Studies in American History 
165 
with much care to fill these conditions was John Tyler, who 
had been a southern candidate for vice-president in 1836.^° 
The Whig estimate of Harrison as a candidate is well 
summed up in the following paragraph, taken from A Sketch 
of the Life and Public Services of W. H. Harrison, published 
in 1840, as campaign propaganda in behalf of the Whig 
cause : 
With tried patriotism, with abilities of the highest order, with in- 
tegrity as pure as the unsullied snow, and with the truest republican 
jjrinciples, William Henry Harrison is now before his fellow-citizens, as 
a candidate for the highest office in their gift. In the long course of his 
public life, he has always been a staunch advocate of popular rights, 
and is therefore truly the candidate of the people. He comes before 
them, not with a crowd of pampered and still-grasping officials to in- 
trigue and bribe for him, but with the noble frankness of an honorable 
and high-minded man, willing and desirous to be judged impartially by 
his fellow citizens, and ready to abide by their honest decisions.^^ 
John Tyler, the vice-presidential candidate, was a pro- 
nounced State Rights man, who had concurred heartily in 
Jackson’s opposition to the Bank of the United States, and 
who had put himself on record to that effect by his speeches 
and his votes. He had, however, become alienated from Jack- 
son in 1833 because of his strenuous anti-nullification policy, 
and from that time on he had acted with the conglomerate 
party of opposition which soon adopted the name “Whig”. 
The nomination for the vice-presidency was said to have been 
promised him before the meeting of the convention by Clay, 
on condition that Tyler should withdraw his opposition to the 
election of William C. Rives as United States senator from 
Virginia, but the circumstantial evidence does not indicate 
that Tyler ever consented to any such bargain.®^ 
As stated above, the Whigs adopted no platform, nor could 
they well have agreed upon one, for the party was made up 
of the most incompatible elements, varying from an original 
nucleus of National Republicans to State Rights men like 
Tyler. And any attempt to define its principles must have 
resulted in its dissolution.^^ 
30/5ic?., 448. 
A Sketah of the Life and Public Services of William Henry Harrison (Providence, 
1840), 32. 
George P. Garrison, Westward Extension, 1841-1850 (in American Nation series, 
edited by A. B. Hart), (New York, 1896), 45, 46. 
23 Lyon G. Tyler, Life and Times of the Tylers (Richmond, 1884-1885), I, 474-493. 
I, 596, note 1. 
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