was not only ridiculous, but they could not themselves even believe in the truth of the statement.1 That election frauds occurred on both sides is very probable. This was a charge which the parties had for years laid at each other's door,2

year

five, six, seven, eight, nine, hundreds, the whole number of males above the age of twenty-one, as ascertained by the census of the same we cannot but confess the force of the opinion to which we have referred, which ascribes the general result to simple fraud in the election, as singly sufficient, and as alone adequate, to explain all the incomprehensible mystery attaching to it." Similarly C. C. Clay, of Alabama, in his letter of resignation of the 12th of November, 1841. Niles, LXI, p. 219.

1 Benton writes: "He [Van Buren] seemed to have been abandoned by the people! On the contrary, he had been unprecedently supported by them-had received a larger popular vote than ever had been given to any president before! and three hundred and sixty-four thousand votes more than he himself had received at the previous presidential election when he beat the same General Harrison fourteen thousand votes. Here was a startling fact, and one to excite inquiry in the public mind. How could there be such overwhelming defeat with such an enormous increase of strength on the democratic side? This question pressed itself upon every thinking mind; and it was impossible to give it a solution consistent with the honor and purity of the elective franchise. For, after making all allowance for the greater number of voters brought out on this occasion than at the previous election by the extraordinary exertions now made to bring them out, yet there would still be required a great number to make up the five hundred and sixty thousand votes which General Harrison received over and above his vote of four years before. The belief of false and fraudulent votes was deep-seated, and, in fact, susceptible of proof in many instances." Thirty Years' View, II, p. 207. Here not a word is said of the fact that in 1836 Van Buren and Harrison were only two of five candidates, and that White, Webster and Mangum received, together, no fewer than sixty-one electoral votes. Benton could not have forgotten this. His exposition must make on the not accurately instructed reader the impression that this silence looks very much like a conscious and intentional falsification of history.

2 "I will state, in brief, that the returning officers and judges of elections, friendly to the administration, have been publicly accused (1838), upon ample testimony, of making false returns, and of otherwise showing foul play in the late elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. And doubtless the same practices exist elsewhere, under the same vicious

THE OPPOSITION WINS.

403

and men who were not actuated by party spirit considered it only too well founded.1 But to wish to charge that the opposition in this election had cast one hundred and fortyfour thousand fraudulent votes more than the democrats was evidently absurd. The opposition had no reason, on this account, to fear that the scales would turn again the next time, because it would be better understood how to watch them closely. The "revolution" in public opinion of which it had had so much to say, was not of great importance, spite of the enthusiasm and the large majorities. It now, in the first moment of intoxication, forgot everything, but during the electoral campaign its leaders had whispered into each other's ears that the people were being "humbugged;"" and now, too, that all the opponents of

66

patronage announced by Mr. Buchanan.' R. Mayo, Political Sketches of Eight Years in Washington, p. 38. Although I know of no instance of any individual coming from another state into ours to vote, yet I have been informed, from sources in which I place the utmost reliance, that extensive arrangements were concerted among a portion of the citizens of another state to come into Illinois for that purpose at our recent election for president and vice-president. The startling frauds which have recently been perpetrated in New York and other places for the destruction of these sacred rights," etc. Message of Governor Carlin, of Illinois. Hazard's U. S. Commercial and Statistical Register, December, 1840, III,

p. 429.

1 Adams writes on the 19th of December, 1838: Charges of gross fraud and corruption in the election returns of Philadelphia were made by both parties against each other, neuter falso- both true. Fraud and violence have thus been introduced into our elections and have signally triumphed." Mem. of J. Q. Adams, X, pp. 69, 70.

2 "We shall choose General Harrison, if no untoward event occurs between this time and November. But we are to have bad times, whoever may be in or whoever out. The people have been cajoled and humbugged. All parties have played off so many poor popular contrivances against each other, that I am afraid the public mind has become in a lamentable degree warped from correct principles, and turned away to the contemplation merely of momentary expedients, not only in regard to men, but to things

the Jackson-Van Buren regime gave themselves up to unbounded jubilation, the old man Adams shook his head sorrowfully and asked how long it would be before this great soap bubble, with the varying splendor of its colors, would burst.1

"No one knows what is coming." Such was the label of the time. In the case of both parties, symptoms of incipient dissolution increased. If their programmes had not as yet seen their day entirely, it was not from them that the binding cement in the first place came. gled for supremacy for supremacy's sake.

2

Parties strug

The electoral

campaign of 1840 was more excited than any that had preceded it, but in what concerns principles and great political ideas it presents, as compared with all previous campaigns, the picture of a desolate waste. And yet how different was the time from the "era of good understanding" which had followed the dissolution of the federalist party! The politicians were concerned only to rule, but the political life of the nation was not wanting in questions deserving of as warm, tense and devoted a struggle as any question about which the battles of parties had ever been fought. Clay's attitude towards the slavery question had cost him the last prospect of success in the New England states, and the bold

also." Mr. Webster to Mr. Everett, Feb. 16, 1840. Priv. Corresp. of D. Webster, II, p. 76.

1“Mutual gratulation at the downfall of the Jackson-Van Buren administration is the universal theme of conversation. One can hardly imagine the degree of detestation in which they are both held. No one knows what is to come. In four years from this time the successor may be equally detested. He is not the choice of three-fourths of those who have elected him. His present popularity is all artificial. There is little confidence in his talents or his firmness." Mem. of J. Q. Adams, X, p. 366.

2" The whole country throughout the Union is in a state of agitation upon the approaching presidential election such as was never before witnessed." Mem. of J. Q. Adams, X, p. 351.

BIRNEY AND EARLE.

405

invention that Harrison was an abolitionist1 stood, more than anything else, in his way, in the south. The person who wished to read the future of the country, from the numbers. of the presidential election of 1840, should not have stopped at the electoral vote and at the numbers which went beyond a million. Weightier than these were the not quite seven thousand votes cast for Birney and Earle, the candidates of the liberty party.

2

"Among the numerous charges which have been put in circulation against you by the presses and partisans of Mr. Van Buren, the two most relied upon and deemed most potent in the south, are— that you are a federalist and an abolitionist." J. Lyons to Gen. Harrison. p. 247.

'Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 471.

Niles, LVIII,

CHAPTER VI.

TYLER'S ADMINISTRATION.

The six months' jubilee with which the whigs had celebrated the promised redemption of the state in advance,1 was brought to a worthy close by the inauguration of Harrison." Yet a glimpse behind the curtain showed that, from the moment of victory, the rosy light began to turn into the deeper tints which announce to the seaman the coming of a sharp wind on the morrow. Many things suggested the fear that the icy north-east wind which blew during the festivities of the inauguration, was an evil omen.

The chiefs of departments were instructed, in the name of the president, through a circular written by Webster, who, as secretary of state, stood at the head of the cabinet, to inform their subordinates, that, henceforth, any abuse of their official positions for purposes of political agitation would be considered a cause for dismissal.3 Harrison, therefore, seemed disposed to remember the promises of reform made by the party longer than did Jackson the good advice he had

1" If one could imagine a whole nation declaring a holiday or season of rollicking for a period of six or eight months, and giving themselves up during the whole time to the wildest freaks of fun and frolic, caring nothing for business, singing, dancing, and carousing night and day, he might have some faint notion of the extraordinary scenes of 1840." N. Sargent, Public Men and Events, II, pp. 107, 108.

2 "The inauguration of William Henry Harrison as president of the United States was celebrated with demonstrations of popular feeling unexampled since that of Washington in 1789. The coup-d'oeil of this day was showy-shabby. General Harrison was on a meanlooking white horse." Mem. of J. Q. Adams, X, p. 439. · 3 March 20, 1841. Niles, LX, pp. 51, 52.