Words and Phrases in American Politics: Fact and Fiction about Salt River

Abstract

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The Salt River Ticket, Democratic Discourse, and Nineteenth Century American Politics

“…The image suggests Tennessee Congressman David Crockett, a folk figure popularized in a series of 1830s ''autobiographies,'' and the text recalls Crockett's having characterized Van Buren's supporters as ''volunteer slaves'' (Crockett, 1923). Harrison lost in 1836, but in the Whigs' 1840 bid for the presidency, Harrison's folksy campaign image as a cider-swilling frontier fighter may have brought the term into general parlance (Sperber & Tidwell, 1951). An 1839 broadside circulated in New York announced a trip up Salt River on the Steamboat Van Buren (Next Stop, 1839), and political cartoons through the 1840s and 1850s consistently employed the visual trope of a body of water labeled ''Salt River,'' into which disfavored candidates fell, were pushed, or had intentionally jumped.…”

“…Berdahl (1976) referred it to Henry Clay, the Whig Senator who three times ran unsuccessfully for President. Historians Sperber and Tidwell (1951) found evidence of the term in American frontier slang as early as 1827, when Frances M. Trollope explained that being sent ''up Salt River'' meant to receive a beating or besting by a Western braggart. An 1836 political cartoon featured a boxing match between presidential candidates Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison: a frontiersman in buckskin and a coonskin cap declares, ''That 'Cold blooded' Kinderhooker [Van Buren] will be row'd up Salt River or I'm a nigger!''…”