CHAPTER XVII. THE LOG CABIN AND HARD CIDER CAMPAIGN.
The Presidential campaign of 1840 surpassed in excitement and intensity of feeling all which had preceded it, and in these respects it has not since been equaled. It having been sneeringly remarked by a Democratic writer that General Harrison lived in a log cabin and had better remain there, the Whigs adopted the log cabin as one of their emblems. Log cabins were raised everywhere for Whig headquarters, some of them of large size, and almost every voting precinct had its Tippecanoe Club with its choristers.
For the first time in our land the power of song was invoked to aid a Presidential candidate, and immense editions of log cabin song-books were sold. Many of these songs were parodies on familiar ballads. One of the best compositions, the authorship of which was ascribed to George P. Morris, the editor of the New York Mirror, was a parody on the Old Oaken Bucket. The first verse ran:
"Oh! dear to my soul are they days of our glory,
The time-honored days of our national pride;
When heroes and statesmen ennobled our story,
And boldly the foes of our country defied;
When victory hung o'er our flag, proudly waving,
And the battle was fought by the valiant and true
For our homes and our loved one, the enemies braving,
Oh! then stood the soldier of Tippecanoe—
The iron-armed soldier, the true-hearted soldier
The gallant old soldier of Tippecanoe."
Mass conventions were held by the Whigs in the larger cities and in the central towns at the great West. They were attended by thousands, who came from the plow, the forge, the counter, and the desk, at a sacrifice of personal convenience and often at considerable expense, to give a hearty utterance to their deep-felt opposition to the party in power. Delegations to these conventions would often ride in carriages or on horseback twenty-five or thirty miles, camping out during the excursion. They carried banners, and often had a small log cabin mounted on wheels, in which was a barrel of hard cider, the beverage of the campaign. On the day of the convention, and before the speaking, there was always a procession, in which the delegations sang and cheered as they marched along, sometimes rolling balls on which were the names of the States, while the music of numerous bands aided in imparting enthusiasm.
The speaking was from a platform, over which floated the national flag, and on which were seated the invited guests, the local political magnates, the clergymen of the place, and generally a few Revolutionary soldiers, who were greeted with loud applause. The principal orators during the campaign were Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William C. Preston, Henry A. Wise, Thomas Corwin, Thomas Ewing, Richard W. Thompson, and scores of less noted names. General Harrison took the stump himself at several of the Western gatherings, and spoke for over an hour on each occasion. His demeanor was that of a well-bred, well-educated, venerable Virginia gentleman, destitute of humor and fond of quoting from the classic authors.
The favorite campaign document, of which hundreds of thousands were circulated through the mails under the franks of the Whig Congressmen, was the reply in the House of Representatives by Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, to an attack upon Harrison's military record made by Mr. Isaac E. Crary. A native of Connecticut, Mr. Crary had migrated to Michigan, and was the first and the only Representative from that recently admitted State. Anxious to distinguish himself, he undertook to criticise the military career of General Harrison with great unfairness and partisan vigor. Mr. Corwin replied the next day in one of the most wonderful speeches ever delivered at Washington. For vigorous argument and genuine wit the speech has rarely been equaled. Those who heard it agree that his defense of Harrison was overwhelming and the annihilation of Crary complete. The House was convulsed with laughter at the richness and originality of the humor, and at times almost awed by the great dignity and profound arguments of the orator. The pages of history were ransacked for illustrations to sustain the speaker, and all were poured in rapid profusion upon the head of poor Crary, who sat amazed and stupefied at the storm he had provoked. As Corwin proceeded the members left their seats and clustered thickly about him, the reporters laid down their pens, and everybody gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the hour. As Mr. Corwin painted in mock heroic style the knowledge of military affairs which the lawyer member from Michigan had acquired from reading Tidd's Practice and Espinasse's Nisi Prius, studies so happily adapted to the art of war, the House fairly roared with delight.
He drew a mirth-provoking picture of Crary in his capacity of a militia brigadier at the head of his legion on parade day, with his "crop-eared, bushy-tailed mare and sickle hams—the steed that laughs at the shaking of the spear, and whose neck was clothed with thunder," and likened Crary to Alexander the Great with his war- horse, Bucephalus, at the head of his Macedonian phalanx.
He traced all the characteristic exploits of the assembled throng on those old-time mustering occasions. The wretched diversity in height and build of the marshaled hosts; the wild assortment of accoutrements, from the ancient battle-ax to the modern broom-stick, the trooping boys, the slovenly girls, the mock enthusiasm of the spectators, all were painted with a master's hand. Finally, after reciting Crary's deeds of valor and labor during the training day, Corwin left him and his exhausted troop at a corner grocery assuaging the fires of their souls with copious draughts of whisky drank from the shells of slaughtered watermelons. When Mr. Corwin came to give the history of General Harrison and defend his military record, he rose to the height of pure eloquence, and spoke with convincing force and unanswerable logic. The fate of Crary was sealed. Probably no such personal discomfiture was ever known from the effect of a single speech. He never recovered from the blow, and was known at home and abroad as "the late General Crary." Even at home the farmers and the boys, in watermelon season, would always offer him the fruit with sly jests and jeers and a joke at his military career; but his public life and usefulness were at an end.
In May, 1840, there was received at Washington the initial number of The Log Cabin, a campaign paper published at New York by Horace Greeley. It was printed at the office of the New Yorker, then edited by Mr. Greeley, on a thin super-royal sheet, and the price for twenty-eight weekly issues was fifty cents for a single copy— larger numbers much less. It contained a few illustrations bearing on the election, plans of General Harrison's battle-grounds, and campaign songs set to music.
Mr. Greeley's paper was recommended to leading Whigs at Washington by Thurlow Weed, and he obtained eighty thousand subscribers, the Whig Congressmen recommending the paper to their constituents. The Log Cabin was the foundation of the Tribune, and thenceforth until his death Mr. Greeley was well known at the National Capital. He was a man of intense convictions and indomitable industry, and he wielded an incisive, ready pen, which went straight to the point without circumlocution or needless use of words. Although he was a somewhat erratic champion of Fourierism, vegetarianism, temperance, anti-hanging, and abolition, there was a "method in his madness," and his heretical views were evidently the honest convictions of his heart. Often egotistical, dogmatic, and personal, no one could question his uprightness and thorough devotion to the noblest principles of progressive civilization. Inspired by that true philanthropy that loves all mankind equally and every one of his neighbors better than himself, he was often victimized by those whose stories he believed and to whom he loaned his hard-earned savings. The breath of slander did not sully his reputation, and he never engaged in lobbying at Washington for money, although friendship several times prompted him to advocate appropriations for questionable jobs—the renewal of patents which were monopolies, and the election of Public Printers who were notoriously corrupt.
Mr. Clay "sulked in his tent" until August, when he went to Nashville and addressed a Whig Convention. "Look," said he, in conclusion, "at the position of Tennessee and Kentucky. They stood side by side, their sons fought side by side, at New Orleans. Kentuckians and Tennesseans now fight another and a different kind of battle. But they are fighting now, as then, a band of mercenaries, the cohorts of power. They are fighting a band of office-holders, who call General Harrison a coward, an imbecile, an old woman!
"Yes, General Harrison is called a coward, but he fought more battles than any other General during the last war and never sustained a defeat. He is no statesman, and yet he has filled more civil offices of trust and importance than almost any other man in the Union."
A man in the crowd here cried out, "Tell us of Van Buren's battles!"
"Ah!" said Mr. Clay, "I will have to use my colleague's language and tell you of Mr. Van Buren's 'three great battles!' He says, that he fought General Commerce and conquered him; that he fought General Currency and conquered him, and that, with his Cuban allies, he fought the Seminoles and got conquered!"
Mr. Kendall came to the aid of President Van Buren, and resigned the office of Postmaster-General that he might sustain the Administration with his powerful pen. He thus brought upon himself much malignant abuse, but in the many newspaper controversies in which he was engaged he never failed to vindicate himself and overwhelm his assailant with a clearness and vigor of argument and a power of style with which few pens could cope. He was not only assailed with the rudest violence of newspaper denunciation, but he was alluded to by Whig speakers in scornful terms, while caricaturists represented him as the Mephistopheles of the Van Buren Administration, and Log Cabin Clubs roared offensive campaign songs at midnight before his house, terrifying his children by the discharges of a small cannon. Defeat stared him in the face, but he never quailed, but faced the storm of attack in every direction, and zealously defended the Democratic banner.
The Whigs of Maine led off by electing Edward Kent Governor, and five of her eight Congressmen, including William Pitt Fessenden and Elisha H. Allen, who afterward, when Minister from the Sandwich Islands to the United States, fell dead at a New Year's reception at the White House. Delaware, Maryland, and Georgia soon afterward followed suit, electing Whig Congressmen and State officers. In October the Ohio Whigs elected Thomas Corwin Governor, by a majority of nearly twenty thousand over Wilson Shannon, and it was evident that the triumphant election of Harrison and Tyler was inevitable. In New York William H. Seward was re-elected Governor, but he ran over seven thousand votes behind General Harrison, owing to certain local issues.
For some months before the election the Democrats mysteriously intimated that at the last moment some powerful engine was to be put into operation against the Whig cause. Mr. Van Buren himself was reported as having assured an intimate friend, who condoled with him on his gloomy prospects, that he "had a card to play yet which neither party dreamed of." The Attorney-General and the District Attorneys of New York and Philadelphia were as mysterious as Delphic oracles, while other Federal officers in those cities were profound and significant in their head-shakings and winks in reference to disclosures which were to be made just before the Presidential election, and which were to blow the Whigs "sky high."
At last the magazine was exploded with due regard to dramatic effect. Carefully prepared statements, supported by affidavits, were simultaneously published in different parts of the country, showing that a man named Glentworth had been employed by some leading New York Whigs in 1838 to procure illegal votes from Philadelphia. The men were ostensibly engaged in laying pipe for the introduction of Croton water.
Messrs. Grinnell, Blatchford, Wetmore, Draper, and other leading New York Whigs implicated promptly published affidavits denying that they had ever employed Glentworth to supply New York with Whig voters from Philadelphia. It was proven, however, that he had received money and had taken some thirty Philadelphians to New York the day before the election. There was no evidence, however, that more than one of them had voted, and the only effect of the disclosure was to add the word "pipe-laying" to the political vocabulary.
The Whigs fought their battle to the end with confidence of success, and displayed an enthusiasm and harmony never witnessed in this country before or since. Commencing with the harmonious selection of General Harrison as their candidate, they enlisted Clay and Webster, his defeated rivals, in his support, and, having taken the lead, they kept it right through, really defeating the Democrats in advance of the campaign. The South were not satisfied with Mr. Van Buren's attitude on the admission of Texas, which stood knocking for admission at the door of the Union, and "the Northern man with Southern principles" was not the recipient of many Southern votes:
"Then hurrah for the field where the bald eagle flew,
In pride o'er the hero of Tippecanoe!"
[Facsimile] Tho. Corwin THOMAS CORWIN was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, July 29th, 1794; was a Representative in Congress from Ohio from December 5th, 1831, to 1840, when he resigned and was elected Governor of Ohio; was defeated for Governor of Ohio in 1842; was a Senator from Ohio from December 1st, 1845, to July 22d, 1850, when he resigned, having been appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Taylor, and served until March 3d, 1853; was again a Representative in Congress from Ohio, December 5th, 1859, to March 3d, 1861; was Minister to Mexico, March 22d, 1861, to September 1st, 1864; died suddenly at Washington City, December 18th, 1865.