The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney. David M. Gold

representative, state senator, governor, and United States attorney. Thurman, too, was an influential Democrat, but his public career, which would culminate in the Democratic nomination for vice president, did not begin in earnest until his election to the supreme court.¹⁰

      The Democrats swept to a crushing victory in 1851, capturing the governor’s chair, both houses of the legislature, and all five seats on the supreme court. The Whigs never recovered and soon disappeared as a party. Historians disagree over the cause of the Whigs’ demise, with some blaming primarily the sectional crisis and the defection of antislavery Whigs and others stressing the rise of prohibition and nativism, which sympathetic Whigs embraced at the peril of losing their German constituents. Whatever the reasons, there was “no denying the fact,” as a Whig newspaper moaned, that the Whigs were “used up.”¹¹

      The constitution provided for five-year terms of office for supreme court judges. However, it required that the initial terms of the five judges be of one, two, three, four, and five years, with the judges deciding by lot who got which term. The General Assembly then created a rotating chief judgeship by mandating that the judge with the shortest time to serve would be chief. Ranney drew the five-year term, which meant that he would not have to run for reelection for five years but would have to wait four years to head the court.¹²