success was certain. Means of travel were not then what they are now. In every town and village through which the returning delegates passed, travelling by coach or carriage, they were met by crowds of men and congratulated upon the result of their labours. When they reached their homes they felt as though the battle were already won.

If it is not easy to account for the unpopularity of Van Buren, the popularity of Harrison furnishes a problem equally perplexing, unless carefully studied. It is certain that General Harrison was one of the plainest of men, and was not possessed of any great or shining talents. He was not an orator. In a public assemblage or in a deliberative body he was not to be compared with his defeated competitor at Harrisburgh, or with his defeated competitor at the election. But the people are generally wiser than their rulers. Perhaps the great popularity of William Henry Harrison lay in the fact that he was one of the people. He had exhibited courage, all good soldierly qualities. He had manifested a capacity for the conduct of public affairs. But he was modest, retiring, apparently satisfied with the vocation of a farmer. On the other hand, there was a feeling, widely spread over the country, that President Van Buren was an aristocrat; that he lived in grand and lofty style; that he ate his soup with a golden spoon; that the people were taxed to pay for this and other extravagant living. The opinion was general that the country was in danger of coming under the control of a "ruling class," whose power lay, not in talents, nor in services for the body politic at large, but in intrigue. They declined to make the fox a representative of their nationality.

However we may account for it, it is certain that Harrison's popularity was prodigious at the start, the people spontaneously sustained him,-and gained with every succeeding day, from his nomination to his election. It was increased rather than diminished by the nature of the assaults made upon him by orators and journals of the Democratic party. They ridiculed his military career, charging him with both imbecility and cowardice. They averred that he was an old dotard; a granny, who ought to wear a red flannel petticoat. Finally

an injudicious editor capped the climax of the universal partisan vituperation by saying: "Give him a log-cabin and a barrel of hard cider, and he will be content on his farm in Ohio, whose affairs only is he capable of managing." Never was unfortunate sentence so big in results. The taunt was taken up by the Whig journals and made use of as an argument to show that we did have a pretentious "ruling class,' who had become pampered with the long possession of political power, and looked down with sneering contempt upon the toiling millions. Not only so, but log-cabins and hard cider became prominent adjuncts in the campaign. Countless logcabins were raised at public meetings, and barrels of hard cider drank beyond all powers of computation.

Besides this opinion of the people, and it was substantially correct, that there was an attempt to foist upon them a ruling class, there were other causes of the political excitement, of the popular fine frenzy. We have seen how effective was The Jeffersonian campaign paper of 1838 under Mr. Greeley's control. In 1840, he established and conducted a paper which was for the whole republic what The Jeffersonian had been for the State of New York. This journal was, indeed, suggested -or, rather, a campaign journal was suggested-in a council of leading New York Whigs, consisting of Governor Seward, Thurlow Weed, and others, and Mr. Greeley was named as editor; but the enterprise, though thus endorsed and aided by favourable opinion, was his own. No contributions were asked or obtained. Mr. Greeley became both editor and publisher. A new partner whom he had secured about this time, frightened at the cheapness of the campaign paper, withdrew from the firm, so that Mr. Greeley was left to edit and publish both that and The New-Yorker,-a double labour which he performed without complaint not only, but with a cheerfulness whose rays of jolly fun penetrated every part of the Union.

The name of the new journal was The Log-Cabin. It was a large sized folio, and the terms to subscribers were: $5 for fifteen copies for the period of six months, being from May 1 to November 1. The publication of the first number was greeted with a rush of subscribers never before heard of. Of this

number 30,000 copies were printed, but they failed to supply the demand. The forms were again put on the press and 10,000 additional copies printed. These were rapidly exhausted, and there was still demand for more, but, the types having been distributed, it could not be supplied. The issues rapidly ran up to 80,000 copies, where they were perforce stopped, the limit of the concern's printing and publishing capacity being reached. Mr. Greeley long afterwards expressed the opinion that with the machinery of distribution by news companies, expresses, etc., subsequently brought in vogue, the issues of single numbers of The Log-Cabin might have reached a quarter of a million copies.

When The Log-Cabin first appeared, the political fervour of the times had begun to boil. And there never was finer fuel to keep political fervour boiling lively than The Log-Cabin. It was very different indeed from The Jeffersonian, being not only argumentative and courteous, but also lively, piquant, jolly, satirical. Here was no long-faced Puritan going to meeting, but a Puritan at home with his week-day clothes on, in a rollicking mood, and tolerably full of Londonderry hard cider. The prevailing excitement was caught up: fully represented by wood-cuts, in song (music accompanying), and in every way, then heard of: and to some extent intensified by each succeeding number of the paper. There are thousands of men now living in America, boys in 1840, who remember how eagerly The Log-Cabin was looked for during that ever memorable campaign, and how, upon its arrival, it was read by every member of the family old enough to read, and by many of the neighbours. It is safe to say that The Log-Cabin, what with old folks and young, had at least a million readers, and countless babies to be amused by "the pictures.

The political songs of the period did much also to keep alive the excitement. Indeed, it has been said by a popular writer, -Mr. Parton-that General Harrison was sung into the Presidential chair. If so much power cannot be justly attributed to the songs of the times, it is certain that they formed a very important element in the canvass. There was a Harrison glee

club in every neighbourhood; several in every town; many in every city. And it is a singular fact, that by early abuse of this glee-club line of political operations, the Democratic party was estopped from taking advantage of it. Toward the close of the campaign, the leaders saw that they had made a mistake, and undertook to rectify it by getting up what they called gleeclubs of their own. But, as Mr. Greeley might have said, it was no go. It was not the campaign for Democratic gleeclubs, or any sort of glee. The fun all came in on the other side from the start, and stayed there to the end. The lively music naturally belonged, during that remarkable year, to the Whigs, and they monopolized it. This was thunder which their opponents could not steal.

Many of the campaign songs originally appeared in The Log-Cabin. Not a few of them were no less comic in music than in words. The song-inaking and song-singing genius of the nation seemed to be all aroused for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." There were even political troubadours in those days; and many will recollect having been treated more than once, by some travelling singer on a stage-coach, while the horses were changing, to a number of "Tippecanoe" airs. The most universally sung of all the ballads of the time, perhaps, was the one beginning with the stanza:

"What has caused this great commotion-motion-motion
Our country through?

It is the ball a-rolling on

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too,

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too;

And with them we'll beat little Van;
Van, Van, Van is a used-up man,
And with them we'll beat little Van."

The original number of stanzas to this song was not very great, but they grew with the campaign, each event of importance being duly chronicled in a new stanza or two, usually published in The Log-Cabin and thus sent all over the country. For example, the result of the Whig triumph at the gubernatorial election in Maine, was done up, in no very sacred lines, as follows:

THOMAS CORWIN.

"O, have you heard how Maine went, went, went?
It went h-1 bent

For Governor Kent,

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too,

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too;

And with them we can beat any man,

Man, man, man of the Van Buren clan;
And with them we'll beat little Van."

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If there were a Democratic hickory-pole raising, and the pole broke; if there were a Democratic mass-meeting announced, and the masses failed to come, as they often did; if there were any disaster to the Democracy; or if there were any good fortune to the Whigs, it would not be midnight till the glee-clubs would have it, and away they would go seranading, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Hundreds of these political songs first appeared in Mr. Greeley's campaign paper. How many he himself wrote can never be known, perhaps, but he no doubt wrote a good many. There is no kind of composition more easy, and as it was now singularly effective it may be regarded as certain that he took all due advantage of it. But whatever may be the fact herein, it is certain that through The Log-Cabin he supplied the omnipresent glee-clubs with a large share of their songs, music inclusive.

And so the political cauldron kept on boiling, and getting hotter and hotter all the time. It was not only a canvass of remarkable campaign papers, and popular enthusiasm, and no end of songs, but also one which must be long noteworthy on account of its eloquence.

In General Harrison's own state, the Whig candidate for Governor was Thomas Corwin, "the wagon-boy of Ohio," as thousands of ribbon badges, with wood-cuts of his jolly face printed thereon, amply testified. Mr. Corwin was, perhaps, the most eloquent orator we have ever had in the United States, unless it may be thought that Sargent S. Prentiss may have equalled him in power before a public assembly. Mr. Corwin was master of every kind of oratory, and whether he was argumentative, grave, humourous, or what not, he held his audiences as if by enchantment, and never failed to convince many of the correctness of his views. Though he had not received the