Mangum, Willie Person, 1792-1861

<p>Willie Person Mangum, lawyer, judge, congressman, and U.S. senator, was born at Red Mountain in a part of northeastern Orange County that became Durham County in 1881. The son of William Person and Catharine Davis Mangum, he received his earliest education at academies in Hillsborough, Fayetteville, and Raleigh. Graduated from The University of North Carolina in 1815, he became a tutor in the family of Judge Duncan Cameron at the same time he was studying law under the judge. In 1817 he began the practice of law. The University of North Carolina granted him the customary master of arts degree in 1818 and awarded him an honorary LL.D. degree in 1845. He was a trustee of the university from 1818 to 1859.</p>

<p>In 1818 and 1819 Mangum began a long career of public service when he represented Orange County in the General Assembly for two terms. As an advocate of constitutional reform, he won many friends in the western part of the state. He was elected a superior court judge in 1819 but resigned the next year because of financial needs. Between 1823 and 1826, as a member of the Republican party (which evolved into the later Democratic party), he served most of two terms in Congress but resigned for political reasons before completing the second; he was then reappointed to the court by the governor to fill an unexpired term but was not reelected by the legislature. In 1828 Mangum was a Jackson elector as well as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, but he withdrew his candidacy before the election. Instead, he was elected a judge of the superior court but once more resigned after a year.</p>

<p>Apparently still seeking a satisfactory place in public life, he was elected by the General Assembly, as was then the practice, to the U.S. Senate and served from 4 Mar. 1831 until he resigned on 26 Nov. 1836. In 1837 he received the electoral votes of South Carolina for president of the United States, perhaps as a reward for his sympathetic attitude towards that state's stand in the Nullification controversy even though he himself was opposed to nullification. Nevertheless, Mangum on occasion expressed clear states' rights sentiments.</p>

<p>Political issues were splitting the old Republican party, and among them was the question of the authority of state legislatures to instruct senators as to how they should vote. This and other questions led Mangum to resign from the Senate, and he soon joined the new Whig party. In 1840, in the interim between service in Washington, D.C., Mangum was a member of the state senate. As chairman of the committee on education, he played an important role in preparing legislation that established the public school system of North Carolina. In the same year he was named to succeed his adversary and fellow senator, Bedford Brown; thereafter, he was regularly returned to Washington, serving in the Senate from 1840 to 1853. He was an active member of many important committees including Finance, Foreign Relations, and Judiciary, and he was chairman of the committee on naval affairs. Following the death of President William Henry Harrison and the advancement of John Tyler to the presidency, Mangum was president pro tempore of the Senate from 31 May 1842 to 4 Mar. 1845. On a number of occasions his name was mentioned as a candidate for president or vice-president, and in 1852, because of the political climate in North Carolina, he declined the Whig nomination for vice-president.</p>

<p>Declining health led Mangum to retire to his home, Walnut Hall, at Red Mountain, but he continued to practice law as long as he was able. Many of his business affairs during his years of public service had been ably managed by his wife and one of his daughters.</p>

<p>In 1819 Mangum married Charity Alston Cain, and they became the parents of five children: Sallie Alston, Martha Person, Catharine Davis (who died in infancy), Mary Sutherland, and William Preston. The latter, a lieutenant with North Carolina troops, died on 28 July 1861 at age twenty-four from wounds received at the first Battle of Manassas. The loss of his son so distressed the elder Mangum that his health worsened and he died soon afterwards. He was buried in the family cemetery at Walnut Hall.</p>

MANGUM, WILLIE PERSON, a Representative and a Senator from North Carolina; born in Orange (now Durham) County, N.C., May 10, 1792; attended academies at Hillsboro, Fayetteville, and Raleigh; graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1815; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1817 and commenced practice in Red Mountain, N.C.; member, State house of representatives 1818-1819; twice elected a superior court judge; elected to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses and served from March 4, 1823, until March 18, 1826, when he resigned; elected as a Jacksonian (later Anti-Jacksonian) to the United States Senate in 1830 and served from March 4, 1831, until his resignation on November 26, 1836; chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs (Twenty-seventh Congress), Committee on Printing (Twenty-seventh Congress); received the eleven electoral votes of South Carolina for President of the United States in 1837; again elected, as a Whig, to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Bedford Brown; reelected in 1841 and in 1847, and served from November 25, 1840, to March 3, 1853; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1853; continued the practice of law until his death in Red Mountain, N.C., September 7, 1861; interment in the family burial ground at his home, 'Walnut Hall,' near Red Mountain, N.C.

<p>Willie Person Mangum (May 10, 1792 – September 7, 1861) was a U.S. Senator from the state of North Carolina between 1831 and 1836 and between 1840 and 1853. He was one of the founders and leading members of the Whig party, and was a candidate for president in 1836 as part of the unsuccessful Whig strategy to defeat Martin Van Buren by running four candidates with local appeal in different regions of the country. He is, as of 2018, the only major-party presidential nominee to have been a North Carolinian at the time of his nomination.</p>

<p>Mangum was born in Durham County, North Carolina (then part of Orange County), to a family of the planter class. He was the son of Catherine (Davis) and William Person Mangum. In his youth, he attended the respected private school in Raleigh run by John Chavis, a free black. They remained friends for years and had a long correspondence. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1815.</p>

<p>Mangum began a law practice and entered politics. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1823 to 1826. After an interlude as a superior court judge, he was elected by the legislature as a Democrat to the Senate from North Carolina in 1830.</p>

<p>Mangum's stay in the Democratic Party was short. He opposed President Andrew Jackson on most of the major issues of the day, including the protective tariff, nullification, and the Bank of the United States. In 1834, Mangum openly declared himself to be a "Whig", and two years later, he resigned his Senate seat.</p>

<p>Due to a lack of organizational cohesion in the new Whig Party during the 1836 election, the Whigs put forward four presidential candidates: Daniel Webster in Massachusetts, William Henry Harrison in the remaining Northern and Border States, Hugh White in the middle and lower South, and Mangum in South Carolina. Some optimistic Whigs foresaw the nomination of several candidates resulting in denying a majority of electoral votes to any one candidate and throwing the election into the House of Representatives, much like what occurred in 1824, where Whig representatives could then coalesce around a single candidate. This possibility, however, did not come to fruition and Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren won the election with an outright majority of electoral votes. The legislature of South Carolina (which chose their electors until 1865) gave Mangum its 11 electoral votes.</p>

<p>After a four-year absence, Mangum served two more terms in the Senate, where he was an important ally of Henry Clay. In 1842, he succeeded Samuel L. Southard as president pro tempore of the Senate, during a vice presidential vacancy. Upon assuming office on May 23, he also became next in succession to the presidency, and remained so until the swearing in of George M. Dallas on March 4, 1845, a period which included President John Tyler's narrow escape from death in the USS Princeton disaster of 1844. In 1852, he refused an offer to be a candidate for vice president on the Whig national ticket; fellow North Carolinian William Alexander Graham was nominated instead.</p>

<p>Realizing that he had little chance of being re-elected as the Whig Party broke up following the 1852 elections, Mangum retired in 1853 at the end of his second term. In 1856 he, like many ex-Whigs, joined the nativist American Party, but a stroke soon afterward ended his political career.</p>

<p>Mangum died at his family estate in Red Mountain, an unincorporated area of Durham County, on September 7, 1861. He was buried in the family cemetery on his estate.</p>