Part 9 (2/2)
In no presidential canva.s.s in America has there been, as Mr. Schurz well says in his life of Henry Clay, ”more enthusiasm and less thought” than in the Whig canva.s.s of 1840. The people were rus.h.i.+ng as from a long restraint. Wise saws about the duties of government had become nauseating. A plain every-day man administering a paternal and affectionate government was the ruling text, while Tyler and his strict construction quietly served their turn with some of the doctrinaires at the South. The nation, Clay said, was ”like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible storm.” There was what he called a ”rabid appet.i.te for public discussions.”
Webster's campaign speeches probably marked the height of the splendid and effectual flood of eloquence now poured over the land. The breeze of popular excitement, he said, with satisfactory magniloquence, was flowing everywhere; it fanned the air in Alabama and the Carolinas; and crossing the Potomac and the Alleghanies, to mingle with the gales of the Empire State and the mountain blasts of New England, would blow a perfect hurricane. ”Every breeze,” he declared, ”says change; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change.” He had not, indeed, been born in a log cabin, but his elder brothers and sisters had; he wept to think of those who had left it; and if he failed in affectionate veneration for him who raised it, then might his name and the name of his posterity be blotted from the memory of mankind. He touched the bank question lightly; he denounced the sub-treasury as ”the first in a new series of ruthless experiments,” and declared that Van Buren's ”abandonment of the currency” was fatal. Forgetting who had supported and who had opposed the continued distribution of surplus revenues among the States, he condemned the President for the low state of the treasury; and notwithstanding it declared his approval of a generous policy of internal improvements. He would not accuse the President of seeking to play the part of Caesar or Cromwell because Mr. Poinsett, his secretary of war, had recommended a federal organization of militia, the necessity or convenience of which, it was supposed, had been demonstrated by the Canadian troubles; but the plan, he said, was expensive, unconst.i.tutional, and dangerous to our liberties. He was careful to say nothing of slavery or the right of pet.i.tion. Only in brief and casual sentences did he even touch the charges that Van Buren had treated political contests as ”rightfully struggles for office and emolument,”
and that federal officers had been a.s.sessed in proportion to their salaries for partisan purposes. The President was pictured as full of cynical and selfish disregard of the people; he had disparaged the credit of the States; he had accused Madison, and, monstrous sacrilege, even Was.h.i.+ngton, of corruption. ”I may forgive this,” Webster slowly said to the appalled audience, ”but I shall not forget it;” such ”abominable violations of the truth of history” filled his bosom with ”burning scorn.” This was a highly imaginative allusion to Van Buren's statement that the national bank had been originally devised by the friends of privileged orders. Nor need the South, even Webster intimated, have any fear of the Whigs about slavery. Could the South believe that Harrison would ”lay ruthless hands on the inst.i.tutions among which he was born and educated?” No, indeed, for Was.h.i.+ngton and Hanc.o.c.k, Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts, had joined their thoughts, their hopes, their feelings. ”How many bones of Northern men,” he asked with majestic pathos, ”lie at Yorktown?” Senator Rives, now one of the Conservatives, said that Van Buren was indeed ”mild, smooth, affable, smiling;” but humility was ”young and old ambition's ladder.” The militia project meant military usurpation. Look at Cromwell, he said; look at Bonaparte. Were their usurpations not in the name of the people?
Preston of South Carolina said that Van Buren had advocated diminished wages to others; now he should himself receive diminished wages.
Harrison was, he said ”a Southern man with Southern principles.” As for Van Buren, this ”Northern man with Southern principles,” did he not come ”from beyond the Hudson,” had he not been ”a friend of Rufus King, a Missouri restrictionist, a friend and advocate of free negro suffrage?”
Clay said that it was no time ”to argue;” a rule his party for the moment well observed. The nation had already p.r.o.nounced upon the ravages Van Buren had brought upon the land, the general and widespread ruin, the broken hopes. With the mere fact of Harrison's election, ”without reference to the measures of his administration,” he told the Virginians at Hanover, ”confidence will immediately revive, credit be restored, active business will return, prices of products will rise; and the people will feel and know that, instead of their servants being occupied in devising measures for their ruin and destruction, they will be a.s.siduously employed in promoting their welfare and prosperity.”
All this was far more glorious than the brutally true advice of the old man with a broad-axe on his shoulders, whom the Democrats quoted. When asked what was to become of everybody in the heavy distress of the panic, he answered, ”d.a.m.n the panic! If you would all work as I do, you would have no panic.” The people no longer cared about ”the interested few who desire to enrich themselves by the use of public money.” If, as the Democrats said, the interested few had been thwarted, an almost universal poverty had for some reason or other come with their defeat.
Perhaps the reflecting citizen thought that he might become, if he were not already, one of the ”interested few.” Nor was the demagogy all on the side of the Whigs, although they enjoyed the more popular quality of the quadrennial product. Van Buren himself, in the futile fas.h.i.+on of aging parties which suppose that their ancient victories still stir the popular heart, recalled ”the reign of terror” of the elder Adams, and how the ”Samson of Democracy burst the cords which were already bound around its limbs,” how ”a web more artfully contrived, composed of a high protective tariff, a system of internal improvements, and a national bank, was then twined around the sleeping giant” until he was ”roused by the warning voice of the honest and intrepid Jackson.”
Harrison's own numerous speeches were awkward and indefinite enough; but still they showed an honest and sincere man, and in the enthusiasm of the day they did him no harm.
The revolts against the severe party discipline of the Democracy, aided by the popular distress, were serious. Calhoun, indeed, had returned; but all his supporters did not return with him. The Southern defection headed by White in 1836 was still most formidable, and was now reenforced by the Conservative secession North and South. Even Major Eaton forgot Van Buren's gallantry ten years before, and joined the enemy. The talk of ”spoils” was amply justified; but the abuses of patronage had not prevented Jackson's popularity, and under Van Buren they were far less serious. This cry did not yet touch the American people. The most serious danger of ”spoils” still lay in the future.
Patronage abuses had injured the efficiency of the public service, but they had not yet begun to defeat the popular will. Jackson came resolutely to Van Buren's aid in the fas.h.i.+onable letter-writing. ”The Rives Conservatives, the Abolitionists and Federalists” had combined, the ex-President vivaciously said, to obtain power ”by falsehood and slander of the basest kind;” but the ”virtue of the people,” he declared in what from other lips would have seemed cant, would defeat ”the money power.” Van Buren's firmness and ability ent.i.tled him, he thought, to a rank not inferior to Jefferson or Madison, while he rather unhandsomely added that he had never admired Harrison as a military man.
The Whig campaign was highly picturesque. Meetings were measured by ”acres of men.” They gathered on the field of Tippecanoe. Revolutionary soldiers marched in venerable processions. Wives and daughters came with their husbands and fathers. There were the barrel of cider, the c.o.o.n-skins, and the log cabin with the live racc.o.o.n running over it and the latch-string hung out; for Harrison had told his soldiers when he left them, that never should his door be shut, ”or the string of the latch pulled in.” Van Buren meantime, with an aristocratic sneer upon his face, was seated in an English carriage, after feeding himself from the famous gold spoons bought for the White House. Harrison was a hunter who had caught a fox before and would again; one of the county processions from Pennsylvania boasted, ”Old Mother c.u.mberland--she'll bag the fox.” Illinois would ”teach the palace slaves to respect the log cabin.” ”Down with the wages, say the administration.” ”Matty's policy, fifty cents a day and French soup; our policy, two dollars a day and roastbeef.” Newspapers were full of advertis.e.m.e.nts like this: ”The subscriber will pay $5 a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected, and $2.50 if Van Buren is.”
But the songs were most interesting. The ball, which Benton had said in his last speech on the expunging resolution that he ”solitary and alone”
had put in motion, was a mine of similes. They sang:
”With heart and soul This ball we roll.”
”As rolls the ball, Van's reign does fall, And he may look To Kinderhook.”
”The gathering ball is rolling still, And still gathering as it rolls.”
Harrison's battle with the Indians gave the effective cry of ”Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” And so they sang:
”Farewell, dear Van, You're not our man; To guard the s.h.i.+p, We'll try old Tip.”
”With Tip and Tyler We'll burst Van's biler.”
”Old Tip he wears a homespun suit, He has no ruffled s.h.i.+rt--wirt--wirt; But Mat he has the golden plate, And he's a little squirt--wirt--wirt.”
When the election returns began to come from the August and September States, the joyful excitement pa.s.sed all bounds. Then the new Whigs found a new Lilliburlero. To the tune of the ”Little Pig's Tail” they sang:
”What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion, Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too!
”And with them we'll beat little Van, Van; Van is a used-up man.
Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine, All honest and true?
One thousand for Kent and seven thousand gain For Tippecanoe,” etc.
And then Joe Hoxie would close the meetings by singing ”Up Salt River.”
The result was pretty plain before November. New Hamps.h.i.+re, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Virginia voted for state officers in the spring. All had voted for Van Buren in 1836; all now gave Whig majorities, except New Hamps.h.i.+re, where the Democratic majority was greatly reduced. In August North Carolina was added to the Whig column, though in Missouri and Illinois there was little change. But when in September Maine, which had given Van Buren nearly eight thousand majority, and had since remained steadfast, ”went h.e.l.l-bent for Governor Kent” and gave a slight Whig majority, the administration's doom was sealed.
Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van Buren 60. New York gave Harrison 13,300 votes more than Van Buren; but a large part of this plurality, perhaps all, came from the counties on the northern and western borders. Only one Northern State, Illinois, voted for Van Buren.
Of the slave States, five, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas, were for Van Buren; the other eight for Harrison. There was a popular majority in the slave States of about 55,000 against Van Buren in a total vote of about 695,000, and in the free States, of about 90,000 in a total vote of about 1,700,000, still showing, therefore, his greater popular strength in the free States. The increase in the popular vote was the most extraordinary the country has ever known, proving the depth and universality of the feeling. This vote had been about 1,500,000 in 1836; it reached about 2,400,000 in 1840, an increase of 900,000, while from 1840 to the Clay canva.s.s of 1844 it increased only 300,000. Van Buren, as a defeated candidate in 1840, received about 350,000 votes more than elected him in 1836; and the growth of population in the four years was probably less, not greater, than usual.
<script>