“…I have been reading in the observer some results of the election. It seems that General Taylor has a majority just equal to the electoral vote of New York: the majority of the popular vote in the Union is thought to be one hundred and forty thousand, of which 100,000 are in this state. It seems then that neither party could have succeeded without the vote of New York, and that in this instance N.Y. is more properly the key stone state. So far as military fame has an influence in our elections, I think it is to be deprecated, but in the present case…this consideration has had but partial weight, and much care has been used to ascertain principles and to find out what measures the President elect would pursue. I hope therefore, no more will be heard about hickory poles, or ash poles, or hard cider, connected with the dignified business of electing a president for twenty millions of people…

On election day, we had, in a furious riot down at the river a display of the beauties of the [liquor] license law. As no law for the prevention of drunkenness can stand long among us, we must be content to pay the heavy expenses which crime must cast the community, and if such bitter experience cannot open the eyes of the people and make them wise, it seems their folly must remain without a cure. If you should see in your quiet place, one half the iniquity that reigns in this village, you and your people would think the enemy had indeed come in like a flood, and that Satan had taken to himself his great power…”

The writer was an obviously conservative Presbyterian clergyman and schoolteacher, a graduate of Union College of a deadly serious bent. He made clear his disdain for the populist hoop-la which had crept into American elections since Jacksonian days - the “furious riot” of “drunkenness” on election day; the undue influence of military fame, rather than political principles, which had won the election for Generals Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison and, that year, Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War; and the popular interest in fatuous campaign slogans and symbols like the Democratic “Hickory Poles” (recalling the nickname of “Old Hickory” Jackson) and the Whig lauding of Harrison as the “hard cider” man of the people.