“My Dear and Worthy Harrisonian,

        … It gave me great pleasure to hear that my old friends in Somerset appear to be Wide Awake and not found napping at so important a crisis as this is – or these Van Ruinous times which we at present are obliged to labour under. However I trust and hope that we shall be able to throw off the yoke which has been a Burthen to this County for several year, I say do your duty in Old Pennsylvania. Don’t be disgraced by giving or rather suffering the vote to go for Van. If you exert yourselves I know you have the power. I say then pick your flint and never give up till the enemy is Conquered – and the Country restored to What it was in Good old Democratic times.

            You say times are very dull in your place and that you have nothing to do in the way of selling goods – and that you feel like Shutting up Shop and using all your Humble Efforts for Old Tip – in other words for the Salvation and Redemption of the once Beloved but now distressed Country. I hope you may have Double Strength granted and persevere and not look Back in the Glorious Cause.

             Old Tip was in this place a few weeks ago. When he was on his way to the Celebration at Fort Meigs in the morning he left his place I had a little chat with him. He appeared to me to be in better health and his appearance, stronger then it was four years ago when I saw him in Philadelphia. Indeed he told me he was much stronger and his health greatly improved to what it was several years ago (the old fellow is Electioneering)…”

An interesting letter, for several reasons.  First is the very early use of the political phrase “Wide Awake”, adopted by a shadowy group of collegiate Lincoln enthusiasts in the presidential election of 1860, becoming synonymous with supporters of the new Republican Party in the decade before the Civil War. The other point of interest is the writer’s reference to “Old Tip” (i.e. Tippecanoe) General William Henry Harrison’s health, a frequent subject of discussion in his two presidential campaigns, which proved to be foreboding as he died just weeks after his Inauguration as President.