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.