%352. The Log Cabin, Hard Cider Campaign%.--The candidate of the Democrats (Martin Van Buren) was a shrewd and skillful politician. The candidate of the Whigs (Harrison) was the ideal of a popular favorite. To defeat him at such a time, when the people were angry with the Democrats, would have been hard, but they made it harder still by ridiculing his honorable poverty and his Western surroundings. At the very outset of the campaign a Democratic newspaper declared that Harrison would be more at home "in a log cabin, drinking hard cider and skinning coons, than living in the White House as President." The Whigs instantly took up the sneer and made the log cabin the emblem of their party. All over the country log cabins (erected at some crossroads, or on the village common, or on some vacant city lot) became the Whig headquarters. On the door was a coon skin; a leather latch string was always hanging out as a sign of hospitality, and beside the door stood a barrel of hard cider. Every Whig wore a Harrison and Tyler badge, and knew by heart all the songs in the _Log Cabin Songster_. Immense mass meetings were held, at which 50,000, and even 80,000, people attended. Weeks were spent in getting ready for them. In the West, where railroads were few, the people came in covered wagons with provisions, and camped on the ground days before the meeting. At the monster meeting at Dayton, O., 100,000 people were present, covering ten acres of ground.[1] [Footnote 1: Shepard's _Van Buren_, pp. 323-335.] [Illustration: William H. Harrison] %353. William Henry Harrison, Ninth President; John Tyler, Tenth President%.--Harrison was triumphantly elected, and inaugurated March 4, 1841. But his career was short, for on April 4 he died,[2] and John Tyler took his place. Tyler had never been a Whig. He had always been a Democrat. Nevertheless, the Whigs, confident of his aid, tried to carry out certain reform measures. [Footnote 2: His death was a great shock to the people. Two vice presidents, George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry, had died in office. But nobody seems to have thought it likely that a president would die.] [Illustration: John Tyler] %354. The Quarrel between Tyler and the Whigs%.--The first thing they did was to repeal the law establishing the Independent Treasury. This Tyler approved. They next attempted to reëstablish the Bank of the United States under the name of the "Fiscal Bank of the United States." Tyler, who was opposed to banks, vetoed the bill, and when the Whigs sent him another to create a "Fiscal Corporation," he vetoed that also. Then every member of the cabinet save Webster resigned, and at a meeting of the great Whig leaders Tyler was formally "read out of the party."