It seemed to me no one was very clear about the issues. General Harrison was a decided favorite, and even now it seems a matter of wonderment that he did not go in by acclaim. We of the frontier had a stronger regard for him than the Eastern States. They were more cultivated and leaned to the social instead of the military aspect.
There were quarrels and not a few open brawls where pistols were used. Then came the great day of voting, and whiskey and betting were rampant. Chicago had improved a little on the old time, when all letters and news had been brought from Niles, Michigan, by a hardy half-breed, only once a fortnight. Still, the tidings were slow in reaching us. And when it came—Martin Van Buren was elected President of the United States of America. There was great rejoicing among the Democrats. Bonfires were built out on the prairies; they were forbidden in the town.
Indeed, there were a number of laws termed "The Ten Commandments," though some of them were not kept much better than the Mosaic Code. Pigs were not to wander in the streets, men were not to shoot off firearms in the limits, but they did. A stovepipe was not to run through a board partition, as if the city fathers had a premonition that fire would some day work a havoc. There was to be no horse racing in the streets, cards and dice were not to be played in taverns after ten o'clock.
I was much interested to know how Mr. Gaynor would take it. He was by no means a red-hot politician, and though he had decided views he seldom allowed himself to wrangle, but turned off an argument with a joke or some humorous comparison.
"Pity it isn't spring," he said dryly, "for then we could go to work and be sure of a long summer. Now we will be frozen up before you know it. I s'pose your folks are shouting. Well go ahead and have all the hurrahing that you can. It's a long lane that hasn't any turning, and ours has been pretty long. I think I see the turn four years ahead," with a funny twinkle in his left eye.
"I don't see that the President has so much power," I subjoined. I belonged to a debating society now, and we were discussing the affairs of the country. "He can veto. Then he has a cabinet to advise him—"
"Well, he doesn't when you come to that, but I observe that he has to shoulder the blame of an unfortunate administration. I wouldn't give a fig for your President, but I do hope Congress will do a little for us. Those Eastern fellows haven't an idea of what this section is going to be. They think they have the whole Atlantic Ocean and trade, and some day we'll have to feed them, keep them from starving. Why, the wheat fields will be the wonder of the world fifty years hence."
He was buying prairie land and seeding it to grain, planting corn and feeding pigs.
I remember his telling mother one time about election cake that the Eastern housekeepers made to treat their friends.
"'Twould take a mighty sight to go round here," said mother.