The year 1840 was made lively throughout the country by the spirited and rollicking campaign which the Whigs made on behalf of General Harrison. In that famous struggle for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," the log cabin, hard cider, and the 'coon skin were the popular emblems which seemed to lend picturesqueness and enthusiasm and a kind of Western spirit to the electioneering everywhere in the land. In Illinois Lincoln was a candidate on the Whig electoral ticket, and threw himself with great zeal into the congenial task of "stumping" the State. Douglas was doing the same duty on the other side, and the two had many encounters. Of Lincoln's speeches only one has been preserved,[47] and it leads to the conclusion that nothing of value was lost when the others perished. The effusion was in the worst style of the effervescent and exuberant school of that region and generation. Nevertheless, it may have had the greatest merit which oratory can possess, in being perfectly adapted to the audience to which it was addressed. But rhetoric could not carry Illinois for the Whigs; the Democrats cast the vote of the State. FOOTNOTES: [34] _The Good Old Times in McLean County_, passim. [35] It was first advocated in 1835-36, and was adopted by slow degrees thereafter. Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 204. [36] _Ibid._ 201. [37] Lamon, 129, where is given the text of the manifesto; Herndon, 101; N. and H. i. 101, 105; Holland, 53, says that _after_ his return from the Black Hawk campaign, Lincoln "was applied to" to become a candidate, and that the "application was a great surprise to him." This seems an obvious error, in view of the manifesto; yet see Lamon, 122. [38] N. and H. i. 102. Lamon regards him as "a nominal Jackson man" in contradistinction to a "whole-hog Jackson man;" as "Whiggish" rather than actually a Whig. Lamon, 123, 126. [39] Herndon, 105. But see N. and H. i. 109.