Much has been written of the historic campaign of 1840. The enthusiasm has been called "frenzy" and "crazy fanatacism." It has also been likened to the crusading spirit, aroused by the preaching of Peter the Hermit. "The nation," said Clay, "was like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible storm." Webster declared that "every breeze says change; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." Long before campaigns usually begin New York was a blaze of excitement. Halls were insufficient to hold the crowds. Where hundreds had formerly assembled, thousands now appeared. The long lines of wagons, driven to the meeting places, raised clouds of dust such as mark the moving of armies. The Whig state convention at Utica became a mass-meeting of twenty-five thousand people, who formed into one great parade. "How long is this procession?" asked a bystander of one of the marshals. "Indeed, sir, I cannot tell," was the reply. "The other end of it is forming somewhere near Albany."
The canvass became one of song, of association, and of imagination, which aroused thoughts that were intensely animating and absorbing. The taunt of a Virginia newspaper that Harrison should remain in his log cabin on the banks of the Ohio made the log cabin "a symbol," as Weed happily expressed it, "of virtue that dwells in obscurity, of the hopes of the humble, of the privations of the poor, of toil and danger, of hospitality and charity and frugality." Log cabins sprang up like gourds in a night. At the door, stood the cider barrel, and, hanging by the window, the omnipresent coonskin swayed in the breeze. They appeared on medals, in pictures, in fancy work, and in processions. Horace Greeley, who had done so much in 1838 through the columns of the Jeffersonian, now began the publication of the Log Cabin, filling whole sides of it with songs elaborately set to music, and making it so universally popular that the New York Tribune, established in the following year, became its legitimate successor in ability and in circulation.
In his biography of Henry Clay, Schurz says that in no presidential canvass has there ever been "less thought." It is likely if there had been no log cabins, no cider, no coon-skins, and no songs, the result would have been the same, for, in the presence of great financial distress, the people seek relief very much as they empty a burning building. But the reader of the Log Cabin will find thought enough. Greeley's editorials summed up the long line of mistakes leading to the panic of 1837, and the people understood the situation. They were simply unwilling longer to trust the party in power.
Evidence of this distrust astonished Democrats as much as it pleased the Whigs. The September election in Maine, followed in October by the result in Ohio and Indiana, both of which gave large Whig majorities, anticipated Harrison's overwhelming election in November. In New York, however, the returns were somewhat disappointing to the Whigs. Harrison carried the State by thirteen thousand majority, receiving in all 234 electoral votes to 60 for Van Buren; but Seward's majority of ten thousand in 1838 now dropped to five thousand,[34] while the Whig majority in the Assembly was reduced to four.
Seward's weakness undoubtedly grew out of his message in the preceding January. With the approval of Dr. Knott of Union College, and Dr. Luckey, a distinguished Methodist divine, he recommended the establishment of separate schools for the children of foreigners and their instruction by teachers of the same faith and language. The suggestion created an unexpected and bitter controversy. Influential journals of both parties professed to see in it only a desire to win Catholic favour, charging that Bishop Hughes of New York City had inspired the recommendation. At that time, the Governor had neither met nor been in communication, with the Catholic prelate; but, in the excitement, truth could not outrun misstatement, nor could the patriotism that made Seward solicitous to extend school advantages to the children of foreign parents, who were growing up in ignorance, be understood by zealous churchmen.
After his defeat, Van Buren retired to Lindenwald, in the vicinity of Kinderhook, his native village, where he was to live twenty-one years, dying at the age of eighty. Lindenwald was an old estate, whose acres had been cultivated for one hundred and sixty years. William P. Van Ness, the distinguished jurist and orator, once owned it, and, thirty years before the ex-President bought it, Irving had secluded himself amidst its hills, while he mourned the death of his betrothed, and finished the Knickerbocker. As the home of Van Buren, Lindenwald did not, perhaps, become a Monticello or a Montpelier. Jefferson and Madison, having served eight years, the allotted term of honour, had formally retired, and upon them settled the halo of peace and triumph that belongs to the sage; but life at Lindenwald, with its leisure, its rural quiet, and its freedom from public care, satisfied Van Buren's bucolic tastes, and no doubt greatly mitigated the anguish arising from bitter defeat, the proscription of friends, and the loss of party regard which he was destined to suffer during the next decade.
CHAPTER IV
HUMILIATION OF THE WHIGS
1841-1842
The Whig state convention, assembled at Syracuse on October 7, 1842, looked like the ghost of its predecessor in 1840. The buoyancy which then stamped victory on every face had given place to fear and forebodings. Eighteen months had left nothing save melancholy recollections. Even the log cabins, still in place, seemed to add to Whig depression, being silent reminders of the days when melody and oratory, prophetic of success, filled hearts which could no longer be touched with hope and faith. This meant that the Whigs, in the election of 1841, had suffered a decisive defeat, losing the Assembly, the Senate, and most of the congressmen. Even Francis Granger, whose majority usually ran into the thousands, was barely elected by five hundred. Orleans County, at one time the centre of the anti-masonic crusade, sent Sanford E. Church to Albany, the first Democrat to break into the Assembly from the "infected district" since the abduction of William Morgan.