The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-21
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS.

| Inc natlOnal campaign luiS year IL suiS
| TO be duller even than that of 1888. Our
| presidential years are becoming duller
than in former times. This is due to
two causes-the greater general intelli-
| gence OF the people and the absence OF
those purely moral issues that formerly
made each canvass one of extreme excite
ment and imprisoned rhetoric. The adj
vent of Jackson was signalized by the first
'red-hot" campaign for the presidency.
| Jackson's arbitrary temper, his passionate
and pugnacious individuality, communi-
| Gated itself to his partisans; his aggressive
| language and methods had become popu-
lar; his military record afforded an oppor-
| tunity to the demagogues to beat the
drum and blow the trumpet, and his
incessant struggles with congress kept the
public mind constantly at fever heat and
the party music st concert pitch.
In 1910 Harrison's small military fame
was skillfully exaggerated, and his virtues
and eccentricties. as type of the Western
pioneer, were sung and shou ted in the
ears of the people until the nation seemed
to become fairly drunk with enthusiasm
for an old Indian fighter of no particular
consequence either in thought or action.
The thrilling eloquence and fascinating
personality of Henry Clay made the cam
paign of 1874 warm struggle on the part
of the Wings. carrying men of the sobriety
of Greeley and Lincoln completely off
their feet. In 1913 the war drum was
again beaten for Taylor. and the factional
fight between Cass and Van Buren, in New
York brought out an enormous vote. In
1852 the election was comparatively dull.
The Wings could not wake up any enthu-
siasm for Scott as military hero, and the
South washed its hands of the Wings,
who had neither the immoral courage to
swallow slavery and swear they loved it,
or the moral courage to curse it without
qualification and take an appeal to the
country.
The Wings were dissolved by their ter
rible defeat in 1882, but by 1856 a new and
vigorous party had sprung into life, armed
from birth with 8 moral issue. viz: unre-
lenting constitutional opposition to the
extension of slavery. Heretofore popular
enthusiasm had crystallized around the
man Jackson, or Clay, or Harrison, but
in 1856, for the FIST time in the history of
the country, it WAS excited by the presen-
tation of a great moral as we'll as economic
principle. The man Fremont was really
of small intellectual or moral weight, and
of slight permanent political consequence,
but the measures and purposes behind the
do no liNa ~ fri
and puissant from its birth. The cam
paign of 1856 approached more nearly that
of $40 than any campaign before or since
IN its wonderful enthusiasm, which was
sustained with passionate energy
from the day of nomination to that of Re-
publican defeat. The proof of its revoIu-
tionary enthusiasm is found in the
fact that while the Democrats in 1852
carried Connecticut, iowa. Maine, New
Hampshire. Michigan, New York, Rhode
Island, Ohio and Wisconsin they lost all
those states in 1876. aud in Pennsylvania
Buchanan had but OPS majority and in
| Indiana hut 1909. This campaign WAS
vocal with the rolling drums and war
songs of politics from first TO last, and
there has been nothing like it since for
music, torches. song, speech, and all the
subordinate scenery of brilliant political
| strife.
The campaign Of 1860 was less noisy and
| brilliant than that of 1856, which was like
| the whirlwind of a charge of splendid
| light horsemen, 4 field filed with the
sound of war bugles and clashing steel,
! but it was fought with intense energy and
! bitterness from May 10, 1850, when Lincoln
| was nominated, 70 his election. The CAM
! paigu of lS61 was a steady. silent, resist
| less movement along the whole line OF Re-
| publican battle. The voters did not
| march and sing and shout as they did in
| 1870 or iSj6. bat they were wrought up to
| more intense feeling on both sides than in
| any political campaign in our history.
| Fewer shots were fired at random;
/ it was like foot TO foot. breast
| TO breast, bitter bayonet fight at close
| quarters. and the feeling was so wrathful
on both sides thar the subsequent exulo-
sion in civil war ought not to have aston
ished anybody. The North had been
enraged by the beating of Sumner, by the
| Kansas atrocities. by the bullying planta-
| ton manners of the South in debate, and
| the carrying of tie outer line in 1855 had
| given 4 taste of coming triumph, so that
| the Republicans moved forward in 1850 as
! full of hope as of wrath. while the Democ-
racy went into battle full of gloomy fore
| bodings and fought with the sullen cour-
| age of despair
! There has been nothing in the history of
| our politics equal 10 the campaign of ls6a
| for the absolute earnestneSs and intense
| popular interest Involved Il was not A
| serio-comic campaign like that of 1870
| which, at this distance, looks like the Bum
mer's end Of political banquet Ii was
| not a dashing assault like the campaign of
| 1876. when the Republican party stuck
| that little GascOa Fremont in its cap. like
| a peacock's feather. and charged, sword in
| hand, with trumrets blowing far and wide
| IL was grim, SOLID advance in column, as
| moody, massive, silent and successful as
| that of Macdonald at Wagram. The man
| Lincoln, before his death, grew 10 figure
| that excited personal devotion. admiration
| and enthusiasm. but the man Lincoln was
| taken on trust ia 1860; his personality
| really had little 10 do with his success.
The rail splitter spisods of his life was