the ocean when convulsed by
some terrible storm." Webster declared that "every breeze says
change; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." Long before
campaigns usually begin New York was a blaze of excitement. Halls were
insufficient to hold the crowds. Where hundreds had formerly
assembled, thousands now appeared. The long lines of wagons, driven to
the meeting places, raised clouds of dust such as mark the moving of
armies. The Whig state convention at Utica became a mass-meeting of
twenty-five thousand people, who formed into one great parade. "How
long is this procession?" asked a bystander of one of the marshals.
"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell," was the reply. "The other end of it is
forming somewhere near Albany."

The canvass became one of song, of association, and of imagination,
which aroused thoughts that were intensely animating and absorbing.
The taunt of a Virginia newspaper that Harrison should remain in his
log cabin on the banks of the Ohio made the log cabin "a symbol," as
Weed happily expressed it, "of virtue that dwells in obscurity, of the
hopes of the humble, of the privations of the poor, of toil and
danger, of hospitality and charity and frugality." Log cabins sprang
up like gourds in a night. At the door, stood the cider barrel, and,
hanging by the window, the omnipresent coonskin swayed in the breeze.
They appeared on medals, in pictures, in fancy work, and in
processions. Horace Greeley, who had done so much in 1838 through the
columns of the _Jeffersonian_, now began the publication of the _Log
Cabin_, filling whole sides of it with songs elaborately set to music,
and making it so universally popular that the New York _Tribune_,
established in the following year, became its legitimate successor in
ability and in circulation.

In his biography of Henry Clay, Schurz says that in no presidential
canvass has there ever been "less thought." It is likely if there had
been no log cabins, no cider, no coon-skins, and no songs, the result
would have been the same, for, in the presence of great financial
distress, the people seek relief very much as they empty a burning
building. But the reader of the _Log Cabin_ will find thought enough.
Greeley's editorials summed up the long line of mistakes leading to
the panic of 1837, and the people understood the situation. They were
simply unwilling longer to trust the party in power.

Evidence of this distrust astonished Democrats as much as it pleased