Ford of Morris County. Fort's opponent in the general election was Whig Party nominee John Runk, a former U.S. Representative from Hunterdon County. The Whig campaign focused on alleged corruption by the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (known as the "Joint Companies"), a transportation conglomerate formed by the 1831 merger of the Camden & Amboy Railroad and Delaware and Raritan Canal Company. The Joint Companies exercised tremendous economic leverage and dominated state politics at the time, primarily through the Democratic Party. Some outsiders derisively referred to New Jersey as "the State of Camden and Amboy." Robert F. Stockton, the president and majority owner of the Joint Companies, was a member of the Democratic Party, and its first nominee had been Stockton's brother-in-law, John Renshaw Thomson. Stockton now backed Fort for Governor, partly out of his own ambition to be elected to the United States Senate in 1851. Fort's father-in-law, Samuel G. Wright, was also an underwriter commissioned to sell shares in the new company in 1831. To counter the issue, Fort's supporters cited his support of the general incorporation law, thought to remove political considerations from corporate power. The Whig Party was also divided over the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Both of the state's Whig United States Senators had voted against the Compromise of 1850, and the Democratic press accused the Whigs of "seeking to make the State of New Jersey an Abolition State." Fort openly favored the Fugitive Slave Act as binding because it was "in accordance with the evident intentment of the constitutional compact" and would, in his view, ensure peace, stability, and the preservation of the Union. Many pro-Compromise Whigs abstained from the campaign altogether; others sought to place the emphasis on other issues, like protective tariffs. The previous Whig nominee for Governor, William Wright, switched parties entirely. The result was a large victory for Fort and the largest percentage of the popular vote in any of the six pre-Civil War elections in the state. His victory ensured the Democratic Party's growing dominance in the state for the next six years, as the Whig Party declined. Term in office (1851–1854) During the Fort administration, expenditures for public schools were increased substantially, drawn from dividends paid on state-owned Joint Companies stock. Laws were passed establishing the ten-hour work day and protecting child labor. General incorporation laws were extended to banks, insurance companies,