Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox

Although much of this book is traditional political history, focusing on a few leaders, Richard J. Ellis also suggests the need to rethink long-held assumptions about the election of 1840. For many historians, this was the “hard cider and log cabin” campaign in which the Whigs stole a page out of the Democrats' playbook. Froth prevailed over substance, lifting William Henry Harrison into the White House. Log cabins on wheels, mile-long processions, endless lyrics praising Tippecanoe (Harrison) and damning Martin Van Buren, attracted voters to the polls—or so the familiar story goes—raising the rate of voter participation from about 57 percent in 1836 to an unprecedented 80 percent in 1840. If not always persuasive, Ellis's argument makes clear scholars should take a second look at this election. To begin with, Ellis offers a new take on the rising rate at which adult white males voted between 1836 and 1840. By...

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