Rift in the DemocracyAutumn 1840. It seemed as if the American people had gone mad. Across the land, bonfires and torchlight parades lighted the night skies. Mobs chanted silly ditties to express their purpose'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,' or 'Van, Van is a used up man.' The wildest election in the sixty some years of the history of the Republic was inspiring citizens to new heights of humbuggery." So writes James Paul in the lucid manner of modern scholarship that aims as