The Election of 1840: Hoopla!

Most of you probably only half-read the sections in the textbook about this election due to the irrelevant-sounding titles of "'Tippecanoe' Versus 'Little Van'" and "The Log Cabins and Hard Cider of 1840." However, this event did bear some historical significance (and a lot of irony).

Van Buren was renominated by the Democrats in 1840, despite his lack of popularity (his term in office was plagued with the Panic of 1837, to which he responded to poorly by issuing the Divorce Bill). His opponent, General Harrison, was elected by the Whigs at the prediction that he had the best shot of winning the vote. Although the Whigs were generally known as advocates for government intervention in economic revival, they published no platform or made commitments to any principles. Instead, the Whigs undertook a hoopla campaign of portraying Harrison as a farmer who had been sent to rid the government of corrupt Jacksonian spoilsmen. Whig propagandists gave false characters to both candidates, stating that Harrison was a lowborn common man and Van Buren was an aristocrat, even though their true descents were of the opposite. Thus began the frenzy of the Whig campaign in 1840. The election achieved an unprecedented intellectual low. Discussion of the issues was overrun by calls of "Harrison, Two Dollars a Day and Roast Beef." Harrison won big in the electoral vote. The Democrats, the stronger of the two parties, had been beaten in their own arena.

The election further solidified the two-party system: it heavily mounted the Democrats against the Whigs. In addition, Van Buren lost the election to a consequence of the New Democracy: the easy manipulation of the masses through propaganda. The Election of 1840 demonstrated the ascendency of a new kind of campaign, one in which the candidate's supporters bend the truth in order to capture the vote of the majority. This hoopla campaign set an unfortunate precedent.