'Fifty-Four Forty or Fight': Facts and Fictions
1957; Duke University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/454081
ISSN1527-2133
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoIf the writer of these lines is even partially right, and we have no reason to doubt the soundness of his judgment, then the existence of words like agrarianism and locofoco and their effect on the electorate must be considered as a factor at least as important to the understanding of historical events as the defalcations of a Swartwout and the allegation that Van Buren used golden spoons and rode in an English-made coach. But while few historians of the Tippecanoe campaign will omit an allusion to these latter facts, we are not aware of any attempt to appreciate the influence of such words as agrarianism and locofoco on the outcome of the election. In general, while historians like to use the slogans and catchwords of the events they describe in order to add color to their presentation, their treatment of the linguistic side of political activities is very far from systematic and in some cases is misleading. The phrase fifty-four forty or fight, frequently quoted as one of the winning slogans of the presidential campaign of 1844, is a case in point. We shall attempt to show that the widely accepted ideas of the origin and history of this slogan must be thoroughly revised. In the course of our work on a historical dictionary of American politics, to be edited under the auspices of the Graduate School of the Ohio State University, we have tried for years to find contemporary evidence of the use of this slogan in 1844. Several times we have found ourselves in possession of what seemed to be reliable clues, but every time it turned out that these clues were misleading. Marquis James, for instance, reports a conversation in the course of which Jackson is alleged to have said: 'Our motto should be, gentlemen, the words of
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