Tippecanoe & Tyler Too!

Mike Smith, writing for the Associated Press, has a nice little article explaining that Battle Ground, Indiana was the birthplace of the modern political campaign. In 1840, William Henry Harrison returned to the site of his 1811 victory over The Prophet.

[In 1840], [t]ens of thousands of people gathered on a historic battlefield site here to help launch William Henry Harrison’s bid for president in a rally that set the stage for the modern political campaign. The day featured bands, floats, stump speeches and songs based on the campaign’s slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

“Every campaign since has essentially followed the mold that was seen in the Indiana wilderness in 1840,” said Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.