“The Most Remarkable Political Contest Ever Known”
How the 1840 election paved the way for the future of American politics
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Some presidential elections live on in our collective memory because of how they tilted the direction of the country: the 1860 win by Abraham Lincoln that sparked a Civil War, or the 1932 landslide that ushered in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, to name just two examples. Then there are those elections that are hugely consequential in their own time but are now barely mentioned in the history books.
Cue the presidential election of 1840.
This isn’t a contest that is widely known or talked about these days, but in real time John Quincy Adams declared it to be “a revolution in the habits and manners of the people.”1 And a half-century later, one author was still calling it “the most remarkable political contest ever known.”2 Indeed, it changed presidential politics in ways almost no one would have dared predict when the campaign began.
The contest pitted the incumbent president, the Democrat Martin van Buren of New York, against his Whig challenger, William Henry Harrison of Ohio. Van Buren was running for re-election in a country that had been decimated by the Panic of 1837, an economic collapse that erupted only weeks after his inauguration and left him with the unfortunate nickname of “Martin Van Ruin.”
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Log cabins, hard cider, and Tippecanoe
Still, the Democrats were somewhat confident in their ability to re-elect Van Buren because he’d already defeated Harrison once before, in the 1836 contest. Also, while Harrison was a former Senator and a war hero, at nearly 68 he was in line to be the oldest president ever elected to that point in American history. It was this line of thinking that led Democrats to mock him as “Granny Harrison.”
The Baltimore Republican newspaper reported that one opponent disparaged Harrison this way:
“Give him a barrel of hard cider, and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and … he will sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin, by the side of a ‘sea-coal’ fire and study moral philosophy.”3
That seemingly innocuous piece of reporting, believe it or not, was the kindling for a political inferno that forever changed presidential campaigns.
Instead of defending Harrison against the attacks, the Whigs transformed him into Old Tip, a soldier and frontier farmer who indeed lived in a log cabin, swilled hard cider and wanted to return government to the people. This was in comparison to Van Buren, whom they portrayed as an elitist, ensconced in a palatial White House and unconcerned with the problems of the common man.
The truth was that Harrison had been born to a wealthy family in Virginia with a father who’d signed the Declaration of Independence. Family friends George Washington and John Adams gave him his first military commission and his earlier job as Governor of the Indiana Territory. Moreover, when the 1840 campaign kicked off, Harrison lived in a 22-room home overlooking the Ohio River. Van Buren, on the other hand, was the son of a tavern owner who had worked his way from nothing up to the presidency.
But the Whig strategy succeeded brilliantly in framing the images of the candidates. The log cabin quickly became a symbol for Harrison’s campaign and came to represent the average person agitating for change in U.S. politics.
Soon, the Whigs were organizing campaign rallies that attracted tens of thousands of people, who would spend a day eating, dancing, and drinking hard cider. They also made huge campaign balls, 10 or more feet in diameter, and rolled them in parades, or in between towns (prompting the saying, “keep the ball rolling”), while singing:
What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball-a-rolling on,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.4
Ah yes, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” Since Harrison (who was renowned for the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe) was paired with a vice-presidential candidate by the name of John Tyler (a former Senator and Governor of Virginia), the Whigs in 1840 also managed to conceive of one of the most memorable campaign slogans in presidential history.
On top of that, the Harrison campaign also sold an eclectic mix of campaign paraphernalia, everything from Tippecanoe shaving cream to log cabin songbooks, coffee cups, and whiskey bottles.
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The advent of presidential branding
Why did all this matter? Because it was the birth of the idea of presidential campaigns as vehicles for entertainment and brand marketing. Previously, it was seen as utterly beneath the dignity of presidential candidates to promote themselves.
This move toward the marketing of presidential candidates would surely have happened eventually, but it was still a political revolution for 1840. The Democrats during the Andrew Jackson era had become experts in organizing rallies, volunteers, and media, but they were taken by surprise when the Whigs added the element of political branding to campaigns.
Additionally, Harrison even gave a couple dozen talks along the way, partly to refute Democratic attacks on him as a feeble old man. He rarely discussed issues, but nevertheless made history as the first presidential candidate to give his own campaign speeches. This was at a time when presidential hopefuls traditionally went out of their way to not appear too eager for the office. Combined with the branding and marketing of Harrison, it’s no wonder John Quincy Adams called the campaign a “revolution.”
The Whigs, meanwhile, also succeeded in painting Van Buren as a pampered, out-of-touch aristocrat. He was really nothing of the sort -- again, having grown up the working class son of a tavern owner – but the attacks resonated among voters who were hurting economically.
The Democrats struggled to fight back. When their defenses of Van Buren fell on deaf ears, they tried to turn the hard cider symbol back against Harrison with this song, to the tune of “rock-a-bye baby.”
Hush-a-bye baby, Daddy’s a Whig
When he comes home, hard cider he’ll swig
When he has swug, He’ll fall in a stu
And down will come Tyler and Tippecanoe.5
None of it worked. The Whigs’ personality-driven campaign, combined with the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, propelled Harrison to an easy victory. He won the popular vote by 53-47% and the electoral tally 234-60.
Then there was an unexpected postscript to the election, as Harrison soon caught pneumonia and died. After all the ferment of the Harrison campaign, the new president lasted just one month in office.
Still, it was the 1840 election that set the stage for the branding of presidents to become commonplace. Future elections would give us everything from “Abe Lincoln the Rail Splitter” and “I Like Ike” to “Make America Great Again.” Nowadays we can’t even imagine a candidate who doesn’t have an image-making strategy. And it all harkens back to the campaign strategists of 1840.
This essay was written for Substack, but parts of it were adapted from my book, Quest for the Presidency: The Storied and Surprising History of Presidential Campaigns in America (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2022).
Stefan Lorant, The Glorious Burden: The History of the Presidency and Presidential Elections From George Washington to James Earl Carter, Jr. (Lenox, Massachusetts: Authors Edition, 1976), 160.
A. Banning Norton, The Great Revolution of 1840: Reminiscences of the Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign (Mount Vernon, Ohio: A.B. Norton & Co., 1888).
Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 497-98, and Lorant, The Glorious Burden, 157.
Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 67.
Ronald G. Shafer, The Carnival Campaign: How the Rollicking 1840 Campaign of “Tippecanoe and Taylor Too” Changed Presidential Elections Forever (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2016), 125.