Old Tip he wears a homespun coat
He has no ruffled shirt-wirt-wirt.
But Mat he has a golden plate
And he’s a little squirt-wirt-wirt.

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The Whig’s nominee was hardly the homespun farmer in buckskin his proponents portrayed. Son of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Harrison, William Henry Harrison was born in a three-story brick mansion in Charles County, Virginia, in 1773. He joined the infantry in 1791 and was posted to Ohio where he involved himself in the politics of the Northwest Territory. Following his army career, he was appointed governor of the Indian Territory with full authority to negotiate and conclude treaties with the Indians. Harrison established his fame when he fought the forces of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811. The battle, in which 188 Americans and an unknown number of Indians were killed or wounded, accomplished little and drove the Indians into an alliance with the British. Harrison was nonetheless heralded as a hero and named supreme commander in the Northwest.

After the War of 1812 Harrison had a steady if unspectacular political career, with service in the House of Representatives, Senate, and diplomatic corps. New York political boss Thurlow Weed took on Harrison’s political fortunes after the 1836 election and managed his upset nomination over Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in 1840. The ticket was completed, and a slogan born, with the nomination of former Democrat John Tyler of Virginia for vice president. It was now "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too."

While the Democrats adopted a platform denouncing federal assumption of state debts, opposing internal improvements, and calling for separation of public money from banking institutions, Weed decided to keep Harrison quiet and emphasize his war-hero record and humble character.

The Democrats took aim at Harrison’s silence, calling him "General Mum." Yet when they went after Harrison’s character, their attacks rebounded in a spectacular fashion. "Give him a barrel of hard cider and a pension of two thousand a year," the Baltimore Republican said of Harrison, "and, our word for it, he will sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin . . . and study moral philosophy." The attack delighted Democratic editors across the nation, and they reprinted the hard cider/log cabin joke in their newspapers. Their joy was short-lived. Whigs quickly jumped at the chance to compare Harrison’s hard cider and log cabin to Van Buren’s Madeira and mansion. Horace Greeley, a Weed protégé and future newspaper editor, seized upon the symbolism and begin a campaign paper entitled Log Cabin. On the back page were lyrics, often penned by Greeley, to be sung to the tunes of popular melodies.

Let Van from his coolers of silver drink wine,
And lounge on his cushioned settee,
Our man on a buckeye bench can recline,
Content with hard cider is he.

And:

Oh where, tell me where, was your Buckeye cabin made?
Oh where, tell me where, was your Buckeye cabin made?
T’was built among the merry boys
That wield the plow and spade,
Where the Log Cabins stand in the bonnie Buckeye shade.

The Log Cabin sold some 80,000 copies each week, and the New York Times called it "the most effective campaign paper ever printed." "Our songs are doing more good than anything else," Greeley wrote Weed. Recognizing what he had wrought, Greeley expanded the song sheet into the Log Cabin SongBook. Included was the battle hymn of the campaign, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too," along with "Buckeye Cabin," "The Soldier of Tippecanoe," "The Flag of Tippecanoe," and "A Tip-Top Song About Tippecanoe." In Illinois a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln took over direction of the "Old Soldier" campaign sheet, complete with musical scores. Singing groups such as the "Tippecanoe Glee Club" and "Tippecanoe Boys" and solo acts such as the famed "Titus of Toledo" began headlining rallies with their renditions of the Log Cabin songs. Democratic Senator Thomas Hart Benton dismissed these antics as "doggerel ballads," but Greeley wisely observed that "people like the swing of the music."

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