As the Democrats were almost unanimously in favor of the renomination of Van Buren, it was not difficult to manage their convention of that year. Nor was the platform the occasion of any serious disagreement. It stated for the first time that the party was opposed to internal improvements, a protective tariff, and the assumption of the debts of bankrupt States. In all these the West was much interested. But on the subject of slavery it was definitely declared that the Federal Government had no power of interference. For the last time in the history of the ante-bellum Democracy, the Declaration of Independence was declared to be an item of the party faith. Van Buren took many risks in this un-Western program; though the panic of 1837 was doubtless his heaviest burden, as the Whigs never tired of asserting and repeating.
The Whigs met in convention at Harrisburg in December, 1839. Divided on the great questions of the day, they feared to nominate their one masterful leader, and in weak imitation of the Jackson men of 1828 turned to William Henry Harrison, a frontier general of no great ability or reputation. John Tyler, a Virginia politician of the Calhoun school, was made the candidate for the Vice-Presidency. On the matter of a program it was impossible for the Whig groups to agree, and consequently they offered no platform at all. But the West received notice from the leaders that in the event of success, the debts of their States would be laid upon the broad shoulders of the Union and that internal improvements would be resumed. In the East the restoration of the National Bank and the renewal of the high tariff schedules of 1832 were the assurances of men like Webster and Clay. With differences so great dividing the opposition it was impossible to make a campaign on the issues of the time, serious as these were acknowledged to be.
The contest which followed was unlike any other in the history of the Union. “Hard cider,” “coon skins,” and “log cabins” became the slogans of the campaign, because once in his life General Harrison had lived in a cabin and “drunk the beverage of the common people.” Van Buren could not meet such cries. His canvass became a defense, and his followers half acknowledged their defeat when it was seen that the West rallied to Harrison. The plain citizen was carried off his feet, and he voted against the man in the White House who was said to use gold and silver on his table and dress himself before costly French mirrors. Nor was he certain in his more serious vein whether after all Jackson had not made a sad blunder in choosing the New York politician to carry out his policies. Without real argument or any serious presentation of the issues the Whigs, appealing to what were considered Western prejudices, built log cabins on the public squares, wore coonskin caps, and sang Van Buren out of office to the tune of “Typ and Ty,” “Little Van is a used-up man,” and other like vanities.
The result was an overwhelming victory for Harrison and Tyler, the President carrying only one New England State and Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois, and receiving only sixty electoral votes out of a total of 294. The popular vote was 2,400,000, almost twice as great as in any previous election. The people were learning to vote if nothing more. Van Buren and his lieutenants, including Calhoun, were chagrined and humiliated. The West had returned the enemies of Jackson to power and, perhaps unintentionally, had written failure across the work of their “hero.” Thus Clay had turned the backwoodsmen and their methods against the original backwoods statesman, and brought about a restoration of the old régime. Nicholas Biddle and all his financial friends rejoiced. Webster and New England looked once again to a new era of protection; and the internal improvements men of the West and the up-country, having been overwhelmed by the panic in their various State undertakings, turned their expectations once more toward the National Treasury. The manufacturing and the financial interests had in reality come into control again, and with the assistance of the plain people of the back-country. Clay had been the architect of the new structure, while Jackson and Calhoun mourned alike the defeat of Van Buren.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Edwin M. Shepard's Life of Martin Van Buren, in American Statesmen series is the best study of the Van Buren Administration. J. Schouler's History of the United Slates, vol. IV; G. S. Callender's Selections from the Economic History of the United States (1909); G. S. Callender's Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 17; W. A. Scott's Repudiation of State Debts (1893), and the biographies and other works cited at the close of the last chapter will give the reader material for further study.
Robert Mayo's Political Sketches of Eight Years in Washington (1839); Mrs. M. B. Smith's First Forty Years of Washington Society (Hunt, 1906); and J. F. H. Claiborne's The Life and Times of General Sam Dale (1860) present most interesting pictures of men and manners. For railroad, canal, and banking ventures, J. L. Ringwalt, Development of Transportation Systems; W. F. Gephart, Transportation and Industrial Development in the Middle West; J. P. Dunn, Indiana, Rufus King, Ohio, T. M. Cooley, Michigan, in American Commonwealths series; Thomas Ford, History of Illinois (1854); J. F. H. Claiborne, History of Mississippi (1880); W. C. Brewer, Alabama, Her History, Resources, etc. (1872); and J. G. Baldwin, The Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi (1853).