The Whigs now became desperate: they saw that they must fight in earnest, and advanced to a man. The Butt-enders were stopped in their advance. Both parties wavered. Travis perceived that the decisive blow was now to be struck. Closing up to Lloyd, he came down on him "with an awk stroke," as the old romancers say, that fairly broke down his guard, and beat him back upon three or four of his followers, who all went over together. The Whigs raised a shout, made a rush forward, and by sheer weight hurled the Butt-enders down the staircase. After them poured the victors, with Travis at their head. The Irish shillelahs were nothing before his hickory: he knocked down or disabled a man at every blow. Still the Locos made a vigorous attempt to rally in the lower entry, but at that moment a reinforcement arrived for the Whigs, which completed their defeat. A band of Unionists (a Whig association formed in opposition to the Butt-enders) had been parading the streets with music and banners, and they now arrived in time to fall furiously on the rear of their antagonists. The Loco-Focos, thus hemmed in between two fires, were gloriously pommelled for about five minutes. At length, with a desperate charge, they broke through the Unionists, and fled precipitately down Broadway, while the band accompanied their retreat with the complimentary air of the "Rogue's March."
The victors re-assembled in the big room, somewhat diminished in numbers (even after the accession of the Unionists) and dilapidated in attire. Travis, who had been foremost throughout the whole row, bore especial marks of it on his person. His coat was slit down the back, and minus several buttons in front; his cravat utterly missing, and his shirt, so much of it as was visible, might possibly have made patches for a rifle, but was of no particular value as an article of dress. But such little incidents only served to increase the general hilarity of triumph. The meeting was reconstructed, the resolutions passed, and they wound off with a Harrison song—in fact, with two or three. It was near midnight before the walls of the Masonic Hall ceased to echo to such strains as these:—
To turn out the administration
Is the very best thing we can do;
'Twill be for the good of the nation
To put in old Tippecanoe.
Chorus all.
Hurrah for old Tippecanoe—oo—oo!
Hurrah for old Tippecanoe!
'Twill be for the good of the nation
To put in old Tippecanoe!
Notwithstanding the very demonstrative character of the row, no lives were lost or bones broken. Even Lloyd, though sadly trodden on by both parties after his fall, sustained no serious injury, nor did the combat of the cousins give rise to any permanent difficulty between them. The registry law was passed some weeks after, to the great disgust of the Loco-Focos, eight or nine hundred of whose voters were thereby placed on the list of unavailables.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] It is a mistake to suppose that the presidential election is always attended with great excitement. Monroe literally walked over the course for his second term. Martin Van Buren's election passed off very quietly; and General Taylor's, being taken almost as a matter of course, was accompanied by no extraordinary demonstrations.
[4] Now more than 600,000.
[5] This sobriquet, at first applied to a small fraction of the New-York democrats, which fraction afterwards absorbed the whole party, had its origin in the following incident: A quarrel occurring at Tammany Hall (the head-quarters of the democracy), the majority moved an adjournment, and, to make sure of it, put out the lights. The recusants, in anticipation of some such step, had provided themselves with lucifer matches, and, by their aid, re-lit the lamps, and continued the meeting. Lucifers were then called loco-focos—why, no one knows; the name was probably invented by some imaginative popular manufacturer of the article; and the appellation of Loco-Foco party was proposed in derision, for this small band of seceders; who, however, in time, brought over the original majority to their views. Hence the Whigs continued to apply the contemptuous designation to the whole democratic or radical party.