"Ellis offers a detailed campaign study that will likely remain the standard on the subject for many years. In this persuasive retelling, the 1840 election appears just as colorful, much more innovative, dramatically more substandtive, and more enduringly significant than ever before."—American Historical Review
"Arguably the best book ever written about the 1840 presidential election. The clarity of the author’s writing, the cogency of his arguments, and the depth of his research all combine to make his study of the path-breaking election a superb book."—Congress & the Presidency
"The volume is well-written and documented, articulate in presentation, rigorous in evidence, and plausible in argumentation."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
“Every student of the early republic should read this account of how the Log Cabin Campaign was about style and substance.”—Civil War Book Review
“In Ellis’s telling, 1840 becomes a milestone in the evolution of partisan loyalties and grassroots participation, its manufactured hoopla a preview of our own media- and class-driven politics.”—Wall Street Journal
“Although often referenced as the first modern presidential campaign, the 1840 presidential election has rarely been examined in a comprehensive fashion. Richard J. Ellis has remedied this oversight by providing the first modern scholarly study of the ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’ campaign. This book is essential for anyone attempting to understand the presidential politics of the Jacksonian era and its modern-day influence.”—Mark R. Cheathem, professor of history at Cumberland University, project director of the Papers of Martin Van Buren, and author of The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson
“Combining tales of rivalry, rumor, and intrigue with careful analysis of voting returns and grassroots politics, this finely conceived and highly readable book establishes beyond doubt that the 1840 election was not simply a rollicking carnival of log cabins and scurrilous personality politics but also a serious conflict of issues and policies arising out of a disastrous nationwide economic downturn.”—Donald Ratcliffe, author of The One-Party Presidential Contest: Adams, Jackson, and 1824’s Five-Horse Race
“The 1840 ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’ presidential campaign is famous for all the wrong reasons. In Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox, historian Richard J. Ellis carefully peels away the legend of a colorful but mindless contest to reveal the true story of how and why William Henry Harrison secured the Whig Party nomination and defeated incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren for the presidency. Attending especially to voting patterns in states and localities, Ellis has produced what is now the standard account of this consequential yet often misunderstood election.”—Daniel M. Feller, professor of history and director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson, University of Tennessee Knoxville
