Mr. Van Buren was the democratic candidate. His administration had been so acceptable to his party, that his nomination in a convention was a matter of form, gone through according to custom, but the result commanded by the party in the different States in appointing their delegates. Mr. Richard M. Johnson, the actual Vice-President, was also nominated for re-election; and both nominations were made in conformity to the will of the people who sent the delegates. On the part of the whigs the same nominations were made as in the election of 1836—General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, for President; and Mr. John Tyler of Virginia, for Vice-President. The leading statesmen of the whig party were again passed by to make room for a candidate more sure of being elected. The success of General Jackson had turned the attention of those who managed the presidential nominations to military men, and an "odor of gunpowder" was considered a sufficient attraction to rally the masses, without the civil qualifications, or the actual military fame which General Jackson possessed. Availability, to use their own jargon, was the only ability which these managers asked—that is, available for the purposes of the election, and for their own advancement, relying on themselves to administer the government. Mr. Clay, the prominent man, and the undisputed head of the party, was not deemed available; and it was determined to set him aside. How to do it was the question. He was a man of too much power and spirit to be rudely thrust aside. Gentle, and respectful means were necessary to get him out of the way; and for that purpose he was concertedly importuned to withdraw from the canvass. He would not do so, but wrote a letter submitting himself to the will of the convention. When he did so he certainly expected an open decision—a vote in open convention—every delegate acting responsibly, and according to the will of his constituents. Not so the fact. He submitted himself to the convention: the convention delivered him to a committee: the committee disposed of him in a back chamber. It devised a process for getting at a result, which is a curiosity in the chapter of ingenious inventions—which is a study for the complication of its machinery—a model contrivance of the few to govern many—a secure way to produce an intended result without showing the design, and without leaving a trace behind to show what was done: and of which none but itself can be its own delineator: and, therefore, here it is:

"Ordered, That the delegates from each State be requested to assemble as a delegation, and appoint a committee, not exceeding three in number, to receive the views and opinions of such delegation, and communicate the same to the assembled committees of all the delegations, to be by them respectively reported to their principals; and that thereupon the delegates from each State be requested to assemble as a delegation, and ballot for candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President, and having done so, to commit the ballot designating the votes of each candidate, and by whom given, to its committee; and thereupon all the committees shall assemble and compare the several ballots, and report the result of the same to their several delegations, together with such facts as may bear upon the nomination; and said delegation shall forthwith re-assemble and ballot again for candidates for the above offices, and again commit the result to the above committees, and if it shall appear that a majority of the ballots are for any one man for candidate for President, said committee shall report the result to the convention for its consideration; but if there shall be no such majority, then the delegations shall repeat the balloting until such a majority shall be obtained, and then report the same to the convention for its consideration. That the vote of a majority of each delegation shall be reported as the vote of that State; and each State represented here shall vote its full electoral vote by such delegation in the committee."

As this View of the Thirty Years is intended to show the working of our political system, and how things were done still more than what was done; and as the election of chief magistrate is the highest part of that working; and as the party nomination of a presidential candidate is the election of that candidate so far as the party is concerned: in all these points of view, the device of this resolution becomes historical, and commends itself to the commentators upon our constitution. The people are to elect the President. Here is a process through multiplied filtrations by which the popular sentiment is to be deduced from the masses, collected in little streams, then united in one swelling current, and poured into the hall of the convention—no one seeing the source, or course of any one of the streams. Algebra and alchemy must have been laid under contribution to work out a quotient from such a combination of signs and symbols. But it was done. Those who set the sum could work it: and the quotient was political death to Mr. Clay. The result produced was—for General Scott, 16 votes: for Mr. Clay, 90 votes: for General Harrison, 148 votes. And as the law of these conventions swallows up all minorities in an ascertained majority, so the majority for General Harrison swallowed up the 106 votes given to Mr. Clay and General Scott, made them count for the victor, presenting him as the unanimity candidate of the convention, and the defeated candidate and all their friends bound to join in his support. And in this way the election of 1840 was effected! a process certainly not within the purview of those framers of the constitution, who supposed they were giving to a nation the choice of its own chief magistrate.

From the beginning it had been foreseen that there was to be an embittered contest—the severest ever known in our country. Two powers were in the field against Mr. Van Buren, each strong within itself, and truly formidable when united—the whole whig party, and the large league of suspended banks, headed by the Bank of the United States—now criminal as well as bankrupt, and making its last struggle for a new national charter in the effort to elect a President friendly to it. In elections as in war money is the sinew of the contest, and the broken and suspended banks were in a condition, and a temper, to furnish that sinew without stint. By mutual support they were able to make their notes pass as money; and, not being subject to redemption, it could be furnished without restraint, and with all the good will of a self-interest in putting down the democratic party, whose hard-money policy, and independent treasury scheme, presented it as an enemy to paper money and delinquent banks. The influence of this moneyed power over its debtors, over presses, over travelling agents, was enormous, and exerted to the uttermost, and in amounts of money almost fabulous; and in ways not dreamed of. The mode of operating divided itself into two general classes, one coercive—addressed to the business pursuits and personal interests of the community: the other seductive, and addressed to its passions. The phrases given out in Congress against the financial policy of the administration became texts to speak upon, and hints to act upon. Carrying out the idea that the re-election of Mr. Van Buren would be the signal for the downfall of all prices, the ruin of all industry, and the destruction of all labor, the newspapers in all the trading districts began to abound with such advertisements as these: "The subscriber will pay six dollars a barrel for flour if Harrison is elected, and three dollars if Van Buren is." "The subscriber will pay five dollars a hundred for pork if Harrison is elected, and two and a half if Van Buren is." And so on through the whole catalogue of marketable articles, and through the different kinds of labor: and these advertisements were signed by respectable men, large dealers in the articles mentioned, and well able to fix the market price for them. In this way the result of the election was brought to bear coercively upon the business, the property, and the pecuniary interest of the people. The class of inducements addressed to the passions and imaginations of the people were such as history blushes to record. Log-cabins, coonskins, and hard cider were taken as symbols of the party, and to show its identification with the poorest and humblest of the people: and these cabins were actually raised in the most public parts of the richest cities, ornamented with coonskins after the fashion of frontier huts, and cider drank in them out of gourds in the public meetings which gathered about them: and the virtues of these cabins, these skins, and this cider were celebrated by travelling and stationary orators. The whole country was put into commotion by travelling parties and public gatherings. Steamboats and all public conveyances were crowded with parties singing doggerel ballads made for the occasion, accompanied with the music of drums, fifes, and fiddles; and incited by incessant speaking. A system of public gatherings was got up which pervaded every State, county and town—which took place by day and by night, accompanied by every preparation to excite; and many of which gatherings were truly enormous in their numbers—only to be estimated by the acre; attempts at counting or computing such masses being out of the question. The largest of these gatherings took place at Dayton, in the State of Ohio, the month before the election; and the description of it, as given by its enthusiastic friends, will give a vivid idea of that monster assemblage, and of the myriads of others of which it was only the greatest—differing in degree only, not in kind:

"Dayton, the whole body there assembled in convention covered ten acres by actual measurement! And at no time were there more than two-thirds of the people on the ground. Every house with a flag was a hotel without price—the strings of every door being out, and every latch unfastened! One hundred thousand! It were useless to attempt any thing like a detailed description of this grand gathering of the people. We saw it all—felt it all—and shall bear to our graves, live we yet half a century, the impression it made upon our hearts. But we cannot describe it. No eye that witnessed it, can convey to the mind of another, even a faint semblance of the things it there beheld. The bright and glorious day—the beautiful and hospitable city—the green-clad and heaven-blessed valley—the thousand flags, fluttering in every breeze and waving from every window—the ten thousand banners and badges, with their appropriate devices and patriotic inscriptions—and, more than all, the hundred thousand human hearts beating in that dense and seething mass of people—are things which those alone can properly feel and appreciate, who beheld this grandest spectacle of time. The number of persons present was, during the whole of the morning, variously estimated at from seventy-five to ninety thousand. Conjecture, however, was put to rest in the afternoon, at the speakers' stand. Here, while the crowd was compact, as we have elsewhere described it, and during the speech of General Harrison, the ground upon which it stood was measured by three different civil engineers, and allowing to the square yard four persons, the following results were arrived at: the first made it 77,600, the second 75,000, and the third 80,000. During the time of making three measurements, the number of square yards of surface covered was continually changing, by pressure without and resistance from within. Mr. Van Buren and his wiseacre assistants, have so managed currency matters, that we have very little to do business with. We can, therefore, be away from home, a portion of the time, as well as at home. And with respect to our families, when we leave upon a rally, we take them with us! Our wives and daughters, we are proud to say, have the blood of their revolutionary mothers and grandmothers coursing through their veins. There is no man among us whose heart is more filled and animated than theirs, by the spirit of seventy-six. Look at the three hundred and fifty at Nashville, who invited Henry Clay, the nation's pride, to be with them and their husbands and brothers on the 15th of August! Look at the four hundred at St. Louis, the nine hundred at the Tippecanoe battle-ground, the five thousand at Dayton! What now, but the spirit of seventy-six, does all this manifest? Ay, and what tale does it all tell? Does it not say, that the wicked charlatanry, and mad ambition, and selfish schemings, of the leading members of this administration of the general government, have made themselves felt in the very sanctum sanctorum of domestic life? Does it not speak of the cheerless hearth, where willing hands sit without employment? Does it not speak of the half-recompensed toil of the worn laborer, who finds, now and then, a week's hard work, upon the scant proceeds of which he must subsist himself and his family for a month! Does it not speak of empty larders in the town, while the garners of the country are overflowing? Does it not speak of want here and abundance there, without any medium of exchange to equalize the disparity? Does it not speak of a general disorganization of conventional operations—of embarrassment, stagnation, idleness, and despondency—whose 'malign influences' have penetrated the inner temples of man's home, and aroused, to indignant speech and unusual action, her who is its peace, its gentleness, its love, its all but divinity? The truth is—and it should be told—the women are the very life and soul of these movements of the people. Look at their liberal preparations at Nashville. Look at their boundless hospitality at Dayton. Look at their ardor and activity every where. And last, though far from the least important, look at their presence, in hundreds and by thousands, wherever there is any good to be done, to animate and encourage, and urge on their fathers, husbands and brothers. Whence those six hundred and forty-four flags, whose stars and stripes wave in the morning breeze, from nearly every house-top, as we enter the beautiful little city of Dayton? From the hand of woman. Whence the decorations of these porticoes and balconies, that gleam in the rising sun, as we ride through the broad and crowded streets? From the hand of woman. Whence this handsome and proudly cherished banner, under which the Ohio delegation returned from Nashville, and which now marks the head-quarters of the Cincinnati delegation of one thousand to Dayton? From the hand of woman. Whence yon richly wrought and surpassingly beautiful standard, about which cluster the Tippecanoe hosts, and whose production has cost many weeks of incessant labor? From the hand of woman. And to come down to less poetical but more substantial things, whence all the wholesome viands prepared in the six hundred and forty-four flag-houses around us, for our refreshment, and all the pallets spread for our repose? From the hand of woman."

By arts like these the community was worked up into a delirium, and the election was carried by storm. Out of 294 electoral votes Mr. Van Buren received but 60: out of twenty-six States he received the votes of only seven. He seemed to have been abandoned by the people! On the contrary he had been unprecedentedly supported by them—had received a larger popular vote than ever had been given to any President before! and three hundred and sixty-four thousand votes more than he himself had received at the previous presidential election when he beat the same General Harrison fourteen thousand votes. Here was a startling fact, and one to excite inquiry in the public mind. How could there be such overwhelming defeat with such an enormous increase of strength on the defeated side? This question pressed itself upon every thinking mind; and it was impossible to give it a solution consistent with the honor and purity of the elective franchise. For, after making all allowance for the greater number of voters brought out on this occasion than at the previous election by the extraordinary exertions now made to bring them out, yet there would still be required a great number to make up the five hundred and sixty thousand votes which General Harrison received over and above his vote of four years before. The belief of false and fraudulent votes was deep-seated, and in fact susceptible of proof in many instances. Many thought it right, for the sake of vindicating the purity of elections, to institute a scrutiny into the votes; but nothing of the kind was attempted, and on the second Wednesday in February, 1841, all the electoral votes were counted without objection—General Harrison found to have a majority of the whole number of votes given—and Messrs. Wise and Cushing on the part of the House and Mr. Preston on the part of the Senate, were appointed to give him the formal notification of his election. Mr. Tyler received an equal number of votes with him, and became Vice-president: Mr. Richard M. Johnson fell twelve votes behind Mr. Van Buren, receiving but 48 electoral votes. It was a complete rout of the democratic party, but without a single moral effect of victory. The spirit of the party ran as high as ever, and Mr. Van Buren was immediately, and generally, proclaimed the democratic candidate for the election of 1844.