John Bell (February 18, 1796 – September 10, 1869) was an American politician, attorney, and planter who was a candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1860.
One of Tennessee's most prominent antebellum politicians,[1] Bell served in the House of Representatives from 1827 to 1841, and in the Senate from 1847 to 1859. He was Speaker of the House for the 23rd Congress (1834–1835), and briefly served as Secretary of War during the administration of William Henry Harrison (1841). In 1860, he ran for president as the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, a third party which took a neutral stance on the issue of slavery.[1] He won the electoral votes of three states by a slim margin.
Initially an ally of Andrew Jackson, Bell turned against Jackson in the mid-1830s and aligned himself with the National Republican Party and then the Whig Party, a shift that earned him the nickname "The Great Apostate".[2][3] He consistently battled Jackson's allies, namely James K. Polk, over issues such as the national bank and the election spoils system. Following the death of Hugh Lawson White in 1840, Bell became the acknowledged leader of Tennessee's Whigs.[1]
Although a slaveholder,[4] Bell was one of the few Southern politicians to oppose the expansion of slavery to the territories in the 1850s, and he campaigned vigorously against secession in the years leading up to the American Civil War.[1] During his 1860 presidential campaign, he argued that secession was unnecessary since the Constitution protected slavery, an argument that resonated with voters in border states, helping him capture the electoral votes of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. After the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861, marking the beginning of the Civil War, Bell abandoned the Union cause and supported the Confederacy.[1]
John Bell was born in Mill Creek, a hamlet near Nashville in the Southwest Territory. He was one of nine children of the local farmer and blacksmith Samuel Bell and Margaret (Edmiston) Bell. His paternal grandfather, Robert Bell, had served in the American Revolution under Nathanael Greene, and his maternal grandfather, John Edmiston, had fought at Kings Mountain.[5]: 1–5 He graduated from Cumberland College (later renamed the University of Nashville) in 1814 and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1816 and established a prosperous practice in Franklin.[1]
Entering politics, he successfully ran for the Tennessee Senate in 1817. As a state senator, he supported judicial and state constitutional reform, and voted for moving the state capital to Murfreesboro (his wife, Sally Dickinson, was a granddaughter of the town's namesake, Hardy Murfree).[5]: 12 After serving a single term, Bell declined to run for reelection and instead moved to Nashville, where he established a law partnership with Henry Crabb.[5]: 11
In 1826, Bell ran for Tennessee's 7th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which had been vacated when the incumbent, Sam Houston, was elected governor. Bell and his opponent, Felix Grundy, engaged in a bitter campaign in which both claimed to support the initiatives of Andrew Jackson.[1] Although Jackson eventually endorsed Grundy, Bell was more popular with younger voters, and he won the election by just over a thousand votes.[5]: 21
Like many Southern congressmen, Bell opposed the Tariff of 1828. He also opposed federal funding for improvements to the Cumberland Road, arguing that the federal government lacked the constitutional authority to fund such a project. One of Bell's biggest initiatives was the Tennessee land bill, in which he and fellow Tennessee congressmen James K. Polk and Davy Crockett proposed the federal government give some of its lands in Tennessee to the state in order to establish public schools. Congressmen from eastern states rejected this, however, stating that Tennessee's mismanagement of its land resources was not the federal government's fault, and the bill was shelved.[5]: 25–32
During Bell's second term (1829–1831), he was chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs. As such, he wrote the Indian Removal Act, which was submitted by the committee in February 1830, and signed by President Jackson later that year.[5]: 39 This act led to the removal of the Cherokee and other tribes to Oklahoma, via the Trail of Tears, in the latter half of the decade. One of the bill's most vocal opponents was Massachusetts congressman Edward Everett, Bell's future running mate in the 1860 presidential election.[5]: 40
Following the shake-up of Jackson's cabinet in the wake of the Petticoat affair in 1831, Senator Hugh Lawson White recommended Bell for Secretary of War, but the appointment went to Lewis Cass instead. Bell nevertheless remained a staunch Jackson ally through his third term, opposing nullification and supporting the Force Bill.[5]: 59–65
The rift between Bell and Jackson began to show during Bell's fourth term (1833–1835). Jackson opposed the idea of a national bank and withdrew the government's deposits from the Bank of the United States in 1833. Bell was initially silent on the issue, while Polk defended the administration's actions on the House floor in April 1834. In June 1834, following the resignation of Speaker of the House Andrew Stevenson, Polk sought the Speakership. Anti-Jacksonites threw their support behind Bell, however, and Bell was elected Speaker by a 114 to 78 vote.[5]: 71 Following his election, Bell stated he was not necessarily opposed to rechartering the bank, something that Jackson vigorously opposed, and Polk's allies assailed Bell in the press as a friend of the bank.[5]: 96
The final break with Jackson came in 1835 when Bell supported the presidential campaign of Hugh Lawson White, one of three members of the new Whig Party running against Jackson's chosen successor, Martin Van Buren. Jackson dismissed Bell, White, and long-time foe Davy Crockett as "hypocritical apostates."[5]: 111 When the House of Representatives convened in 1835, Polk mounted a strong campaign for the Speakership, and defeated Bell 132 to 84.[5]: 118 Jackson's friends were so elated at Bell's defeat that they held a gala at Vauxhall Gardens in Nashville, celebrating with champagne and the firing of cannons.[5]: 118
Bell spent much of his remaining House career sponsoring mostly unsuccessful legislation aimed at ending the spoils system. In 1837, he was again defeated by Polk for the Speakership, this time by a 116 to 103 vote.[5]: 140 In May of the following year, the House debated a bill to address Indian hostilities, with Bell arguing in favor of negotiation, and Jackson ally Hopkins L. Turney arguing for an authorization of military force. As Bell brushed off Turney as a "tool" of Jackson, Turney attacked Bell, and a fistfight erupted between the two.[5]: 150
In 1839, Jackson tried to convince former Tennessee governor William Carroll to run against Bell, but Carroll refused, saying no one could defeat Bell in his home district.[5]: 158 The Jacksonites finally convinced Robert Burton to run, but he was easily defeated by Bell in the general election. In March 1839, Bell's allies in the House engineered one last attack against Polk (who was retiring to run for governor) by removing the word "impartial" from his customary thanks for service.[5]: 157
While Bell had won reelection in 1839, Tennessee's Whigs struggled at the state level, with incumbent Governor Newton Cannon losing to Polk, and the Democrats gaining control of the state legislature. Determined to revive the state's Whigs, Bell spent several weeks in 1840 canvassing the state for Whig politicians. Although he initially supported party leader Henry Clay for the Whig presidential nomination, he nevertheless campaigned for the eventual nominee, William Henry Harrison, helping him capture Tennessee's electoral votes on his way to winning the election. His efforts also helped Whig gubernatorial nominee James C. Jones defeat Polk.[5]: 168–174
When the newly elected President Harrison organized his cabinet in 1841, he offered the position of Secretary of War to Bell, following the advice of Daniel Webster. After Bell accepted, he was blasted as a hypocrite by Democrats, who pointed out that he had railed against the spoils system throughout the 1830s. After Harrison's death, his successor, John Tyler, agreed to keep all cabinet appointments, though many members of the cabinet were skeptical that Tyler, as a former Democrat who was effectively retired when he showed interest in the Whigs, would support Whig initiatives. In May 1841, Secretary Bell issued his report on the nation's defenses, suggesting they were outdated. He also recommended replacing civilian superintendents of national armories with military professionals, fearing that civilian superintendents lacked adequate knowledge of munitions storage.[5]: 189
As the cabinet members had feared, Tyler proved hostile to core Whig initiatives, vetoing a string of bills introduced by Clay and his allies in Congress and rejecting to hold cabinet votes on his decisions. Finally, on September 11, 1841, two days after Tyler vetoed the Fiscal Corporation bill, Bell and several other cabinet members followed Clay's order and resigned in protest.[5]: 187
Bell returned to Tennessee to focus on personal business affairs. He continued campaigning for Whig political candidates, however, helping Jones again defeat Polk in the 1843 gubernatorial election, and helping Whig nominee Clay narrowly capture the state's electoral votes over Polk in the 1844 presidential election, although Polk won the presidency.
In 1847, Bell returned to politics and was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives. He was offered the House speakership, but he declined. Shortly afterward, the legislature, now controlled by Whigs, took up the task of filling one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats. The seat was held by a Whig, Spencer Jarnagin, who had angered the party by voting for the Walker tariff and thus had no chance of reelection. Bell, with the support of William "Parson" Brownlow's Jonesborough Whig and the Memphis Daily Eagle, was among those nominated to fill the seat. After several weeks and 48 rounds of voting, Bell finally received the necessary majority on November 22, 1847, beating, among others, John Netherland, Robertson Topp, William B. Reese, and Christoper H. Williams.[5]: 214
Shortly after his arrival in the Senate, Bell immediately began speaking out against the Mexican–American War, arguing it was a tyrannical endeavor of his old rival, James K. Polk, who was now president. He suggested that even if the war was defensive, the U.S. had no right to take over a portion of Mexico's territory. He was concerned, among other things, that the addition of new territory would bring the divisive issue of slavery back to the forefront of American politics, especially in light of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in the new territories.[5]: 253 He nevertheless voted to ratify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in March 1848.[5]: 225
As Bell had feared, sectional strife erupted in 1849 when California applied for statehood as a free state. Bell supported the state's admission, and clashed over the issue on the Senate floor with fellow Southern senators John C. Calhoun and John M. Berrien. Bell offered a compromise that would have allowed California to be admitted, and would have split New Mexico and a portion of western Texas into three new states, one free, and two slave states. In May, this compromise was shelved in favor of the package of bills proposed by Henry Clay, subsequently known as the Compromise of 1850. Bell mostly supported Clay's compromise, voting for the admission of California and the agreement on the territorial boundaries for New Mexico, but voted against the bill abolishing the slave trade in Washington, D.C.[5]: 261
During the latter half of his first term, Bell debated various bills regarding internal improvements, namely a bill subsidizing the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad (which he supported, though he thought proceeds from land sales should be evenly split among the states), and a bill subsidizing construction of the St. Mary's Falls Canal, which he opposed.[5]: 270 Bell was a steadfast supporter of Millard Fillmore, who had become president following the death of Zachary Taylor in 1850. Fillmore offered Bell the position of Secretary of the Navy in July 1852, but he turned it down.[5]: 273