Finally a topic connected to my research. So here we go. Full disclaimer : I'm French, so my english might not be the best.

If we paint a broad picture, the XIXth century is largely dominated by what historians call the Mute Tribune. Inspired by the liberal philosophy surrounding the dignity of the presidential office and the example of George Washington, the vast majority of XIXth century candidates simply didn't campaign publicly. That is not to say they didn't host diners and parties at their home, but most of them just stayed "mute". They didn't appear on the campaign trail, they didn't stump, they didn't court the vote.

Courting the vote was mostly seen as demagoguery, unfitting for a President. It's important to state that this is only in regards to the Presidential office. Other level of candidates could be campaigning and stumping hard very early in the Republic. That is also not to say that there wasn't any campaigning going on. But the candidate didn't partake, and for most of the XIXth century, that was the general norm.

But this norm quickly showed a few cracks. There and there, occasionnally, for different reasons, a few candidates decided to break from the tradition and slowly shifted the cultural stigma surrounding the idea of a presidential candidate campaigning for the job. It wasn't a linear process nor a foregone conclusion, but at the end of the century, and most especially during the 1896, the winds had changed : both candidates, William Jennings Bryan and Williman McKinley campaigned hard.

So when did it all start ? One might trace back this new trend in 1824, when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay arranged to use the press to broadcast their opinions. While Clay had his HoR speeches printed, Jackson sent letters to an editor, expecting to have them printed. Nevertheless, those are meager exceptions, far from what we've come to know today. 4 years later, Jackson gets way more active. Without appearing publicly, he full immersed himself in the campaign and didn't try to play the "I don't want the job but I'll take it if you want me to" attitude. He organized, sent letters to his partisans, and even answered directly some personal attacks in the press.

But everytime a Jacksonian committee invited him for a speech, he declined. Except for once, in January 1828, at the 13th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. After getting the assurance that the even would be apolitical, Jackson took a boat to N-O and, upon disembarkment, gave a speech to 35 000 people. According to Parsons, this speech is the first "media event" in American political history. But is it a candidate fully going public for his campaign ? Not exactly yet in my opinion.

For that, we need to jump 12 years ahead, in the mad campaign of 1840 between Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison. During the spring of 1840, the Whig candidate, Harrison, at this point the oldest presidential candidate in American history, is under an artillery barrage of snyde and attacks from the Democrats. His old age is an infinite ressource for jokes and nicknames, being portrayed as unarticulated man led by his counselors, a man who should retire in his log cabin and drink his hard cider.

Deciding that enough is enough, Harrison accepted the invitation to celebrate the battle of Fort Meigs in June 1840, and goes to Perrysburg, Ohio. Thus, on the road, stopping at the National Hotel in Colombus, on the morning of June 6th 1840, Harrison gave what could be considered, in my opinion, the first true campaign speech from a presidential candidate. Between June and October, Harrison gave a total of 23 speeches, attracting tens of thousands of people, curious to see (more than hear to be fair) a presidential candidate in the flesh.

So that's it, the modern presidential candidate is born ? Well, no. In 1844 and 1848, no candidate took the stump. We have to wait 1852 for the Whigs, again, in a desperate move to salvage Winfiled Scott, to send him on the roads. But as we can see, it's not perceived as a "normal" or even "winning" move. It's a last-resort strategy banking of the supposed popularity of the General. And even then, they tried to hide the real purpose of his travel (campaiging) by saying that he was going to open and inaugurate a veterans home in Kentucky. Even the speeches of Scott are repeating several times that he wasn't here for political reasons, even tho a few sentences later he overtly courted ethnoreligious minorities for their votes.

Those desperate stumping tours went up several notches with a succesion of democratic candidates between 1860 and 1872. Stephen Douglas, facing inevitable defeat after the split of the Democratic party and engaging and anti-Secessionist crusade ; Horatio Seymour wanting to avoid being replaced by the party on the eve of the election ; Horace Greeley, navigating pityfully the Liberal-Democrats alliance : they all shared one thing when they went out to stump : they were desperate. Stumping wasn't some accute strategy to maximize the chance of winning the elections. It was a last-resort tactic when everything else had failed.

The turn of the 1880 is when the Mute Tribune is starting to appear more and more archaic. Even the Republican Party is slowly understanding the potential advantages of a candidate speaking directly to the voters, in person. In his letters in 1880, James Garfield express this sentiment overtly :

If I could take the stump and bear a fighting share in the campaign, I should feel happier […] you can hardly imagine how I ached to be free for one day to handle Hendricks as he deserves for his unmanly speech at Indianapolis.

So he's gonna find a compromise. He's gonna quickly transform the traditionnal private parties at the candidate's home into public event, giving birth to what is usually remembered as the front porch campaign. This tactic finds a new echo in the Republican Party after James G. Blaine lost the 1884 Presidential election. Having stumped, he exposed himself to ciritcal mistakes in public and went from a widely popular figure to the guy who didn't flinch when Irish were publicly insulted in his presence. The GOP candidates got cold feet about stumping and embraced the front porch campaign, as exemplified by Harrison in 1888 and McKinley in 1896. It was clearly expressed as a way to connect with the public while controlling the environment of said encounter.

For the Democrats, the road was more chaotic. They didn't stump during the 1880s and most of the 1890s, resorting to the traditional Mute Tribune. This was especially due to the growing influence of elitist Liberals inside the party, who were watching the giant parties that were the XIXth century campaign with disdain and disgust. But at the 1896 convention, the populist wing carried by Bryan triumphed, and most of the money men of the party flocked away. Without much funds to campaign, Bryan started the first, massive, national stumping tour in presidential campaign history, giving hundreds of speeches to thousands of people. Not having many money to organize a true party machine, he simply hopped into a train and carried his message himself, at a time when the press and mail pamphlets were still kings.

This is a very simplified version of it, but you get the broad strokes. For example, I didn't get into how technology also allowed this transition, by connecting a large territory and allowing Bryan to do his fantastic feat. In my opinion, the most important part, beside the chronology of it all, is that modern stumping as a part of the culture of presidential campaign, happened "contextually". The reflexion about how it allowed the candidate to better connect with the voter came after the "invention" of it all. First and foremost, it was a byproduct of historical circumstances pushing a minority of candidates to break with a longlasting tradition. To speak in cultural studies terms, the practice preceded the representation.

Sources (I have many more on every of those events if needed) :

Boller, P. F. (2004). Presidential Campaigns : From George Washington to George W. Bush (Revised edition). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Calhoun, C. W. (2008). Minority Victory : Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888 (1st Edition edition). Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas.

Cmiel, K. (1991). Democratic Eloquence : The Fight Over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-century America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press

Dinkin, R. J. (1989). Campaigning in America : A History of Election Practices. New York, NY: Praeger.

Heale, M. J. (1982). The Presidential Quest : Candidates and Images in American Political Culture, 1787-1852 (1st ed). London, NY: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Holt, M. F. (1992). Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln. Bâton-Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Epstein, B. (2018). The Only Constant is Change : Technology, Political Communication, and Innovation Over Time.

Parsons, L. H. (2011). The Birth of Modern Politics : Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828

Shafer, R. G. (2016). The Carnival Campaign : How the Rollicking 1840 Campaign of « Tippecanoe and Tyler Too » Changed Presidential Elections Forever (1st edition). Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press.