March 15, 1978

President Harrison An OK Buckeye

Robins are OK as a sign of Spring, but I know the season begins when Buckeye sons file their petitions for political office March 23.

Not many folks remember that the tradition of rip-roaring political campaigns was nurtured in Ohio during the Harrison-Van Buren contest of 1840-and that out of it came “OK” and “Buckeye” as new words in the English language.

Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States, was held accountable for the Panic of 1837 and the hard times that followed. Yet, the Democrats had no choice but to nominate him for re-election.

The Whigs trooped to the polls in the Spring of 1840 to nominate General William Harrison as their presidential candidate. Having defended the Northwest territory in the war of 1812 at Ft. Meigs ( Toledo) Ohio, and Tippecanoe River ( Indiana) he was a popular hero.

Dissident Democrats in New York City, comprised largely of out-of-work Irish immigrants opposed to banking, formed an O.K. Club on March 23 of that year as the political campaign got underway. They took the name in defiance of conservative party members who jeered the common Irish expression “all correct” and spelled it “Oil Korrect” to imitate brogue.

East Coast newspapers noted the new political force a few days later: “The Irish Locofocos (another derisive name for the dissidents) in New York’s 6th ward have been parading the streets with shillelaghs, swearing ‘O.K.’ etc,” said the National Intelligencer, “The Locos translate O.K. oil correct.”

The Whigs were delighted with this split in the opposition party and adopted OK as a war cry to emphasize their concern for the working man.

In those days -- before television, rallies and parades were popular -- political affairs were attended by thousands of party faithful. Each side strived to outdo the other in numbers of supporters turned out, the length of their parades, the cleverness of their mottoes, the size of their bandwagons.

A notable Whig convention was held in Urbana, Ohio, in the Fall of 1840, where the presidential candidate spoke for two hours, and other orators filled out the day. Twelve dining tables, each 300 feet long, were set up in a grove of trees. The audience drifted away from the speaker’s platform from time to time to eat barbecued oxen and sheep and drink barrels of hard cider.

Over all, a huge banner proclaimed: “The People is Oil Korrect.”

This intrigued Samuel Medary, a Whig publisher of Columbus, Ohio, and he made much of the OK motto in his newspaper.

This, in turn, impressed an ardent Whig tavern owner in Springfield, Ohio, named Daniel Leffel. His establishment, known as Sugar Grove, was located on the National Road, then a busy thoroughfare between the east and west.

Leffel painted the initials OK over his doorway to proclaim his political leaning, and travelers spread the appellation far and wide.

The term Buckeye to designate a native Ohioan originated with the Indians around Marietta. It was first applied to Col. Ebenezer Sproat, high sheriff of the first settlement there.

When the first court was opened at Marietta, city officials, judges, and military officers marched to Campus Martius Hall in solemn procession.

Leading with drawn sword was the sheriff who was over six feet tall and well proportioned. Indians watching the procession were so impressed with the commanding figure of Sproat that they shouted “Hetuck” to him –meaning “big buckeye” in their language.

Thus, the nickname was of local usage when the Harrison-Van Buren campaign got underway. Ohio Whigs quickly claimed Harrison for their own on the strength of his campaigns here against the British. The Democrats sneered that the aging general “was better fitted to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider than rule in the White House.”

A nominating convention in Columbus in February 1840 took up the intended insult and turned it into an inspired campaign ploy. Harrison supporters built a cabin of buckeye logs on a wagon, hauled it to the convention and composed several songs praising their “log cabin candidate” as a true “Buckeye.”

A favorite ditty was:

Oh where, tell me where,
Was your buckeye cabin made?
‘Twas built among the merry boys
Who wield the plough and spade
Hurrah for the father of the Great West,
For the Buckeye who follows the plow.

Enterprising Whig businessmen took to manufacturing buckeye canes as a symbol of Harrison’s frontier background. The sticks quickly became as famous as Harrison’s official slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”

Strings of buckeye beads, already entrenched in folk lore as a preventive of rheumatism, also figured prominently in Harrison’s campaign. Ohioans traveling outside the state took along buckeyes as Harrison souvenirs, and they were much prized.

Harrison was elected by a landslide, thanks to the OK and Buckeye publicity.

But the hardships of the campaign were too much for him. He died after only a month in office, leaving two new words as his most enduring monument.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist