page_title: Marcus Morton
section_title: Perennial candidate for governor
hierarchical_section_title: Marcus Morton / Supreme Judicial Court and runs for governor / Perennial candidate for governor
caption_attribution_description: George Bancroft
context_page_description: Marcus Morton was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician from Taunton, Massachusetts. He served two terms as Governor of Massachusetts and several months as Acting Governor following the death in 1825 of William Eustis. He served for 15 years as an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, all the while running unsuccessfully as a Democrat for governor. He finally won the 1839 election, acquiring exactly the number of votes required for a majority win over Edward Everett. After losing the 1840 and 1841 elections, he was elected in a narrow victory in 1842.
  The Massachusetts Democratic Party was highly factionalized, which contributed to Morton's long string of defeats. His brief periods of ascendancy, however, resulted in no substantive Democratic-supported reforms, since the dominant Whigs reversed most of the changes enacted during his terms. An opponent of the extension of slavery, he split with longtime friend John C. Calhoun over that issue, and eventually left the party for the Free Soil movement. He was considered by Martin Van Buren as a potential vice presidential running mate in 1848.
context_section_description: The political situation in the late 1820s and 1830s was quite fluid.  The Democrats were highly factionalized, with three major groups vying with one another for control of the party apparatus.  Morton's support base consisted mainly of farmers, industrial and shipyard laborers, and recent immigrants.  A second faction, dominated by Theodore Lyman, consisted of merchants and wealthy coastal interests opposed to Whig interests.  The third faction, which successfully controlled the party apparatus in its early years, was headed by David Henshaw, who had split from the John Quincy Adams camp over political aspects of the bridge controversy.  Henshaw was the principal party organizing force, while Morton became a perennial gubernatorial candidate, running for the office each year from 1828 to 1843.  The party was supported in its organizing efforts by Morton's friend John Calhoun, who served as Vice President under Adams and Jackson.  Morton generally did no overt campaigning, sensitive to maintaining the appearance of neutrality as a judge.
  Morton was never able to make significant electoral inroads on Lincoln's majorities in the years the latter held the governor's seat (1825–34).  This was principally because opposition to the National Republicans was fragmented, exemplified by the Free Bridge Party and the Anti-Masonic Party, the latter of which in particular siphoned off significant numbers of Democratic votes in the 1832 election.  Despite attempts by both the National Republicans and the Democrats to woo the Anti-Masons into their fold, neither was able to.  Morton was mildly anti-Mason, but Henshaw was a Freemason, and Morton apparently did not recognize the potential power of the Anti-Masons despite their significant electoral showing.  As a result, the Democrats lacked the voting strength to unseat the National Republicans.  The Democrats were also splintered in 1832 and 1833, when the Working Men's Party drew support by attacking both of the larger parties for their lack of attention to labor issues.  Morton was sufficiently disheartened by his repeated failures that he considered abandoning his quest for the governorship in 1832; Henshaw convinced him to soldier on.  In 1831 Morton broke ranks with his friend John Calhoun over the latter's support for nullification, which Morton believed was based on his support for slavery.  This also caused fractures in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, with Henshaw siding with Calhoun and the southern Democrats.
  The closest Morton came to victory before 1839 was in the 1833 election, when Lincoln stepped down.  In a four-way race involving Worcester Congressman John Davis (running as a National Republican) and John Quincy Adams (running as an Anti-Mason) as his principal opponents (along with a Working Men's candidate), none of the candidates received the required majority.  The state legislature chose Davis, the largest vote-getter, after Adams withdrew in Davis's favor.
  By the late 1830s activists for the abolition of slavery had grown into a potent political force in the state.  Both Whigs and Democrats (including Morton) had avoided the issue in pursuit of other political objectives, but abolitionists began regularly requesting formal statements from candidates for office on the subject.  Morton was known to be personally opposed to slavery, and this gained him votes in the 1837 and 1838 elections despite the vacillating answers he gave to such requests. His opponent in those elections, Edward Everett, was also opposed to slavery, but had in 1826 made a speech sympathetic to the rights of slaveholders, which was used against him.  Morton's faction within the Democratic Party also gained strength due to the organizational skill of historian George Bancroft, and successful moves spearheaded by Morton to change the methods by which lower-level party leaders were chosen.  David Henshaw resigned from the politically important post as the collector of the Port of Boston in 1837, starting a struggle within the party for this valuable patronage plum. Morton was one of several po
caption: George Bancroft, historian and Massachusetts Democratic Party organizer
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