=The Whigs and General Harrison.=—­By this time, the National Republicans, now known as Whigs—­a title taken from the party of opposition to the Crown in England, had learned many lessons.  Taking a leaf out of the Democratic book, they nominated, not Clay of Kentucky, well known for his views on the bank, the tariff, and internal improvements, but a military hero, General William Henry Harrison, a man of uncertain political opinions.  Harrison, a son of a Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence, sprang into public view by winning a battle more famous than important, “Tippecanoe”—­a brush with the Indians in Indiana.  He added to his laurels by rendering praiseworthy services during the war of 1812.  When days of peace returned he was rewarded by a grateful people with a seat in Congress.  Then he retired to quiet life in a little village near Cincinnati.  Like Jackson he was held to be a son of the South and the West.  Like Jackson he was a military hero, a lesser light, but still a light.  Like Old Hickory he rode into office on a tide of popular feeling against an Eastern man accused of being something of an aristocrat.  His personal popularity was sufficient.  The Whigs who nominated him shrewdly refused to adopt a platform or declare their belief in anything.  When some Democrat asserted that Harrison was a backwoodsman whose sole wants were a jug of hard cider and a log cabin, the Whigs treated the remark not as an insult but as proof positive that Harrison deserved the votes of Jackson men.  The jug and the cabin they proudly transformed into symbols of the campaign, and won for their chieftain 234 electoral votes, while Van Buren got only sixty.

=Harrison and Tyler.=—­The Hero of Tippecanoe was not long to enjoy the fruits of his victory.  The hungry horde of Whig office seekers descended upon him like wolves upon the fold.  If he went out they waylaid him; if he stayed indoors, he was besieged; not even his bed chamber was spared.  He was none too strong at best and he took a deep cold on the day of his inauguration.  Between driving out Democrats and appeasing Whigs, he fell mortally ill.  Before the end of a month he lay dead at the capitol.

Harrison’s successor, John Tyler, the Vice President, whom the Whigs had nominated to catch votes in Virginia, was more of a Democrat than anything else, though he was not partisan enough to please anybody.  The Whigs railed at him because he would not approve the founding of another United States Bank.  The Democrats stormed at him for refusing, until near the end of his term, to sanction the annexation of Texas, which had declared its independence of Mexico in 1836.  His entire administration, marked by unseemly wrangling, produced only two measures of importance.  The Whigs, flushed by victory, with the aid of a few protectionist Democrats, enacted, in 1842, a new tariff law destroying the compromise which had brought about the truce between the North and the South, in the days of nullification.  The distinguished leader of the Whigs, Daniel Webster, as Secretary of State, in negotiation with Lord Ashburton representing Great Britain, settled the long-standing dispute between the two countries over the Maine boundary.  A year after closing this chapter in American diplomacy, Webster withdrew to private life, leaving the President to endure alone the buffets of political fortune.