Political Recollections | Page 3

Tyler.
Through the influence of early associations, I began my political life as
a Whig, casting my first presidential ballot for General Harrison, in
1840. I knew next to nothing of our party politics; but in the matter of
attending mass-meetings, singing Whig songs and drinking hard cider,
I played a considerable part in the memorable campaign of that year. So
far as ideas entered into my support of the Whig candidate, I simply
regarded him as a poor man, whose home was a log cabin, and who
would in some way help the people through their scuffle with poverty
and the "hard times"; while I was fully persuaded that Van Buren was
not only a graceless aristocrat and a dandy, but a cunning conspirator,
seeking the overthrow of his country's liberties by uniting the sword
and the purse in his own clutches, as he was often painted on the party
banners. In these impressions I was by no means singular. They filled
the air, and seemed to be wafted on every breeze. Horace Greeley's
famous campaign organ, "The Log Cabin," only gave them voice and
fitting pictorial effect, and he frankly admitted in later years that his
Whig appeals, with his music and wood engravings of General
Harrison's battle scenes, were more "vivid" than "sedately
argumentative." No one will now seriously pretend that this was a
campaign of ideas, or a struggle for political reform in any sense. It was
a grand national frolic, in which the imprisoned mirth and fun of the
people found such jubilant and uproarious expression that anything like
calmness of judgment or real seriousness of purpose was out of the
question in the Whig camp.
As regards party issues, General Harrison, singularly enough, was not a
Whig, but an old fashioned States-Rights Democrat of the Jeffersonian
school. His letters to Harmar Denny and Sherrod Williams committed
him to none of the dogmas which defined a Whig. No authentic
utterance of his could be produced in which he had ever expressed his
agreement with the Whig party on the questions of a protective tariff,
internal improvements, or a national bank. There was very high Whig
authority for saying that the bank question was not an issue of the
canvass, while Van Buren's great measure for separating the currency
from the banks became a law pending the Presidential struggle. In fact,

it was because no proof of General Harrison's party orthodoxy could be
found, that he was nominated; and the Whig managers of the
Harrisburg Convention felt obliged to sacrifice Henry Clay, which they
did through the basest double-dealing and treachery, for the reason that
his right angled character as a party leader would make him unavailable
as a candidate. As to John Tyler, he was not a Whig in any sense. It is
true that he had opposed the removal of the deposits, and voted against
Benton's expunging resolutions, but on all the regular and recognized
party issues he was fully committed as a Democrat, and was, moreover,
a nullifier. The sole proof of his Whiggery was the apocryphal
statement that he wept when Clay failed to receive the nomination,
while his political position was perfectly understood by the men who
nominated him. There was one policy only on which they were
perfectly agreed, and that was the policy of avowing no principles
whatever; and they tendered but one issue, and that was a change of the
national administration. On this issue they were perfectly united and
thoroughly in earnest, and it was idle to deny that on their own showing
the spoils alone divided them from the Democrats and inspired their
zeal.
The demand of the Whigs for a change was well-founded. Samuel
Swartwout, the New York Collector of Customs, had disgraced the
Government by his defalcations; and, although he was a legacy of Mr.
Van Buren's "illustrious predecessor," and had been "vindicated" by a
Senate committee composed chiefly of his political opponents, he was
unquestionably a public swindler, and had found shelter under Mr. Van
Buren's administration. He was the most conspicuous public rascal of
his time, but was far from being alone in his odious notoriety. The
system of public plunder inaugurated by Jackson was in full blast, and
an organized effort to reform it was the real need of the hour; but here
was the weak point of the Whigs. They proceeded upon the perfectly
gratuitous assumption that the shameless abuses against which they
clamored would be thoroughly reformed should they come into power.
They took it for granted that a change would be equivalent to a cure,
and that the people would follow them in thus begging the very
question on which some satisfactory assurance was reasonably required.
They seemed totally unconscious of the fact that human nature is

essentially the same