Evening star., 1927-05-30

" W moved Uncle Joe to say:
'Tippecanoe and Tyler,
Too is the first political battle cry
can remember. Tt tripped lightly on
the tongue and even a child could
shout it without knowing it's meaning.
I heard and sang it as our covered
wagon passed along the highways on
the trek from North Carolina to Indi-
ana when I was four years old. As
we emigrants travelled slowly over the
prairies we came in contact with the
most remarkable political demonstra-
tions that have ever been seen in this
country.
at was the famous campaign of
1870, which took it's place in history
as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider
campaign. The Whig candidate, Gen.
Harrison, was the idol of the West,
especially of Ohio and Indiana, where
he had been Governor of Indiana ter
ritory, Representative and Senator
from Ohio, and where he had defeated
the British Indians in 1911 at the bat
tie Of Tippecanoe. He was the great
commoner of the people of that sec
ton, while President Van Buren, ap-
peared to them as the representative
of aristocracy. Those Western Wings
believed that President Van Buren,
was in league with Europe and drank
only French champagne and lived in
luxury typical of the East and foreign
to the necessities and ideals of the
West, where log cabins We're the
houses of the people and hard cider
the popular beverage for merrymak- |
ing, and it had almost as much kick
as the Presidents champagne.
Hard Cider CIassed As Wine.
"Oh, yes, they had whisky which !
was made from their corn, but hard
cider was the wine of the country
and as closely associated with the log
cabin as corn pone and wild game |
for food. AS our little emigration |
train moved into the West it met this |
Whig enthusiasm for Gen. Harrison, |
which took new and strange shape |
with procession of log cabins on |
wagons surrounded with all the trap |
pings of the frontier, rifles and coon |
skins at the doors, and cider barrels |
with young women serving hard cider |
to old and young without a prophecy |
of the eighteenth amendment or the |
volstead law Quaker that l was. / |
learned and was permitted to sing:
Should plan log cabins be despised,
And neer regarded more?
Should plain Job cabins be despised, |
Our fathers built of yore?
Come, ye. whatever betide her,
To freedom have sworn to be true, !
Prime up with cup of hard cider,
And drink to Old Tippecanoe.
Quakers Join i'm Song.
"Strict temperance people as those |
Quakers were and very serious in |
their views of life. they caught the |
infection Of this Western political en- |
thusiasm and soon became a part of |
it as they emerged from the South |
into the Northwest across the Ohio |
River at Marietta.
For many years this was the first |
landmark of my recollections. 1t ap- |
peared to me that / had my beginning |
on the old National Pike in the hurry |
burly of the log cabin and hard cider
campaign. When our emigrant train
left Greensboro it was made up of Is
Quaker families from Guilford County,
but as it moved north into Virginia
other Quaker families Joined until we
had quite a respectable number. With |
a few State roads and none of them |
macadamized the natural movement |
was to the North to some point on |
the National road. It was the great |
connecting link between the East and |
the West, projected to hold the Mis- |
sissippi Valley and the country beyond |
in the Union. There were no railroads
in the West, not even to Pittsburgh, |
and the National Pike was the great |
highway along which the emigrant |
travelled as did Government agents, |
the mails and the stage coaches.
''That National Pike in 1910 was at
that time the most crowded thorough
fare in the country, with more life as
compared to the country than the
great White Way in New York now,
and more typical Americanism than
any place l know of at the present
time. There was brought together the
East and the West. the North and the