1840s in the United States

Events and Trends

"For more trends, see 19th century in the United States"

* Population of continental United States surpasses the Native American population before European contact (estimated at 9 million).

Leaders

* Whig William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren in the 1840 presidential election to become the ninth President of the United States, but served only thirty days of his term, dying on April 4, 1841. He was succeeded by his vice-president, John Tyler. Tyler's presidency was not taken very seriously by other politicians of the day. He angered his party by vetoing most of the Whig agenda, and was officially expelled from the party shortly into his term. In the closing days of his term, he successfully pushed through a joint resolution of Congress annexing Texas to the United States, leading eventually to war with Mexico in 1846. Tyler originally sought to run for a second term as a third party candidate (as neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would have him), but eventually withdrew his candidacy.
* In the 1844 presidential election, Democrat James Knox Polk, campaigning on a platform combining an expansionist position on the "Oregon question" and in favor of the annexation of Texas, narrowly defeated Whig Henry Clay to become the United States' eleventh President. Texas was annexed before Polk took office, however, and Polk inherited a foreign policy situation containing a very irate Mexico, who eventually declared war with the United States in 1846. The Mexican-American War was a crushing defeat for Mexico, costing them nearly half of their territory and firmly establishing the United States as the leading power in the western hemisphere. Polk's administration was responsible for the largest increase in the total territory of the United States of any single administration. As a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico in 1848, the United States gained approximately 1.2 million square miles of territory (the Mexican Cession). The Oregon Treaty with Great Britain in 1846 also captured half of the disputed Oregon Territory. Polk, having promised to serve only one term and in declining health in 1848, did not seek reelection.
* The 1848 presidential election saw war-hero Zachary Taylor, who ran as a Whig but himself remained vague on issues throughout the campaign, up against Democrat Lewis Cass and former president Martin Van Buren, the nominee of the newly-formed Free Soil party, which had split off from the Democratic party in reaction to the Democrat's failure to take an anti-slavery position. The combination of Taylor's public popularity as a war hero and the split of Democrats on the slavery issue gave Taylor a plurality of the popular vote and the election. Taylor's brief term (he died in office in July of 1850) was dominated by the burgeoning issue of slavery as the nation worked to absorb the vast lands that it had acquired earlier in the decade.