The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-09-04

For Ttppecanoe and Tyler, too. Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.
 Van, Van.
 | Van is a used-up man:
 And with thom we'll beat little VanP The campaign of 1s40 is called the Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign | It all came about because of the com placent superiority of the Democrats Van Buren had beaten Harrison In 1886 and when the Wings turned down their great Clay and again nominated
 the venerable Harrison. the Demo crats could do nothing but laugh. Hav- | ing beaten Harrison once, they req soned that it was utterly impossible for them to be beaten by Harrison. l The sneers at the Whig candidate ap- peared in every Democratic paper. but Fit remained for the Baltimore Repub- l liean to say:
 sGive him barrel of hard cider. | and settle pension of $200o year | on him, and. my word for it, he will sit the remainder of hts days in his 1 log cabin. by the side of sea-coal fire.
 and study moral philosophy That l paragraph was not so cruel, perhaps. as the New York Evening Posts ap- l peal tc the ladies to send in second
 hand shoes and hats so that the pow
 erty-stricken Harrison might appear
 
 but 1t struck the whigs as utterly contemptible. Therefore, they turned the tables. took up the "hard elder" and log cabin sneers at their can didate and proclaimed to the world l that. as true Democrats, they were supporting n man who lived In q log cabin and drank hard cider--a third cincthnatus
 The Whigs, and their predecessors in opposition to the Democrats. had had excellent opportunity to judge of the efficacy of The Hero in politics. For four presidential campaigns Andrew Jackson had been unconquerable with
 the people. Tn 1896 Harrison had been a candidate, but ere was little refer ! ence to his war record. But in 1s40 he was put forth by his ardent follow CTS as real. true and genuine war hero. He was the hero of the Battle
 of the Thames. of the Battle of Fort
 Meigs, and he had overcome the | mighty chieftain, Tecumseh, at the Battle of Tippecance. The Democratic candidate for viee-president, Richard | H. Johnson. of Kentucky, had slain Tecumseh with his own hand. and Few Of the younger Democrats tried 1 to reta1iate with Johnson as a hero
 But 1t didn't SO Johnson was not l popular to begin with. and 1S40 was l distinctly not a Democratic year. The panic of 1887. brought on by
 over-speculation and too much conf
 dence in the great governmental pros perity as prop for individual pros l perfty, had reduced the nation to pow 1 erty. Men were out of work, bank deposits had been lost in bank wreelks and the country was in a terrible con dition. Whether rightly or wrongly | the party in power was held to be re- 1 sponsible and the Whig landslide was l inevitable.
 l When the whigs met at Harrisburg I there were three candidates: Henry Giay, the real soul of the party, Will
 liam Henry Harrison and Winfield l scotn Thaddeus Stevens made his first | entry into the realm of practical,---and dirty,-politics in this convention. He i was an anti-Mason and he soon con vinced the convention that it would
 be impossible to get the anti Mason
 vote Tor Clay. who was a Royal Arch
 Mason With Clay eliminated the race was between Scott and Harrison, both
 heroes of the war of 1872. Both were born in Virginia. as was Clay, and curiously enough. it required the vote or the Virginia delegation to settle the
 because he had a letter from Harrison because he had letter from ER rrison promlsing him cabinet position If
 Harrison was nominated and elected.
 Stevens also had a letter from c5ener- al scott written to Francis Granger in which Scott was flirting with the aboI itionist sentiment in New York with A view Of getting votes in the conven- fion. Stevens with careful carelessness. let this letter drop on the floor of the Virginia Headquarters room. If was found and read. Instantly the Virginia delegation solidified in support of Har- rison and he won the nomination. It was the first real fight for a nomination bv National Convention.
 Another remarkable feature of the a a af Lt of the Abolition Party, Its candidate tor Pres dent. James c. Birnev recaiv- ed s.h39 votes. mostly in New York and Massachusetts. but 1t was the begin hing of movement which brought about the political conditions which re- sulted in the civil war. the abolition of slavery and the re1hion 0f the States upon basis of acknowledged insep- arabic permanency.
 Anoth sr innovation of the campaign of fS40 was that William Henry Harri- son took the stump. It was contrary to all precedent and the Democrats af. fected to te shocked beyond wosis by the indecent spectacle of a candidate for President naturally pleading for votes on the musings. But the tour of Ohio and Indiana enabled Harrison to offset the charge that he was q mare puppet in the hands of po- litical schemers. and 1t turned the tide in his favor.
 One of the greatest political gather ings this country has ever seen was the Whig gathering at the battle-ground of Tippeeanoe near Lafayette, Ind. on May 20. 1s40. A log cabin had been built on the field and in it General liar rison received the veterans who had fought there under him against Te- cumseh. It was q great day and liar rison made a great speech. He then began his famous hand shaking tour nament. which, according to the popular belief at that time. caused his death one month after he was inaugurated Prea- ident. People came in wagons for more than 300 miles to the Tppecanoa meeting and there were 30.000 people there
 The campaign lie" reached it's height in this contest. Thurlew Weed, editor of The Albany Journal, was accused by The Albany Argus of having shaved the whiskers off a corpse to make it pass for the body of William Morgan, said to have been slain by the Masons. Gener- al Horrisc was accused of cowa acdico fin battle. and Democrats refused to believe that he was even present at the battle of Tippecanoe. Horace Greeley thundered denuBciations of the Demo- crats who were assiduously spreading the lie that General Harrison had voted to sell white men into slavery for debt.
 The great popular interest and ex- citement brought out the greatest vote ever cast up to that time the total be- ing nearly two and a half millions. Harrisons' majority of the popular vote was something less than 150,000 but he carried nineteen of the twenty-six