An interesting letter with exceptional content on the election of 1840 and on the origin and significance of Harrison's Log Cabin and Hard Cider emblem:

"I am pleased to hear of the zeal among the Whigs of VT. I have great hopes of a favorable result. Your objection to the use we are making of the Log Cabin & hard Cider emblem surprises me. I glory in it & deem that we are making just use of what was intended to sneer & ridicule us & our candidate. And besides it is a beautiful emblem of the purity & simplicity that should again prevail at the seat of Govt. where corruption riots in the treasury that are created by the tenants of Log Cabins. You must recollect that we are indebted to the Van Buren press for the watchword of L. Cabin & Cider. They said after the nomination in allusion to Harrison's imbecility & vanity that give him a pension of $ 2000, plenty of cider & a Log Cabin to live in & he would be contented - & again that the old ladies of Washington were making up a present of old clothes for him and requested contributions of old cloths, shoes &c to send to the poor old General - such things were enough to arouse the feeling of every Whig & it has done so as well as many Democrats & when a whole nation are animated by the same feeling it must not be deemed "childish, absurd, ridiculous, silly or immoral." And again the Whigs never wished to discuss or bring before the people his military life. It was forded upon them by wholesale charges of cowardice against Harrison."