William A. Graham, Whig Patrician

William Graham (“Bill”) Otis is cruising the Danube. He will return to his blogging chores next week. For a change of pace, I’ve written this post about his great-great-grandfather, William A. Graham.

Graham was governor of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy, vice presidential candidate in 1852, member of the U.S. Senate and, much later, the Confederate Senate. Graham was a Whig. In fact, he helped form the Whig party in North Carolina.

As I learned years ago when I read some of his papers, Graham was a genuine Whig, not a nominal one like certain other Southern Whigs such as John Tyler. Indeed, Graham consistently sided with Henry Clay when he clashed with Tyler during the latter’s “accidental presidency.”

Graham favored Clay’s "American System,” including a national bank and federally funded internal improvements. In this, I think it’s fair to say, Graham was on “the right side of history.”

Graham served as Secretary of the Navy during the presidency of the next “accidental president,” Millard Fillmore. Graham authorized Commodore Perry to sail to Japan. Samuel Eliot Morrison, the great naval historian, called Graham one of the best 19th century Navy Secretaries.

In 1852, the Whigs nominated Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the Mexican War, to run for president. Scott wrested the nomination from Fillmore, the incumbent president. Graham supported Fillmore.

The main substantive issue at the convention was the Missouri Compromise of 1850 and the issue of “free soil.” Many Northern Whigs were free-soilers and opposed the Compromise. Most Southern Whigs, including Graham, backed it — as did Fillmore.

To secure the nomination, Scott’s managers assured delegates that Scott supported the Compromise. (Scott himself followed the custom of the day and wasn’t at the convention.) It was the announcement of Scott’s support for the Compromise, plus an affirmation of this position in the party platform, that helped him secure the nomination.

Even with Scott’s apparent support for the Compromise, there was still considerable mistrust about his position on slavery. Southern Whigs felt betrayed by Scott’s fellow Mexican War general, Zachary Taylor, a slaveholder who had not been ardent in defending slavery. They feared a repeat performance by Scott who, after all, had been backed at the convention by anti-slavery Whigs.

Thus, when it came time for the convention to select a running mate for Scott (that’s how it worked back then), there was broad consensus that the pick should be (1) a southerner or at least someone from a slave state and (2) someone from the defeated Fillmore faction.

Graham fulfilled both conditions. On the first ballot, he finished in second place, behind Edward Bates of Missouri (later Attorney General in the Lincoln administration). On the second ballot, southerners rallied around Graham and he was nominated.

Michael Holt in his 1,000 page history of the Whig party, says that “Graham’s nomination was perfectly logical. . .Graham had never supported Scott, was a member of Fillmore’s inner family [and] he was from a state with 10 electoral votes” that needed “shoring up.” The selection of Graham was, in Holt’s words “a desperate attempt to preserve the party as a bi-sectional operation.”

It didn’t work. The ticket was viewed as neither fish nor fowl. As one critic put it, the party was running on an “an anti-free soil platform with the candidate of Free-Soilers nominally on it.”

Key Southern Whigs, notably Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs, refused to support the ticket. For them, this was the right call. Pierce proved to be a friend to slavery and the South.

The other problem was Scott. With both parties seeming to agree about slavery, the campaign was, in Holt’s telling, more about personalities than policy. Pierce was attractive. Scott came across as stiff and formal. In contrast to Gen. Taylor (“Old Rough and Ready”), Gen. Scott was (“Old Fuss and Feathers”).

In the end, the Scott-Graham ticket carried only four states — Tennessee, Kentucky, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Graham returned to North Carolina where he owned three plantations.

In the election of 1856, the Republican party emerged and the Whigs fielded no candidate. Graham supported his friend Fillmore who ran as the candidate of the new American Party (the “Know Nothings”). Like his fellow “Patrician Whigs,” Graham wanted nothing to do with that unsavory party. He continued to identify as a Whig.

Graham opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and Stephen Douglas’ version of “popular sovereignty .” In his view, that doctrine would heighten strife over slavery and thus tend to undermine, not preserve, the Union.

Here, again, I would say that Graham was on the right side of history.

However, he was on the wrong side of history when it came to Secession. To be fair, Graham was a very reluctant secessionist. In 1860, he was a Constitutional Unionist — the party of John Bell, his fellow former Whig, who carried Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Graham initially opposed Secession. But he eventually supported North Carolina’s withdrawal (or purported withdrawal, as Lincoln would have it) from the Union.

During the Civil War, Graham served for a time in the Confederate Senate. He was a critic of Jefferson Davis and strongly opposed Davis’ suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. He also opposed the last ditch effort to save the Confederacy by enlisting blacks in exchange for their freedom. A realist about the South’s prospects, he eventually proposed a separate peace for his state.

After the war, North Carolina, whose blacks still couldn’t vote, once again sent Graham to the U.S. Senate. He was not seated. The “disability” placed on him by the government was not lifted until much later.

Graham devoted much of his attention to education and to his alma mater (also Bill’s), the University of North Carolina. He was a staunch opponent of Reconstruction.

All in all, it’s no exaggeration to say, as one historian has, that William A. Graham was “arguably the preeminent North Carolinian of his age.”