Back to the Future for the GOP – A Return to the Whig Rallies

One of the more interesting innovations that Donald Trump has brought to modern presidential campaigns has been the party-like atmosphere of his Trump rallies. These rallies were in battleground states and areas, where Trump spoke for a few hours, oftentimes mixing political and policy issues with jokes and commentary on non-political affairs, with some music and a little dancing.

Then again, these types of political rallies are not totally new and unique to American politics. Political events with a party atmosphere have been around since the beginning of the Republic and before; in his elections to the Virginia House of Burgesses, George Washington himself paid for at least one raucous event on election day where he plied voters with alcoholic beverages and food. 

But it was in 1840 when the real precursor to the modern-day Trump rallies first occurred. As a result of that year’s rallies, that election was called, according to one prominent historian, “mainly fun and games.” Presidential Campaigns, Paul F. Boller, Jr. That year, the opposition party, the Whig Party, running General William Henry Harrison, challenged the Democratic-Republican Party and sitting President Marvin Van Buren (note – contrary to popular culture, Martin Van Buren wasn’t particularly “mean”). The economy was not in the best of shape, but the Whigs also ran a strikingly dishonest campaign depicting Harrison as a war hero who was a man of the people, born in a log cabin, and who enjoyed drinking hard cider. (None of these assertions was true.)

To further their campaign, the Whigs held huge rallies:

Estimates of crowds assembled for Whig rallies ranged from one thousand to one hundred thousand and sometimes were reckoned in terms of acreage covered… And Whig gatherings – replete with speeches, songs, cheers, and hard cider – were almost interminable: two, three, five hours long. Log cabins decorated with coonskins (after the fashion of frontier huts) became ubiquitous; erected at party rallies, drawn along in parades, and stationed in just about every city, town, village, and hamlet in the land. Hard cider was plentiful: the latchstring at the door of the log cabins was always drawn; and there was also sweet cider for the temperate. Slogans, mottoes, nicknames, and catchwords abounded: “The Farmer’s President”; “The Hero of (the battle of) Tippecanoe”…and best of all (since John Tyler of Virginia was Harrison’s running mate), “ Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” 

There were Tippecanoe badges, handkerchiefs, shaving cream, and log cabin songbooks. The Whigs created the expression “keep the ball rolling” by rolling huge Harrison balls ten or twelve feet in diameter, made of twine, paper, leather, or tin, and covered in slogans, from town to town.

All of this worked in 1840; Harrison beat Van Buren in both the popular vote and the electoral vote by a huge margin. As a Democratic-Republican newspaper complained, “We have been sung down, lied down, drunk down!” 

Granted, General Harrison did not speak at these Whig rallies. He did not speak much at all during the 1840 campaign. Prior to the 20^th century, presidential nominees avoided personal campaigning, and Harrison’s political aides specifically instructed him to keep quiet on the salient issues; as a result, the Democratic-Republicans tagged him as “General Mum.”

In 2024, the Trump rallies (presumably) worked as well. They were certainly popular with Republicans, and they seemed to provide some free positive media for the Trump campaign. There is at least one study that said there was a positive polling effect from them (using data from 2016).

Of course, there is one other big difference between the Trump rallies and the Whig rallies – no alcohol is/was served at the Trump rallies. I will leave it to the readers to tell me whether that is a positive or a negative.