The 5 Craziest Presidential Conventions in American History

Jacob Heilbrunn

Politics, United States

Riots, deadlocks and barbed wire.

Even as Donald Trump expresses the pious wish “I hope it doesn’t involve violence,” this summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland is widely anticipated to be a tumultuous one. The Democratic convention in Philadelphia could also become rather fractious if Bernie Sanders’s followers decide to turn on Hillary Clinton. But this would hardly be the first time in American history that a political convention took an unusual turn. Here’s a look at the five most heated conventions from the past.

The first national convention of elected delegates took place in Baltimore in December 1831. While it wasn’t violent, the convention did take some peculiar turns. It was composed of Antimasons representing thirteen states. After a number of candidates declined the nomination, the Antimasons chose William Wirt, a former Attorney General under James Monroe, as president and Amos Ellmaker for vice president. According to the late historian Eugene H. Roseboom in his valuable A History of Presidential Elections, “Wirt’s statement accepting the nomination virtually repudiated the party’s principles.” Nor was this all. The Antimasons may have established America’s most beloved political event but they never conducted another one. Instead, Andrew Jackson swept to victory, promising to eliminate “ragg, tagg banks.”

Then there is the convention of 1839. It gathered at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Henry Clay wanted the nomination, but his followers were outfoxed by General William Henry Harrison, who had fought at the battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812. Clay declared, “It is a diabolical intrigue, I know now, which has betrayed me. I am the most unfortunate man in the history of parties: always run by my friends when sure to be defeated, and now betrayed for a nomination when I, or any one, would be sure of an election.” According to Roseboom, “he had been shabbily treated, but should not have been surprised. The northern politicians, and behind them, the conservative business interests, wanted victory…. Clay was not their man.”

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