Studies in American History 
179 
tinued years afterward to believe, that all this popular fer- 
ment was in the nature of a crazy fanaticism, stimulated by 
adroit appeals to popular sympathy. There was some truth 
in this opinion, yet it did grave injustice to the common sense 
of the American people, and gave undue importance to the 
power of politicians. The Whig popular demonstrations bore 
the same relation to the underlying public feeling that the 
foam and spray of Niagara do to the deep, swift, resistless 
undercurrent which produces them. The people had grown 
tired of twelve years of the dominant party’s rule. They had 
suffered from ‘'hard times”, derangements of the currency 
and low prices, frequent and ruinous. They believed, whether 
justly or not, that these were the direct results of experiments 
in finance, made by their rulers. The overthrow of the United 
States Bank, the suspension of specie payments, the passage 
of the Sub-Treasury law, the refusal of protection by tariff, 
the tampering with the mails, and the denial of the right of 
petition were all regarded with apprehension and alarm, not 
so much because of actual ill effects as because they were 
proofs of the existence of arbitrary power at Washington, 
which, if not checked, might lead to still greater oppression. 
Nothing could be more acceptable to a majority entertaining 
such apprehensions than the nomination of a candidate known 
to be a patriot, and believed to be in a condition in life which 
would make his interests and sympathies identical with their 
own. They dreaded an aristocracy which might give them 
a king "Stork”; they had no fear, even if their own candi- 
date should turn out to be a king "Log”. It is quite probable 
that, with a different candidate, the Whigs would still have 
carried the election; for the popular mind, as the last two 
years had evinced, was bent upon a change of rulers. That 
the results of 1840 were not produced by the arts of politi- 
cians, or the infection of excitement, is sufficiently shown by 
the fact that politicians, with their utmost skill, have never 
been able to imitate them, even in times of greatest excite- 
ment, since. To this day, the highest praise that a party 
newspaper can bestow upon a great meeting is, that it was 
like the old scenes of "the Harrison campaign in 1840”. 
Every two or three days, as the campaign went on, the 
newspapers would announce that some prominent Democrat 
had left his party, and avowed himself for Harrison. Each 
499 , 500 . 
