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DEMOCRATIC SIMPLICITY. Or the Arrival of our Favourite Son.
   
Complete Explanation:
A satirical attack on alleged excesses in the Van Buren administration and on the President's Loco Foco or radical Democratic supporters in New York. Martin Van Buren rides past New York's Tammany Hall in a luxurious British carriage. With him are editors and advisers Frances Preston Blair and Amos Kendall. The carriage is drawn by supporters, one wearing a fireman's hat marked "No.5." A crowd looks on, and two youthful "Loco Foco" match-vendors wave as the coach passes.

Blair: "Well my democratic friends this is really a triumph! What will the Federal Whigs say to it."

Kendall: "You told me Matty that you could make the Tammany men do do anything--I see you can!"

Van Buren: "These are my loyal subjects! old Tammany never fails to do her duty on a Pinch!"

Others: "This is truly royal--great as the Coronation--what a humbug is this Democracy." "This beats our reception of Hunt & Cobbett at Spittalfield." ". . . LaFayette's entry was a fool to this."

An elderly man in the crowd: "I must have a seat in Congress again to speak of this Triumph."

The coach's driver: "This is True Democracy--a triumph of principle."

Weitenkampf dates the print 1838, but several factors argue against this. The matter of Van Buren's purportedly regal life-style and preference for foreign goods figured large in the Whig campaign of 1840. (It was given prominence by Pennsylvania Representative Charles Ogle's lengthy philippic on the subject in Congress during April of that year.) In addition, editors Blair and Kendall emerged as Van Buren's most powerful publicists during the 1840 race.


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