{"id":302,"date":"2012-05-01T02:44:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T02:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/?p=302"},"modified":"2012-05-01T03:37:22","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T03:37:22","slug":"302","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/1848\/302\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Hero. Experienced Statesman. Honorable Man. Lewis Cass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"For Cass, 1848.dv\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EF6b3Gi02I4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Charlie Gephart<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">For Cass Explanation<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joel Silbey, in <em>Party Over Section; The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848<\/em>, writes that \u201cthe Democratic campaign [for Lewis Cass] was neither innovative nor adventurous\u201d (115).\u00a0 The campaign almost wholly avoided the polarizing subject of slavery, instead focusing on other issues.\u00a0 <!--more-->To his base, Cass was a true Democrat, a committed expansionist, and a man with a decorated history of service (both as a veteran and a public official) to his country.\u00a0 Credited for coining the term \u201cpopular sovereignty,\u201d Cass believed in each state\u2019s ability to decide on the issue of slavery.\u00a0 However, he never specified when or how settlers in new states should make a decision about the peculiar institution.<\/p>\n<p>Cass entered the election of 1848 as the American West\u2019s leading political figure.\u00a0 He had also served his country in the War of 1812 gallantly and effectively\u2014though some in the opposition parties enjoyed poking fun at his role in the surrender of Detroit to the British.\u00a0 Further, Cass was an active and committed Democrat throughout his career.\u00a0 I wanted to stress all of the latter aspects of Cass in my video, because they directly answered critiques of him from opposition parties and they also implicitly illustrate Zachary Taylor\u2019s shortcomings.<\/p>\n<p>I start the video by calling Lewis Cass \u201cGeneral Lewis Cass.\u201d\u00a0 Taylor garnered most of his own popularity based strictly off of his military accomplishments in the Mexican-American War.\u00a0 I wanted to play up Cass\u2019 military achievements, because they were indeed numerous and impressive.\u00a0 Later on in the video, I display two quotes\u2014\u201c[Always] to be found where the shot flew thickest,\u201d and \u201cAn officer of the highest merit\u201d\u2014to stress his military record, and thus the fact that Cass was <em>also<\/em> a war hero.\u00a0 The second quote, about Cass\u2019 merit, comes from William Henry Harrison, the late Whig President.\u00a0 Because this quote from a Whig President supports a man running on the Democratic Party\u2019s ticket, I think it would capture the American public\u2019s attention at the time.\u00a0 Further, the image at the background of this quote is a map of the northern US and Canada.\u00a0 Cass distinguished himself as a soldier during the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes Frontier.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to stressing Cass\u2019 military record, I focused on his public, known political history.\u00a0 Zachary Taylor admittedly had never even voted before the election of 1848, and his political principles were incredibly vague and unclear (although Cass was also criticized for being two-faced regarding the Wilmot Proviso\u2014praising it in the company of some Northerners but knocking it amongst Southerners).\u00a0 Cass, however, was fairly stable in his politics.\u00a0 I used a quote from George Hickman, in <em>The Life of General Lewis Cass with His Letters and Speeches on Various Subjects<\/em> (Baltimore, 1848), to illustrate this point.\u00a0 In <em>The Life<\/em>, which was essentially a campaign pamphlet for Cass, Hickman wrote that Cass \u201crequires no censor to ask his principles, or to ascertain his qualifications \u2026He is\u2026clear and manly in the exposition of his principles.\u201d\u00a0 I thought this quote illustrated Cass\u2019 aptitude for the Presidency well, and I also thought it was effective in implicitly labeling Taylor as unmanly for having no clear principles.\u00a0 I also inserted two other quotes into the video\u2014 \u201cA perfect embodiment of progressive democracy\u201d (from a correspondence between Thomas W. Thomas to Howell Cobb on June 5, 1848) and \u201cIf you vote for General Cass, you vote to continue and perpetuate the Democratic policy, which has brought the country to such a high state of prosperity\u201d (from <em>Campaign 20<\/em>, a pamphlet supporting Cass on October 11, 1848)\u2014which directly connect him to the Democratic party and its recent successes in the oval office.\u00a0 The second quote of the two explicitly describes Cass as a man who could further the success of Jacksonian Democracy in the United States.\u00a0 Cass\u2019 ability to do so was a major attribute for him to his base.<\/p>\n<p>The video features three images of Cass.\u00a0 The first two are portraits of him that I found on the Library of Congress webpage.\u00a0 The third picture also comes from that site, but it features Cass in a campaign poster.\u00a0 Here, he is surrounded by the 11 previous US Presidents.\u00a0 I thought that this image was quite effective to end on, as my video figuratively placed Cass into office with that picture.\u00a0 Another significant aspect of that section of the video was the quote I included: \u201cOn Tuesday, November 7, Unite, vote for Cass.\u201d\u00a0 Though this seems like a fairly standard call to action to a modern audience, it would have been significant to the audience of the time.\u00a0 The election of 1848 was the first Presidential election to have a unified <em>national<\/em> election day.\u00a0 Previously, dates varied amongst states.\u00a0 Thus, I wanted to call on the nation as a whole to unite behind Cass on the seventh of November.<\/p>\n<p>For the video\u2019s music, I chose a clip from Ludwig van Beethoven\u2019s Symphony No. 6, also known as \u201cThe Pastoral Symphony.\u201d\u00a0 The music has a light, energetic feel to it, and I wanted my audience to see Cass in the most positive light possible.\u00a0 I also thought that the cheery, carefree spirit of the symphony mirrored the nature of Cass\u2019 campaign, which altogether avoided the serious issue of slavery and instead focused on his more redeeming, less polarizing qualities.\u00a0 The music also picks up\u2014in terms of tempo and volume\u2014during the two most important quotes of the video: Harrison\u2019s quote about Cass\u2019 military record, and Cass\u2019 ability to continue the Democratic tradition of leading the country towards prosperity.\u00a0 The music helps the flow and feel of the video, and it accents exactly what I wanted to accent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charlie Gephart For Cass Explanation \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joel Silbey, in Party Over Section; The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848, writes that \u201cthe Democratic campaign [for Lewis Cass] was neither innovative nor adventurous\u201d (115).\u00a0 The campaign almost wholly avoided the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/1848\/302\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26632],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-26632"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/hist359\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}