SDMB Retrospective US Presidential Elections 1840

Politics & Elections
1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1840

Harrison again.

2

I dunno, he don’t look too healthy . . .

3

I guess I’d have voted for Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, over the Jacksonian Van Buren.

4

Birney. He’s the only Abolitionist on the ballot.

5

Yeah but them Founding Fathers had worked so feverishly to end slavery.

6

This is a meh election for me. I guess I’ll go for Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, if only because it’s arguably the catchiest slogan in U.S. political history.

7

Van Buren. He’s a local man, so you have to support that. Plus, Harrison’s campaign song is annoying. What is it about Van Buren that bothers people?

8

That’s why historians roll their eyes at Harrison’s content-free “inane hoopla campaign” defeating the Whigs who tried to talk about actual policy choices. I’m sure we all read The American Pageant in high school.

9

^ This.

10
  1. He had really bad facial hair.
  2. He presided over one of the Panic of 1837, probably the worst economic calamity in American history before the Great Depression.
  3. He sided with the Spanish government in seeking the return of the Amistad captives, thereby rolling back the one positive thing America had done with respect to slavery (banning the international slave trade)
  4. He carried out Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy in an especially brutal and callous manner.

Guess I’ve talked myself into voting for Ol’ Tip.