page_title: Henry Adams Thompson
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Adams Thompson / Political career
context_page_description: Henry Adams Thompson was an American prohibitionist and professor who was the vice-presidential nominee of the Prohibition Party in 1880.
  Thompson was a native of Pennsylvania, but spent much of his career in Ohio. He became a member of the United Brethren church and taught mathematics at several United Brethren colleges in the Midwest. Thompson served as president of Otterbein University from 1872 to 1886. Much of his time as college president was devoted to improving the financial standing of the school during the economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873.
  Initially a Republican, he became an early member of the Prohibition Party. His attempt at election to the vice presidency in 1880, running on a ticket with Neal Dow of Maine, was the party's best showing to date, but they still placed a distant fourth to the eventual winners, James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. He ran for office under the Prohibition banner several other times before and after 1880, all without success.
context_section_description: Thompson had identified with the Republican Party since its founding in the 1850s, but in 1874 he left it to join the new Prohibition Party. The Prohibitionists, more of a movement than a party, focused their efforts on banning alcohol. Like Thompson, most party members came from pietist churches, and most were former Republicans. He was the party's nominee for the federal House of Representatives from Ohio's 12th district at a special election held that year because of the resignation of Democrat Hugh J. Jewett, as well as for the full term that would follow. Thompson lost both, receiving only a few hundred votes and losing to Democratic candidate William E. Finck. He served as chairman of the Prohibition National Convention in 1876 in Cleveland, but the young party's nominees fared poorly, winning fewer than 7000 votes nationwide. 
  In 1880, the party nominated Thompson for vice president, joining a ticket headed by Neal Dow of Portland, Maine, the author of one of the nation's first municipal prohibition laws. Only twelve states sent delegates to the convention, and the platform they agreed on was silent on most issues of the day, focusing instead on the evils of alcohol. The Prohibitionists increased their vote total in the election that year, but still received just over 10,000 votes out of more than nine million cast. Thompson made another bid for elected office in 1887, when the Prohibition Party nominated him for Governor of Ohio. He was again unsuccessful, netting less than one percent of the vote and finishing in a distant fifth place behind the winner, Democrat Richard M. Bishop. Thompson's vote total was also surpassed by the Republican candidate, William H. West, and the candidates of two other minor parties, the Workingman Party and the Greenback Party.
  Thompson ran for Congress several more times. In 1900, he ran in Ohio's 3rd congressional district as the nominee of the Union Reform Party, which was made up of Prohibition Party members who split from the main party. He received just 0.32% of the vote, and Republican Robert M. Nevin won the election. In 1908, he ran for the same seat for the re-united Prohibition Party, but won just 0.4% of the vote, losing the election to Democrat James M. Cox. In 1910, Thompson ran for governor of Ohio. Despite the growing popularity of the idea of prohibition, the Prohibition Party candidate got just 0.77% of the vote as Democrat Judson Harmon carried the state. His final attempt at election came in Indiana's 4th congressional district, just over the Ohio border. With 2.24% of the vote, it was Thompson's best performance, but he still fell far short of victory.
caption: Neal Dow, Thompson's running mate in 1880
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