The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-09-03
THE GREAT CAMPAIGN OF 40
The Secret of the Enthusiasm Shown
for "fippecanoe and Tyler Too."
The Difference Between the Democrats of
50 and Wings of Eight Years Later
An Address to the Tppecanoe Club.

The Tippecanoe Club holds regular meetings
on the first Wednesday of every month, when
reports are made of the sick members and ad-
dresses on appropriate subjects delivered by
members selected at some previous meeting
The mayors court room is the club-room There
was an unusually full attendance yesterday and
two or three ladies were among the auditors.
The sitting was opened with prayer by Rev S..
T. Gillette, and after the reading and approval
of the minutes and the reports Of the sick and
their condition--Mr. Borgess. and James Loucks
were reported to be SC feeble that they ex-
pected never to be able to attend the club again
an address on the causes of the unusual politi-
cal excitement of the campaign Of 1910, was de-
ivered by B. r. Sulgrove. Mr.. Sulgrove said:
Gentlemen of the Tippecanoe Club: The
legend of the Pied Piper of Hameliu says that
one of the children that followed his piping. but
escaped to tell of it, declared that the music he
played had distinct utterance to every child,
promising all sorts of fur and fine things In the
place they going to, and it made an ire
sistable temptation to go along. The great po
litical movement of 1910, / have often thought,
had much of this quality of appealing to every
boys feelings in a strain adapted to each. Its
novelty and its marvellous success attested its
power to reach the feelings more effectually. and
to reach wider range of feelings than any po-
litical movement that had then ever occurred in
this country; and there must have been in it
pant appropriate it to himself as
something applying expressly to him.
don't think we have ever had o movement
stirred by the same influences since, and we
certainly had before. Political professions,
stump speeches to large popular meetings, were
common enough Party songs were not wholly
unknown. The Hunters of Kentucky" very
popular song of those days. was a hurran of
glory over the battle of New Orleans and its
hero. The French sang the Ca ira" and the
"Marseillaise" in their first revolution. The
English sang "Lilibaero" in 1858, and it's au-
thor boasted that he had sung the king off his
throne. So the Tppecanoe songs were not un-
precedented any more than the party process
sions and the parade of party symbols. But
still the political movement, though 1t laid hands
upon old appliances for its own uses,
was novel one. 1t originated in con-
ditlons that had never existed before.
and advanced upon lines followed
before, with frequency and force enough to be-
come familiar. Its direct growth from the time.
and the needs of the people is the explanation Of
its peculiar power of making every follower feel
personal interest in IT, ANY man will feel
some degree Of interest in a party that proposes
to mold public measures according to his views
of policy, but it need not be, and usually Is not,
a personal interest. He doesn't want it to fail,
but he is not going to fight his neighbor Smith
or his cousin Jones to make it succeed. His in
terest is not of that absorbing character. But
the interest reused by the Wing movement of
1910 was of just that intense and personal kind.
Men were ready and eager to work for it, and a
good many of them altogether too eager to fight
for it. They felt about it as Corsican a
Kentuckian feels about vendetta a family
feud. Their hearts and souls were in it well
as their judgments and political arguments.
This element of personality or of personal inter
est, was the distinguishing feature of the move
ment of 1910, and 1t was something new in the
political history of the country. There had
been as devoted adherents of the Democracy for
years before. but they were held by admiration
of General Jackson q man peculiarly adapted to
win and hold the affections of halfeivilized pio-
leers and backwoodsmen, whose admiration is
all reserved for personal prowess and pluck
They were Democrats because they worshiped
''Old Hickory" not because the Democracy was
opposed to national bank or Clays American
system, the prosecution of internal i'm
provements. They knew little of these and
cared less Without their idol they were just as
likely to be Wings as Democrats. This was not
the case with the Wings of 1910 and all who
joined their movement. They were attached to
General Harrison because ne was the enbodi-
ment of the party feeling and purpose. They
would have given equal devotion to any other
man fairly selected as the party's standard
bearer. He was patriotic man, a wise Gov
of our wild Territory and it's wilder natives,
a skillful general, m Oldest, honest, true man;
but he was not man to evoke such devotion as
qualities, Jackson did from his adherents.
He not Inferior but he was different The
Democratic devotee of 80 Democrat be-
cause he was q hero-worshiper The Wing of
40 was hero-worshiper because he was Wing.
When he roared ''Tippecanoe and Tyler, too"
he roared Tyler" as heartily as '"Tippecanoe,"
though he knew as little of John Tyler as he did
of Dick Johnson less, indeed. for the supposed
slayer OF Tecumseh was we'll known, and well
regarded, too, in State so largely settled by
KantuckiaDc The enthusiasm Of IN in
sense personal to the candidates There was
none of it in 1886 when Harrison was beaten by
Van Buren,. The candidates were the same, the
parties the same the leaders the same; but the
conditions were greatly changed four years
later They produced the enthusiasm that made
General Harrison. for the time. as much idol
of popular hero worship as General Jackson,
without making the party's devotion or energy
in the least degree dependent on It's personal re-
gard for him. They produced in each that
feeling alluded to at the outset. which made him
regard himself personally and especially
urged to join the movement for change or
political measures and restoration of business.
There were two conditions that were most
effective in molding the feeling and giving drec
ton to the action of the time Neither was in
any considerable degree derived from or depend
ent on the other. First, when Senator Oliver
ID. Smith made speech IN the old courthouse
on his return from Washington. shortly after
his removal to this city, | remember that he
characterized the especial peril of the govern
ment as "a tendency to consolidated executive
government. had no idea what that was. but
was sure that it was something dreadful A
United States senator awful being in my
eyes in those days. had never seen one before,
and listened to him with the absorbed atten-
ton of pupil of Plato to lecture on pre-
existent state. This great man thought our
government imperiled by tendency to the con-
sodation of power in the hands of the executive.
Here. however vague the description may have
been then, | atterward could see, lay one
of the primary causes of the movement
of 1910. Nobody feared a usurpation
of the Cromwell fashion, or coup d etat of the
second Napoleonic order but there was
feeling that the President was getting to be
too much of the government Van Buren,,
though an ADLER man in civil affairs than General
jackson, was the protege of the General, and
President solely by his preference If he had
been son Of the House CT jackson and succeed
ed by the right of birth he could not have been
more completely President by the act of his