Democratic nominee James K. Polk narrowly defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest turning on the controversial issues of slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas.

It also risked war with Mexico while the United States engaged in sensitive possession and boundary negotiations with Great Britain, which controlled Canada, over Oregon.

The Whigs nominated Henry Clay, a famous, long-time party leader who was the early favorite but who conspicuously waffled on Texas annexation.

His awkward, repeated attempts to adjust and finesse his position on Texas confused and alienated voters, contrasting negatively with Polk's consistent clarity.

Birney's vote share in New York exceeded Polk's margin of victory over Clay, marking the first time a third party candidate affected the outcome of a United States presidential election.

Whigs and Democrats embarked upon their campaigns during the climax of the congressional gag rule controversies in 1844, which prompted Southern congressmen to suppress northern petitions to end the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

[7] The question as to whether the institution of slavery and its aristocratic principles of social authority were compatible with democratic republicanism was becoming "a permanent issue in national politics".

[13] Both major parties – the Democrats and Whigs – viewed Texas statehood as something "not worth a foreign war [with Mexico]" or the "sectional combat" that annexation would provoke in the United States.

[19][20] Politically isolated, but unencumbered by party restraints,[21] Tyler aligned himself with a small faction of Texas annexationists[22] in a bid for election to a full term in 1844.

[40][41] Martin Van Buren, President of the United States between 1837 and 1841, and chief architect of Jacksonian democracy,[42][43] was the presumptive Democratic presidential contender in the spring of 1844.

On the eighth ballot, the historian George Bancroft, a delegate from Massachusetts, proposed former House Speaker James K. Polk as a compromise candidate.

[53] He crafted an emphatically anti-Texas position that temporized with expansionist southern Democrats, laying out a highly conditional scenario that delayed Texas annexation indefinitely.

Furthermore, annexation of Texas as a territory would proceed, tentatively, under a Van Buren administration, only when the American public had been consulted on the matter and Mexico's cooperation had been pursued to avoid an unnecessary war.

[69] As the Senate debated the Tyler treaty, Jackson declared that the popular support among Texans for annexation should be respected, and any delay would result in a British dominated Texas Republic that would promote slave emancipation and pose a foreign military threat to the southwest United States.

They also pitched their nominees to particular local followings, having Polk hint preposterously, in a letter to a Philadelphian, that he favored "reasonable" tariff protection for domestic manufactures, while they attacked the pious humanitarian Frelinghuysen as an anti-Catholic bigot and crypto-nativist enemy of the separation of church and state.

[83][84] Clay, a slaveholder, presided over a party in which its Southern wing was sufficiently committed to the national platform to put partisan loyalties above slavery expansionist proposals that might undermine its north–south alliance.

[92] In it, he flatly denounced the Tyler annexation bill and predicted that its passage would provoke a war with Mexico, whose government had never recognized Texas independence.

[93] Clay underlined his position, warning that even with Mexico's consent, he would block annexation in the event that substantial sectional opposition existed anywhere in the United States.

In it, he counseled his Whig constituency to regard Texas annexation and statehood as merely a short phase in the decline of slavery in the United States, rather than a long term advance for the Slave Power.

Clay's commitment brought Southern Whigs under extreme pressure in their home states and congressional districts, threatening to tarnish their credentials as supporters of slavery.

They also attacked former House Speaker Polk as nobody who deep down was a dangerous Loco Foco radical...With greater success, the Whigs linked up with resurgent nativist anti-Catholic movement strongest in New York and Pennsylvania, and planted stories that as president, Clay would tighten up immigration and naturalization laws.

One notorious handbill, widely reprinted, by an abolitionist minister Abel Brown, denounced Clay as a "Man Stealer, Slaveholder, and Murdurer," and accused him of "Selling Jesus Christ!"

Moreover, he hinted that he would drop out of the race once that end was assured, informing Polk, through Senator Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, that his campaign efforts were simply a vehicle to mobilize support for Texas annexation.

[116] Joseph Smith, the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois, and founder of the Latter-day Saint movement, ran as an independent under the newly created Reform Party with Sidney Rigdon as his running mate.

He proposed the abolition of slavery through compensation by selling public lands and decreasing the size and salary of Congress; the closure of prisons; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; and the re-establishment of a national bank.

[117] His top aide Brigham Young campaigned for Smith saying, "He it is that God of Heaven designs to save this nation from destruction and preserve the Constitution.

The former slaveholder, now abolitionist, James Birney of the Liberty Party, received 15,812 and 3,632 votes, respectively, based on his unwavering stand against Texas annexation.

[129] As of 2024, Clay was the third of eight presidential nominees to win a significant number of electoral votes in at least three elections, the others being Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump.

The Whig Almanac, a yearly collection of political statistics and events of interest to the party, contained in 1845 a column alleging fraud in Louisiana.

[132] Ultimately, these allegations of fraud would not have changed the election (though the Whig Almanac makes a slippery slope argument that if this fraud occurred in Louisiana, it must also have occurred in New York, which had Clay won he would have won the election), as Louisiana switching its vote would make the final count 164 electoral vote for Polk to 111 for Clay.