Studies in American History 
431 
which the slave issue did not cast its shadow and southern 
politicians hold the helm. 
The defeat of 1840 left the Democrats in the Northwest 
in a state of temporary bewilderment. After forty years in 
office they found their enemies in control not only of the 
national government but of three-fourths of the states. After 
such a period of peace, prosperity, and security of rights the 
country would now see a $100,000,000 bank controlled by 
Great Britain, a $100,000,000 debt, a protective tariff to 
grind to dust the workingman and “the monster Abolition 
struggling thru the land and severing the bond of fraternal 
feeling and love which now unites the people of the different 
states”. Poor, crawling, creeping Whiggery would bow itself 
in the dust to lick the spittle from its master’s feet. 
But for the Whigs the victory of 1840 availed but little. 
Tyler’s acts placed the party in a ridiculous position. The 
dash for spoils, increasing independence of the Abolitionists, 
failure of internal improvements, and factional fights within 
the party prepared the way for a Democratic recovery. The 
President was burned in effigy. After the veto of the Fiscal 
Corporation Bill there was no attempt to justify the acts of 
“His Accidency” and soon the Whig party was split several 
ways. In addition to such troubles came reverses in state 
politics. In 1841 the Democrats regained the Ohio legislature, 
but when in extra session they reapportioned the state, 18 
Whigs senators and 27 members of the House resigned. 
Democrats cried “treason and revolution” but the Whigs de- 
clared it less so than the work of the “tin pan” caucus of the 
Democratic party. In 1842 Democrats again secured the 
legislature and returned Wilson Shannon to the governorship. 
The Whigs credited their undoing to the unholy alliance of 
Loco-Focoism, Tylerism, and Abolitionism. The next year, 
altho the Democrats elected 12 of the 21 Congressmen and the 
legislature was a tie on joint ballot, the Whigs considered it 
a moral victory due to the handicap of the Democratic Ap- 
portionment Bill.®® 
The Liberty party had nominated Leister King- of Trumbull County for governor 
in December, 1841. 
Seven districts in the south had a population of 460,000, while 7 in the north 
had 58,369. Nineteen Whig counties of 1840 were sunk in Democratic districts and not 
one Democratic county had been sacrificed. Had the apportionment of 1842 been made 
before 1840, the Whigs in 1840, with 16,000 majority in the state, would have elected 
10 Congressmen to 11 for the Democrats, while in 1842 the Democrats, with a majority 
of only 3,217, would have elected 15 to 6 for the Whigs. 
