The carnival campaign How the rollicking 1840 campaign of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" changed presidential elections forever

With the US economy still struggling in 1840, the out-party Whigs were positioned to capture the White House for the first time. In breezy prose, Shafer traces the ensuing campaign, from the nomination of William Henry Harrison at a Harrisburg, PA, conclave through Harrison's decisive victory over incumbent Martin Van Buren and the general's distinctive, one-month presidency. Drawing heavily on newspaper sources, secondary works, and published memoirs, Shafer calls Harrison's campaign pathbreaking in its use of popular media, material culture, and reliance on grassroots appeals. Such a perspective ignores the extent to which each of the supposed "campaign firsts" he cites were adaptations of already common presidential campaign practice. It is true that the Whigs' heavy reliance on parades, songs, and such hokum as trumpeting Harrison's birth in a log cabin and penchant for hard cider reached new heights in 1840 and sparked widespread interest in a campaign that turned out more than 80 percent of eligible voters. But Shafer's emphasis on "carnival," however entertaining, obscures the reality that Whig success was fundamentally connected to voter disenchantment with the state of the economy in 1840, about which he has little to say. Summing Up: Recommended. Public libraries; lower-division undergraduate collections. --Michael J. Birkner, Gettysburg College