The debates notably saw the Whigs adopt a strategy of constitutional reform, a reversal from their historical record of conservative retrenchment.

[4] The Democratic convention, seeking to maintain an edge with social reformers, adopted a platform more aggressively favoring labor rights than any ever taken by the party prior to the American Civil War.

It included resolutions denouncing corporations for depressing wages, compelling excessive hours from employees, and blacklisting labor organizers.

[5] The convention scrambled political coalitions in the commonwealth; anti-Coalition, anti-prohibition, national Democrats fielded a separate ticket for the second consecutive year and a number of prominent Free Soilers including Charles Francis Adams Sr., John G. Palfrey, and Samuel Hoar opposed the new constitution.

[5] On the eve of the election, U.S. Attorney General Caleb Cushing issued a statement enjoining Democrats from further cooperation with anti-slavery forces or suffer the loss of federal patronage.