For too long historical accounts have attributed Harrison’s election to mindless hoopla. A Democratic contemporary came closer to the truth when he wrote Van Buren that “the second revulsion” (meaning the Panic of 1839 coming on top of that of 1837) “and no other cause whatever, has elected your opponent and would have elected any other man.”21 The most judicious modern scholarship concludes, however, that the voters did not just lash out at the incumbent party but rendered a judgment on which party’s policy they trusted to get the country out of hard times. The Whig campaign possessed “reason
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