AUTUMN 1840. It seemed as if the American people had gone
mad. Across the land, bonfires and torchlight parades lighted
the night skies. Mobs chanted silly ditties to express their
purpose--"Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," or "Van, Van is a
used up man." The wildest election in the sixty-some years of
the history of the Republic was inspiring citizens to new
heights of humbuggery. "Politics," bewailed one college pro-
fessor, "indeed appear to swallow every other interest, and the
whole surface of the earth seems covered with politicians as
Egypt once swarmed with locusts." ¹

In this greatest of all campaigns yet seen, the Whigs were
making a superhuman effort to elect William Henry Harrison,
and thus to cast out of power the Democratic party, depriv-
ing Andrew Jackson's chosen heir, Martin Van Buren, of his
second term in the Presidency.

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