1840 U.S. presidential election

In 1840 the Whigs finally won the presidency. William Henry Harrison, an Ohio general famous for defeating the forces of Tecumseh's confederacy at Tippecanoe in 1811, beat President Martin Van Buren by 234 electoral votes to 60, with about 53 percent of the popular vote. About 80 percent of eligible voters, then almost entirely white men, turned out, a huge jump from 1836. Harrison's running mate was John Tyler of Virginia, hence the slogan 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.'¹³

The Panic of 1837 and the depression that followed had ruined Van Buren's standing, and the Whigs ran the first campaign of mass spectacle. When a Democratic paper sneered that Harrison would be happy in a log cabin with a barrel of hard cider, the Whigs embraced the image, staging parades with log cabins and cider and portraying Harrison, a planter's son, as a frontier commoner and Van Buren as a dandy who ate off gold plates. Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in history, fell ill weeks later and died on April 4, 1841, after 31 days in office. Tyler became the first vice president to succeed to the presidency, and he soon broke with the Whigs.¹²³