting to an especially important watershed election that began the politicization of the abolitionist cause, which eventually led to the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 14th Amendment.
*Sorry for the repetitive use of the phrase "enslavement" but eBay finds the actual term to be offensive.
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