On Your Mark...

"It began with Martin Van Buren. Two years before the 1828 vote, 'The Little Magician' began to build the first modern party, soon named the Democrats, in part to avenge Andrew Jackson's unjust defeat in the previous election. Van Buren secured the allegiance of influential pols up and down the East Coast and helped establish pro-Jackson newspapers from New England to Louisiana. A decade later, William Henry Harrison, who hoped to be the new Whig Party's first nominee, began touring key states more than a year before the 1836 election. Soon after losing that race (to Van Buren), the 64-year-old military hero took to the road again. After all, his party rivals Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were doing it, too."

Michael Kazin in The Washington Post traces the history of early starting presidential campaigns.