Tippecanoe and Tyler Too
Spin doctors have been around in US presidential elections since at least 1800, when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in some vicious mud-slinging. The election of 1840 was a particularly vigorous campaign in which strategists for the Whig Party tried to mislead voters into believing that their candidate William Henry Harrison arose from poverty to become a war hero and leader, while Democratic incumbent president Martin Van Buren was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. These were both exaggerations, but in the days before electronic media, it was difficult to react to a negative message once it was out there.
One of the ways that the Whigs tried to hammer their message home was through a campaign song, a little ditty called "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." The song was part of the Whig Party's "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" Campaign. It was written in 1840 by Alexander Coffman Ross, a jeweler from Zanesville, Ohio, to the tune of the minstrel song, "Little Pigs". He first performed it at a Whig meeting in Zanesville, and it came to national attention when, traveling on a business trip, he introduced it to a Whig rally in New York.
The lyrics to the first verse and chorus of the song went as follows:
What's the cause of this commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van,
Van is a used up man.
And with them we'll beat little Van.
Ross's version had twelve verses. It contains a repeated reference to rolling balls and constant motion. Rolling large balls of twine or canvas became a physical prop in the campaign pageantry. People would use the expression "keep the ball rolling" both in literal reference to these huge campaign props, and as a metaphor for keeping the momentum of the campaign going.
Martin Van Buren is referred to derisively in the song as "Little Van" or "Little Matty" and his supporters as "Vanjacks". These are contrasted with the simple honest virtues of Harrison and the inevitability of his victory.
In modern times the song was used as part of the 1968 Off-Broadway musical entitled "How to Steal an Election". It has been recorded in a traditional form at least twice: in 1978 by Peter Janovsky on the album Winners and Losers: Campaign Songs from the Critical Elections in American History, Vol. 1 for Folkways Records, and in 1999 by Oscar Brand on the album Presidential Campaign Songs: 1789 – 1996 for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The band "They Might Be Giants" (one of my favorites, also famous among
potus_geeks for their song "James K. Polk") recorded an alternative rock version of the song for the 2004 compilation album "Future Soundtrack for America".
Here is a YouTube video of the song, sung in its more traditional tune:
and here is They Might Be Giants doing their version:
One of the ways that the Whigs tried to hammer their message home was through a campaign song, a little ditty called "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." The song was part of the Whig Party's "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" Campaign. It was written in 1840 by Alexander Coffman Ross, a jeweler from Zanesville, Ohio, to the tune of the minstrel song, "Little Pigs". He first performed it at a Whig meeting in Zanesville, and it came to national attention when, traveling on a business trip, he introduced it to a Whig rally in New York.
The lyrics to the first verse and chorus of the song went as follows:
What's the cause of this commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van,
Van is a used up man.
And with them we'll beat little Van.
Ross's version had twelve verses. It contains a repeated reference to rolling balls and constant motion. Rolling large balls of twine or canvas became a physical prop in the campaign pageantry. People would use the expression "keep the ball rolling" both in literal reference to these huge campaign props, and as a metaphor for keeping the momentum of the campaign going.
Martin Van Buren is referred to derisively in the song as "Little Van" or "Little Matty" and his supporters as "Vanjacks". These are contrasted with the simple honest virtues of Harrison and the inevitability of his victory.
In modern times the song was used as part of the 1968 Off-Broadway musical entitled "How to Steal an Election". It has been recorded in a traditional form at least twice: in 1978 by Peter Janovsky on the album Winners and Losers: Campaign Songs from the Critical Elections in American History, Vol. 1 for Folkways Records, and in 1999 by Oscar Brand on the album Presidential Campaign Songs: 1789 – 1996 for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The band "They Might Be Giants" (one of my favorites, also famous among
potus_geeks for their song "James K. Polk") recorded an alternative rock version of the song for the 2004 compilation album "Future Soundtrack for America".Here is a YouTube video of the song, sung in its more traditional tune:
and here is They Might Be Giants doing their version: