I have said that Van Buren's election was a sign of Jackson's personal influence. But the election of 1840 was a more startling sign of the completeness of his moral triumph, of the extent to which his genius had transformed the State. In 1832 the Whigs pitted their principles against his and lost. In 1840 they swallowed their principles, mimicked his, and won.
The Whig theory--so far as any theory connected the group of politicians who professed that name--was that Congress and the political class which Congress represented should rule, or at least administer, the State. From that theory it seemed to follow that some illustrious Senator or Congressman, some prominent member of that political class, should be chosen as President. The Whigs had acted in strict accord with their theory when they had selected as their candidate their ablest and most representative politician, Clay. But the result had not been encouraging. They now frankly abandoned their theory and sought to imitate the successful practice of their adversaries. They looked round for a Whig Jackson, and they found him in an old soldier from Ohio named Harrison, who had achieved a certain military reputation in the Indian wars. Following their model even more closely, they invented for him the nickname of "Old Tippercanoe," derived from the name of one of his victories, and obviously suggested by the parallel of "Old Hickory." Jackson, however, really had been called "Old Hickory" by his soldiers long before he took a leading part in politics, while it does not appear that Harrison was ever called "Tippercanoe" by anybody except for electioneering purposes. However, the name served its immediate purpose, and--
became the electoral war-cry of the Whigs. Tyler, a Southern Whig from Virginia, brought into the ticket to conciliate the Southern element in the party, was their candidate for the Vice-Presidency.
Unfortunately for themselves, the Democrats played the Whig game by assailing Harrison with very much the same taunts which had previously been used by the Whigs against Jackson. The ignorance of the old soldier, his political inexperience, even his poverty and obscurity of origin, were exploited in a hundred Democratic pamphlets by writers who forgot that every such reflection made closer the parallel between Harrison and Jackson, and so brought to the former just the sort of support for which the Whigs were angling.