ult was greatly to their
loss. His frontier life in a log cabin was also the subject of
ridicule at the opening of the campaign. The Whigs accepted the issue,
built log cabins on wheels and drew them over the country from one mass
meeting to another. The unfortunate remark was made by a writer or
speaker that if Harrison had a log cabin and plenty of hard cider he
would be content. A barrel became the emblem of the Whig Party. The
log cabin was furnished with a cider barrel at the door, and the
emblematic barrel was seen on cane heads and breast pins.

Mr. Webster struck a fatal blow at the error of the Democratic Party:
--"Let him be the log cabin candidate. What you say in scorn we will
shout with all our lungs. * * * It did not happen to me to be born in a
log cabin; but my elder brother and sisters were born in a log cabin
raised amid the snow drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that
when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the
frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation
between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. * * * If ever I
am ashamed of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate remembrance of him
who reared it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction,
cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and through the
fire and blood of a seven years' Revolutionary war, shrunk from no
danger, no toil, no sacrifice to save his country and to raise his
children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name
of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind."

John Tyler of Virginia, was placed on the Whig ticket as the candidate
for Vice-President. Tyler had been a Democrat and the opinions of the
States Rights wing of the Democratic Party were his opinions,
notwithstanding his associations with the Whig Party. His nomination
was due to the disposition to balance the ticket by selecting one of
the candidates from each wing of the party--and there are always two
wings to a party.

Of poetry the Whig writers furnished much more than was enjoyed by
Democrats. An effort was made to stay the tide in favor of Harrison
by poetry as well as by argument. The effort was fruitless. The
contest of 1840 had its origin in the most distressing financial
difficulties that ever rested upon the country, and it was conducted
on the part of the Whigs by large expenditure of money, for those days,
and with a d