1832 Democratic National Convention

The Anti-Masonic Party and the National Republican Party had held the first presidential nominating conventions in 1831, and Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet" helped organize a Democratic convention in 1832.

As the party leaders assumed that Jackson would be nominated for president, the primary purpose of the convention was to find a new running mate: Vice President John C. Calhoun had fallen out with Jackson following the Petticoat affair and the Nullification Crisis, and would subsequently resign the office in order to take a Senate seat.

The convention, which was presided over by Governor Robert Lucas, hosted delegates from every state except Missouri; Jackson won the presidential nomination unanimously.

With Jackson's strong endorsement, Van Buren easily won the vice presidential nomination on the first ballot, defeating former Representative Philip P. Barbour of Virginia and Representative Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky. The Democratic ticket of Jackson and Van Buren went on to win the 1832 presidential election.

Background

In the summer of 1822, "Richmond Junto" leader Thomas Ritchie of Virginia began raising the idea of a national convention to resolve the issue of nomination; ultimately, the congressional nominating caucus was appealed to by the devotees of Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford's candidacy. Following that defeat in the election of 1824, early in 1827, Van Buren privately made the argument to Richie for an exclusive national convention of Republicans to ensure Jackson's nomination. However, it did not immediately come to fruition while state conventions and legislatures took up Jackson as their presidential candidate for the election of 1828 with Vice President John C. Calhoun as his running mate. Such a type of national convention would occur after the election.

Calhoun soon became politically estranged from President Jackson, due in part to an 1830 letter written by Crawford stating that Calhoun, as Secretary of War under President James Monroe, pushed for a reprimand of then-General Jackson for his actions in the 1818 invasion of Florida. The Petticoat affair in which Calhoun's wife, Floride, was a central figure further alienated Jackson from the vice president and his supporters. The final blow to the relationship came in January 1832, when Calhoun, as President of the Senate, sank Van Buren's nomination as Minister to Great Britain by casting a tie-breaking vote in the United States Senate. Consequently, Calhoun was replaced as the party's 1832 vice presidential nominee by Van Buren. Later that year, on December 28, he resigned as vice president, after having been elected to the U.S. Senate. There he continued to be a proponent of the doctrine of nullification in opposition to Jackson.

The proposal for the convention began with members of Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet", his coterie of informal advisers and confidants. Major William Berkeley Lewis wrote on May 25, 1831, to Amos Kendall, who was then in New Hampshire. He proposed that the New Hampshire legislature call for a national gathering of Republican supporters of the Jackson administration to nominate a candidate for the vice presidency, and asked Kendall to pass the idea to Isaac Hill. After the New Hampshire legislature issued the call for a general convention, the Washington Globe, the principal Jacksonian newspaper, seconded the recommendation on July 6, 1831:

The recommendation of a Convention at Baltimore to nominate a candidate for the Vice-Presidency deserves a serious consideration. It is probably the best plan which can be adopted to produce entire unanimity in the Republican party, and secure its lasting ascendancy.

Lewis later recalled warning former Secretary of War and delegate John Eaton the day before the convention not to vote for anyone there except Van Buren unless he was prepared to "quarrel with the General [Jackson]."