and were declaimed in the public schools as examples of witty oratory. Many years later, when the House of Representatives left the old chamber and went into that which it now occupies, Thurlow Weed wrote an interesting article on scenes he had witnessed in the old hall, and most vivid of all was his picture of this speech by Corwin. His delineations of Crary's brilliant exploits, his portrayal of the valiant charges made by Crary's troops on muster days upon the watermelon patches of Michigan, not only convulsed his audience, but were echoed throughout the nation, Whigs and Democrats laughing alike; and when John Quincy Adams, in a speech shortly afterward, referred to the man who brought on this tempest of fun as ``the late General Crary,'' there was a feeling that the adjective indicated a fact. It really was so; Crary, although a man of merit, never returned to Congress, but was thenceforth dropped from political life. More than twenty years afterward, as I was passing through Western Michigan, a friend pointed out to me his tombstone, in a little village cemetery, with comments, half comic, half pathetic; and I also recall a mournful feeling when one day, in going over the roll of my students at the University of Michigan, I came upon one who bore the baptismal name of Isaac Crary. Evidently, the blighted young statesman had a daughter who, in all this storm of ridicule and contempt, stood by him, loved him, and proudly named her son after him.
Another feature in the campaign also impressed me.
A blackguard orator, on the Whig side, one of those whom great audiences applaud for the moment and ever afterward despise,--a man named Ogle,--made a speech which depicted the luxury prevailing at the White House, and among other evidences of it, dwelt upon the ``gold spoons'' used at the President's table, denouncing their use with such unction that, for the time, unthinking people regarded Martin Van Buren as a sort of American Vitellius. As a matter of fact, the scanty silver-gilt table utensils at the White House have been shown, in these latter days, in some very pleasing articles written by General Harrison's grandson, after this grandson had himself retired from the Presidency, to have been, for the most part, bought long before;--and by order of General Washington.
The only matter of political importance which, as a boy eight years old, I seized upon, and which dwells in my memory, was the creation of the ``Sub-Treasury.'' That this was a wise measure seems now proven by the fact that through all the vicissitudes of politics, from that day to this, it has remained and rendered admirable service. But at that time it was used as a weapon against the Democratic party, and came to be considered by feather-brained partizans, young and old, as the culmination of human wickedness. As to what the ``Sub-Treasury''
really was I had not the remotest idea; but this I knew;--that it was the most wicked outrage ever committed by a remorseless tyrant upon a long-suffering people.
In November of 1840 General Harrison was elected. In the following spring he was inaugurated, and the Whigs being now for the first time in power, the rush for office was fearful. It was undoubtedly this crushing pressure upon the kindly old man that caused his death. What British soldiers, and Indian warriors, and fire, flood, and swamp fevers could not accomplish in over sixty years, was achieved by the office-seeking hordes in just one month. He was inaugurated on the fourth of March and died early in April.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, my dear mother coming to my bedside, early in the morning, and saying to me, ``President Harrison is dead.'' I wondered what was to become of us. He was the first President who had died during his term of service, and a great feeling of relief came over me when I learned that his high office had devolved upon the Vice-President.
But now came a new trouble, and my youthful mind was soon sadly agitated. The Whig papers, especially the ``New York Express'' and ``Albany Evening Journal,''
began to bring depressing accounts of the new President, --tidings of extensive changes in the offices throughout the country, and especially in the post-offices. At first the Whig papers published these under the heading ``Appointments by the President.'' But soon the heading changed; it became ``Appointments by Judas Iscariot,''
or ``Appointments by Benedict Arnold,'' and war was declared against President Tyler by the party that elected him. Certain it is that no party ever found itself in a worse position than did the Whigs, when their Vice-President came into the Chief Magistracy; and equally certain is it that this position was the richly earned punishment of their own folly.
