Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 12 March 28, 1891
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The Thibodaux Sentinel March 28, 1891

Not being a resident of Louisiana during the campaign of 1840, I have but little 
knowledge of how it was conducted, but the fact of the vote of the state being 
given to Gen. Harrison is a reasonable conclusion to suppose that the Whigs were 
alive and earnest, as their brothers were elsewhere.

Among the leading Whigs of that day, who no doubt participated in the contest 
were Gov. E.D. White of Lafourche, Senator Porter of St. Mary, Edward Sparrow, 
J.P. Benjamin, Christian Roselius, Rice Garland who met with such a tragical 
fate, a few years afterwards; among the Locofocos were also a number of men of 
great talent and eloquence.

The parishes of Lafourche and Terrebonne were almost unanimously Whig, whilst in 
Ascension and Assumption the parties were pretty equally divided. In the 
southern portion of Louisiana the Whigs were largely in the majority whilst in 
the northern part of the state the Locofocos predominated.

On the fourth day of April, 1841, just one month after his inauguration, 
President Harrison died, much to the sorrow and regret of the Whig party. He had 
appointed an able cabinet, with Daniel Webster at its head.

Almost the only official act which he did, besides the appointment of officers, 
was to publish a call for an extra session of Congress. 

John Tyler, the vice president, became president a few days afterwards.

The call for an extra session required the governors of all the states to issue 
calls for the election of members of Congress, previous to the usual dates.

At these elections the Whigs elected a handsome majority of the members, among 
them some of the ablest men of the nation.

A bill authorizing the charter of a national bank was vetoed by President Tyler, 
to the dismay of the Whig party, as that was one of its favorite measures. A 
second bill, under a different title, framed in such a manner as was thought to 
avoid the president’s objections, met with a similar fate. This so aroused the 
indignation of the Whigs against Tyler, that he had scarcely a friend left in 
the halls of Congress.

The Whigs deemed his acts those of a traitor to his party, whilst the Locofocos 
would not trust him, being inclined to hold a similar opinion, whilst rejoicing 
over his treachery. The Whigs passed what was then supposed to be a high tariff, 
but if Henry Clay the great leader of the protectionists could have seen the 
McKinley bill of 1890 he would have considered his American plan as that of a 
very low tariff indeed.

The Whig party advocated a system of internal improvement by the government, 
whilst the Locofocos voted against nearly everything of the kind, except coast 
defenses, and the improvement of harbors bordering upon the deep seas.

They denied the right of the government to pull up snags or improve the 
navigation of any river, that was within the limits of any state–that, they 
contended–was the duty of the individual state.

The consequence was that the government was improving rivers and harbors in all 
the northern, whilst nothing was done in the southern states. When a bill to 
improve a northern river was before Congress, the Whigs supported it on 
principle whilst the Locofoco members, in the northern states would all vote for 
it, and thus the bill would pass. But when the question of doing anything in the 
south was up, the local Locofoco members as well as those in the other states 
would all fall back on principle and vote against it.

It was not until some years later when John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, the 
great, able and eloquent leader of the States Rights Party, visited Memphis in 
Tennessee, and proclaimed the Mississippi river to be “a great inland sea worthy 
of the protection of the government,” that the Democrats began to vote for any 
federal improvements.


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