The presidential campaign of 1840 surpassed in excitement and intensity of feeling all which had preceded it. Delegations to the whig conventions carried banners and often had a small log cabin mounted on wheels in which was a barrel of hard cider, the beverage of the campaign. Early in Harrison's campaign comments were made on the elegant style of living in the White House during Van Buren's administration. Van Buren was charged with being an aristocrat and a monarchist while the masses toiled and suffered to pay for his luxurious living. A Richmond newspaper observed derisively of Harrison, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and a pension of two thousand dollars and our word for it he will sit for the remainder of his days contented in a log cabin." Log cabins and hard cider thus became the symbols of a popular crusade. The log cabins were decked in frontier style with coonskins, bunches of corn, strings of peppers and dried apples and the like, and were set up in cities and villages. Inside these cabins copious supplies of cider were on tap to be drunk with gourds. The appropriateness of the symbol came from the fact that Harrison had formerly resided in a western log cabin, and the cider was meant to typify western hospitality. The result was that young and old drank the cider freely and the whig meetings often degenerated into mere drunken carousals, the example of which was especially injurious to the rising generation. There are men still alive who claim that a single glass of wine drunk by Herschel V. Johnson was responsible for the wreck of the democratic party in 1860 by unfitting him to reply to the speech of Howell Cobb in favor of separate democratic nominations at the Georgia democratic state convention. The Count de Paris says of the vigilance committees that terrorized the South into secession: "The bar-room was generally the place of their meetings. Around the counter on which gin and whiskey circulated freely a few frantic individuals pronounced judgment upon their fellow citizens, whether present or absent." In one of the Lincoln-Douglas joint debates Douglas described his own father as an excellent cooper. Lincoln said he did not doubt the truth of the statement for he knew of one very good whisky cask he had made. As Douglas was short and thick-set and a heavy drinker the joke was enjoyed. On another occasion, Douglas said that when he first knew Lincoln, Lincoln was a good bar-tender. Lincoln in admitting that he had sold whisky said Douglas was one of his best customers, adding that he had left his side of the counter but Douglas had stuck to the other side. _Early Defiance of Law_