OZYMANDIAS PAYS A CALL ON SOUTHERN VERMONT

    Three days after         July 4, in the year one                  thousand eight-     hundred and forty,            20,000 farmers marched to this spot, with "banners flying" and   "lively airs playing," and some               with log cabins pulled by teams of  white horses, to listen to Daniel                Webster and to thunder        support for the Whigs, for their             man, William Henry Harrison, for "Tippicanoe and Tyler        Too," to rail against the depravities of the Democrats, the "Tyranny"   of Martin Van Buren, and perchance       to drink a little cider, which may explain why some saw 10,000             more, and this great   convention emptied out the towns of      southern Vermont, with a good dollop of  New Hampshire men and New      Yorkers, and everyone had a fine time, and boys who                 were there remembered the            Stratton Convention for         the rest of their lives, all hard to imagine now in a              clearing invaded by woods,                          no larger than a front     yard, so quiet where once many              thousands                    cheered and jeered on a  "large open plot of ground,"        oh, that day Daniel Webster came                 to Vermont!   At the site of of the Stratton Convention Stratton, Vermont July 2004

All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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