By any standard, the campaign of 1840 marks a watershed moment in the history of American politics that crystallized the many developments that had been unfolding throughout the previous three elections, particularly the campaign and election of 1828, establishing a firm base upon which the party structure and system would be framed and further developed over the years to come. The fairly rapid democratization of American political culture had already dramatically reshaped the electoral process by the early 1830s, and the “Age of Jackson” was marked by a far more expansive and comparatively inclusive political process than what had been experienced by the previous generation, developments and patterns that would prove the incubator of organized and directed bipartisan affiliations, managed national campaigns, hot-button issues tied into sustained and competing agendas, and a political rhetoric and emotive symbolism that appealed to the “common man” in the general sense, the “democratic man” in the abstract, and “the people” in the lowest common denominator. These developments were nothing more or less than a reasonable response to the expanded electorate, for by 1840, unqualified adult white male suffrage had become the norm, with all but three states (Rhode Island, Virginia, and Louisiana) successfully guaranteeing the right to vote for all white adult males without any stipulations as to the ownership of property (free African Americans were less fortunate, as only four New England states—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts—made a sustained effort to protect their right to vote).
Following hard upon these democratizing trends, the Campaign of 1840, as it is generally credited by political historians, is viewed as having fully ushered in a new era in presidential campaigns, in which the packaging of an attractive presidential candidate became as important as the more difficult labor of cobbling together a policy platform containing sufficient scope to draw in the widest possible support. Ideological attachments remained important, and in some cases they were drawn tighter still; but the focus of campaigns sharpened around the image of the candidate (a development already strikingly prefigured in the person of Andrew Jackson), the ability to communicate that image through the emotive shorthand of symbolism, and the ease with which a pool of voters beyond the diehard base could be marshaled behind a party’s national nominee. Candidates with strong regional appeal and favorite sons were still in play, but their influence on the national party organizations and the overall tenor of presidential campaigns was receding from view. To win the White House, a candidate needed to represent something intuitively meaningful to the entire nation, as former president Andrew Jackson had, and as incumbent president Martin Van Buren, for all his considerable political acumen and abilities, never quite could. What thus transpired in 1840 was a campaign that came to symbolize the emergence of modern political parties as an irremovable fixture of the nation’s political landscape.
Looking back, Jackson’s Democratic Party had just managed to survive a scare from the new Whig Party during the Campaign of 1836. Had the Whigs directed a more cohesive and focused national organization, they might have won the White House. By 1838, Whig members of Congress came to recognize that if they had any chance of defeating the incumbent Democratic president Van Buren, they would have to avoid nominating multiple regional candidates as they had during the previous campaign. Thus, the only way to avoid repeating the failures of 1836 was for the Whig Party to abandon its regional approach and, emulating the Democrats and even other minor parties such as the Anti-Masonic Party, hold a national nominating convention to select a single, national standard-bearer.
Eager to capture the White House from the Democrats and confident in their chances, the Whigs deliberately sought a candidate that would appeal to an electorate that had previously and enthusiastically selected the inimitable Jackson for two terms and, subsequently, Jackson’s heir apparent Van Buren, the famed “Little Magician” from New York. It was Andrew Jackson who had, through the possession of that rare personal magnetism that can through its own power command unflagging loyalty and adulation, provided the American prototype of the popular candidate—a charismatic leader, bona fide war hero, and resolute patriot who smoothly combined the nationalist sentiments favored by the Old Federalist/Hamiltonian element with the nagging distrust of national institutions and centralized power that marked the Jeffersonian-Madisonian Republicanism and that had for the most part dominated American political culture on the national level since 1800. All this was mixed in with a genuine populist disposition in spite of Jackson’s own well-concealed aristocratic proclivities (which were developed without an actual aristocratic background, as Jackson was truly a self-made man, further adding to his mystique and popular appeal). Such an ostensible man of the people joined to his unsurpassed military legacy provided future campaigns with the best model to emulate, but also one that would be difficult to find among lesser mortals.
Fortunately for the Whigs, they already had someone in play—General William Henry Harrison of Ohio (originally from Virginia), the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe and the Battle of the Thames, a familiar figure who previously had stood as one of the four Whig candidates in the loose campaign of 1836. Prima facie, Harrison fit the Jacksonian suit, a battle-hardened frontiersman who appeared to embody the American ideal of the man of action, at once a symbol of patriotic self-sacrifice and, as the story went, someone in touch with the sensibilities of a people increasingly committed to a broader political equality. And while Harrison may have been to a certain degree many of the things that were advertised about him, the image and the substance of the person behind it were not always consonant. He was indeed experienced in leading men in combat. Were his martial exploits in the same league as Jackson’s? That seems to be less clear, at least to some historians, and it is a question that is more relevant for an account of military history than for our discussion of political campaigns.
Harrison’s military record had served as a springboard into public service, serving the state of Ohio first as a member of the House of Representatives and then as senator, followed by a short assignment as President Jackson’s minister to Colombia. After his diplomatic service, he quietly took up residence on a farm near North Bend, Ohio, working modestly as a county official. Such an unexpectedly unassuming lifestyle for a man favored by circumstances does, to a degree, draw some distance between Harrison and his upper-class roots, thus further clouding Harrison’s frontiersman credentials. One thing is certain: He was far from representative of the “common man.” Unlike both Jackson and Van Buren, Harrison came from a wealthy Virginia family, one of the richest in the young republic, which was influential politically and had already played a notable role in the direction of the nation; his father, Benjamin Harrison V, was both a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and a former governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He also had familial connections to the wealthy Carter family of Virginia, which also linked him to the family of Robert E. Lee. This is not to say that Harrison was insincere in his attempts to identify with the popular frontier spirit of the times, which may indeed have been genuinely pursued with good intentions. But such an admission must allow that such a “man of the people” was a decidedly well-connected one.
Another thing is certain: Harrison left his native Virginia and, through his own talents, earned a reputation as a leading figure in the development of the Northwest Territory, a fact of his biography that does support to some degree his frontier character and common connection to the people as such. Nonetheless, in many ways, Andrew Jackson, while he came to amass a significant fortune and harbored within his personality certain nondemocratic impulses, was, by way of contrast to Harrison, truly a man who through great effort and against much adversity achieved remarkable success from the humblest of beginnings, having been born to modest parents and orphaned at age fourteen—before Jackson was born, his father died as a result of injuries—and forced to fight to survive from a very young age. Even Van Buren, while not quite facing Jackson’s hardships, was hardly a man of privilege, having come from a large, financially strapped family that could not afford college for young Martin (his father was a tavern owner and devoted follower of Thomas Jefferson). None of this was in Harrison’s experience, but the imagery spun around “Old Buckeye,” or “Old Tippecanoe” (or the abbreviated “Old Tip”), as he was to be called for obvious reasons, successfully evoked “Old Hickory” and all that he came to symbolize to the American people, and, quite unfairly, it emitted an image of Harrison as a man in touch with the people, in contrast to the alleged elitism of Van Buren. In this case, image and reality were by no means aligned.
Harrison’s frontier-warrior/man of the people campaign image gave birth to one of the more famous political slogans in American history, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” Tyler being Virginia’s John Tyler, Harrison’s running mate on the Whig ticket. The phrase evoked his military record in a way that viscerally resonated with the American public, who wanted a new Jackson and expected their presidents to follow not only the model of Old Hickory, but even more importantly, the example of that first and greatest of American presidential archetypes, George Washington. Toward this end, the Whig Party unapologetically combined hagiographical promotion of its candidate, a festive atmosphere, exaggerated personal attack against the opposition, superficial treatment of the real issues, and an uninhibited appeal to the ever-multiplying, variegated voters to propel Harrison to victory. War hero Harrison was successfully depicted as the simple friend of the small farmer and all those who made their way through the hard world on their own initiative and by their own wits, a claim that was expertly encapsulated in a legend that circulated conveying an image of Harrison having been raised in a log cabin. Never mind that the closest the wealthy Harrison came to living in a log cabin was a brief residence with his bride as newlyweds in a five-room log house; the modest, rustic image stuck to him and again effectively set him apart from Van Buren, who, while not raised in a log cabin, actually was born into humbler circumstances than Old Tip.
The first Whig National Convention, attended by delegates from twenty-two of the twenty-six states, was held on December 4, 1839, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, an uncharacteristically early date for a presidential nominating convention. Along with Harrison, elder statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky and General Winfield Scott of Virginia all entered the convention with significant levels of support. The eloquent and capable Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was also a name in play early on, but as before in 1836, he lacked sufficient support outside of his New England base, and a Webster candidacy was openly opposed in a series of editorials by Richard Hildreth published in the Boston Atlas. This was a serious blow to Webster’s credibility given that this print campaign against him originated from his home state. Webster’s candidacy was thus stunted well before the convention was scheduled to be held.
It was the eminent Clay who actually enjoyed front-runner status prior to the convention. He drew extensive support in the South as well as enough support in the North and West, especially in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Illinois, to demonstrate his continuing national appeal. Clay also seemed to benefit from support in New York, the critical northern state; but his position there was compromised when he encountered a mixed reception during an extended visit to the Empire State in the summer of 1839. For the most part, Whigs in New York City had expressed a general preference for Clay; but in Albany and the rest of upstate New York, there were enough doubts about running another Clay candidacy to darken his prospects. This may have been caused, at least in part, by Clay’s Masonic affiliation, and it was here in New York that the Anti-Masonic movement originated and still enjoyed palpable influence. Clay was also connected to the national bank, still a point of contention even among some Whigs and thus a connection that might have further weakened his appeal in a general election. However, it must be noted that this issue may have just as easily been defused by 1840, especially given Clay’s own recent admission, for whatever reason, that he no longer considered the whole of his American System and all the policies associated with it as essential to any future candidacy. Rather, he began to cultivate a more moderate tone that placed his approach to national policy somewhere between his erstwhile Hamiltonianism and the more populist and prevailing Jacksonianism that had held sway for over a decade. Finally, the slaveholding Clay was on record as being in favor of preserving the peculiar institution; but this position would not necessarily hurt a campaign against Van Buren, who had, at least at this point of his political career, openly expressed reservations about abolitionism.
These three issues have been viewed as possible sources of doubt among Whig partisans, but it might also be the case that Clay’s record as a national candidate worked against him. An otherwise highly successful politician and revered statesman, his inability to mount a successful presidential candidacy in earlier campaigns may have caused some hesitation within the leadership of the Whig Party, especially in the North (and particularly in New York, where the local politicos were well familiar with Van Buren’s skills and just what would be needed to counter them). Clay was unsuccessful in the Campaigns of 1824 and 1832 (indeed, he had been thoroughly trounced by the incumbent president Andrew Jackson in 1832), and it is quite possible that a past marked by electoral failure at the national level was the one thing that kept the party leadership from rolling out a bandwagon for Kentucky’s Great Compromiser. Broadly admired as a truly accomplished legislator (by many accounts the greatest of his era), his presidential ambitions were clouded behind the tarnish of past defeat. As with Webster, the bloom was off the rose with regard to Clay, his reputation as a statesman notwithstanding. This, more than any particular issue or political proclivity, seemed to weaken Clay’s appeal as a presidential candidate. The young Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, for example, who would throughout his political life define himself as a Clay stalwart and protégé, would in the election year of 1840 turn to Harrison, whom he referred to as the “father of the Northwestern Territory” (not only had Harrison distinguished himself as a fighting general in combat against Native American warriors and the British army within the Northwest Territory during both the Northwest Indian War and the War of 1812, but he had also served as secretary of the Northwest Territory for a short time as well as governor of the Indiana Territory prior to statehood). Clay was a hero to Lincoln, but the Rail Splitter surmised that it was Harrison who could win the White House for the Whigs, and so he threw in behind Old Tip. Similar attitudes prevailed elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, for example, leadership in the Whig Party unreservedly praised Clay for his many achievements but turned to Harrison as offering the Whigs the best chance to unseat Van Buren. Thaddeus Stevens, who was in the process of making a name for himself in the Keystone State, was quick to commend Clay and, in the next breath, just as quick to recommend Harrison. Indebted as the party was to both Clay and Webster, other, fresher candidates were sought and found, not in the halls of Congress, but rather among those whose leadership had been tested on the field of battle, as with Old Hickory, who was now widely embraced and revered by the rank and file of both major parties as the prototype candidate for national office.
“Old Tip” was not the only candidate who fit that type. General Scott was another figure with growing appeal within the Whig ranks. His war experience included the Battle of Lundy’s Lane near Niagara Falls during the War of 1812, an engagement in which Scott served admirably but that failed to produce a decisive outcome, and thus the memory of this battle failed to ring as emotionally as Harrison’s exploits at Tippecanoe and the still more decisive Battle of the Thames. Scott was more recently lauded, especially in New York (and perhaps another reason why Clay’s own appeal there declined), for his ability to successfully defuse border tensions with British Canada. This success gave Scott an advantage both over Clay (in that he could be promoted as a man of action with a record of success) and over Harrison (in that his latest accomplishments were more impressive, Harrison having kept a lower profile in recent years). Because of this, Harrison’s nomination was not guaranteed, in spite of the inroads he was able to make in the losing effort of 1836.
Indeed, in spite of considerable hesitation about Clay, the Great Compromiser remained the front-runner as the convention opened. An informal straw poll signaled a likely plurality for Clay at the convention, Clay taking 103 noncommitted votes to 91 for Harrison and 57 for Scott. On closer examination, while it is true that Clay initially garnered more votes than the other two candidates, it was equally clear that a majority of delegates (148, the total votes for Harrison and Scott combined) sought a new champion to carry the party’s banner against President Van Buren. Whether or not the convention would go to Harrison or Scott remained less clear, at least until Thaddeus Stevens somehow arranged to “accidentally” drop a letter among the Virginia delegation that had been privately penned by Scott to Pennsylvania delegate Francis Granger, the contents of which revealed Scott’s antislavery position. Stevens’s ploy, particularly cynical due to his own antislavery position, actually worked; Virginia delegates responded by throwing in behind Harrison, a turn of events that convinced the New York delegation, originally leaning toward Scott, to join in the endorsement of Harrison. On the fifth ballot, Harrison won the nomination, taking 148 votes, mostly from former Scott supporters, while Clay and Scott managed 90 and 16, respectively. The convention then nominated John Tyler of Virginia, a Clay delegate, as the Whig Party’s vice presidential nominee, and thus was paired “Tip” and “Ty,” and “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” was forever fixed in American political culture and history. In one of history’s odd coincidences, Tyler’s father, John Tyler Sr., ran for and won the Virginia governor’s mansion in 1808 against Harrison’s father, Benjamin, a shared history of political rivalry that again illustrates their high social standing within Virginia society.
As the Whig convention concluded, the Baltimore Republican, an anti-Whig newspaper, printed a comment attributed to a Clay supporter waggishly claiming that should one “give [Harrison] a barrel of hard cider and a pension of two thousand a year, my word for it, he will sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin, by the side of a ‘sea-coal’ fire and study moral philosophy.” While this was meant to derogate Harrison’s character, the Democrats inadvertently handed to the Whigs one-half of what would prove to be another of the more memorable, and more effective, slogans in presidential campaign history: “Log Cabin and Hard Cider.” The image of Harrison living in a log cabin, a pint of cider in hand, became fixed in the minds of the electorate, and rather than impugning Harrison’s habits as intended in the original remark, it actually worked to enhance the “common man” and pioneer persona that the Whigs had been trying to project. Here indeed was a frontiersman like Jackson and a man who lived in a modest dwelling and enjoyed his hard-earned cider just like the rest of us.
On May 6, 1840, the Democratic Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, and proceeded to renominate the president for a second term despite lukewarm support within Democratic ranks. Van Buren, the Little Magician or “Old Kinderhook,” was at times called the less flattering “Slippery Elm” by some within party ranks, a feeble contrast to the party’s real and beloved hero, Old Hickory. An economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837 had hurt Van Buren politically, tarnishing his appeal throughout the larger electorate and dampening his support even within the party. Conservative Democrats were defecting to the Whigs, and those Democrats who stood with Van Buren did so with muted commitment. The convention was even less enthusiastic about renominating Vice President Richard Johnson of Kentucky—reputed by some to have been the person actually responsible for slaying Tecumseh, and who had brought his own military credentials to the ticket in 1836. In spite of this military record, he was unable to supply the Democrats with the same dignified bearing and forceful persona as had Jackson, and he was regarded by some within the party as definitely expendable. But no other candidate for the vice presidency emerged at the convention; thus it was decided to allow the state parties to resolve the issue, and in time, it was therein resolved to Johnson’s favor, but not before other names such as Senator Littleton Tazewell of Virginia and Governor James K. Polk of Tennessee were also considered in some quarters; Tazewell actually managed to win eleven electoral votes for the office, with Polk winning the attention of one Electoral College voter. With the convention adjourned, the Democrats found themselves in a vulnerable position as they opened their campaign to retain the White House.
Van Buren, whose credentials as a committed proponent of democracy were sound, was successfully (and quite unfairly) redefined by Whig campaigners as an Eastern aristocrat with no real connection to common Americans. It was brilliant deployment of creative imagery and unabashed sloganeering. The Democrats groused at having their populist thunder stolen by, in their minds, the phony Federalist-Whig usurpers. In response, Van Buren’s supporters attempted to resuscitate the issues, particularly the battle over the bank, while dismissing the log-cabin story as the superficial trumpeting of mere celebrity mythmaking. In contrast, the Whigs intentionally steered from the issues. And the issues were still there, both parties hewing to their same positions advanced four years earlier, but now with the important addition that the issue of slavery was threatening to become a more visible and increasingly divisive concern. And yet the Whigs’ campaign was, through all this, still marked by presentation and image management, popular entertainment and populist appeal.
Additionally, Whig strategists found themselves managing (or in modern parlance, “handling”) their candidate. Harrison was not known for political acuity or philosophical clarity. His manner of speaking was often disjointed and confusing—incoherent to some and inspiring to none, he could appear both uninformed about and indifferent to the important questions of the day. Harrison’s more influential supporters, particularly Nicholas Biddle (whose renown had been earned in political battle against President Jackson over the national bank), were understandably nervous whenever Harrison actively appeared on the campaign trail. A committee of campaign managers was hastily formed with the specific charge of monitoring and coaching Harrison’s public statements. In a sense, Whig leaders devoted substantial energy to simply preventing their candidate from undermining himself. But for the most part, the polished Whig packaging—borrowing heavily from the Hickory Pole and public event tactics used to great effect by Jackson’s campaigns in 1828 and 1832—stifled any real policy discussion through the slick organization of festivals, parades, and barbecues, all punctuated by a chorus of slogans, jingles, and catchphrases and lubricated by a glut of mock log cabins filled with both hard and soft cider free for the taking.
Merchandising was a signal mark of the Whig promotion. Baubles such as promotional handkerchiefs and campaign buttons were common. Boisterous Whig campaign songs were abundant and widely circulated through sheet music and song-books. Familiar melodies such as “The Star Spangled Banner,” “La Marseillaise,” and “Yankee Doodle” now accompanied pro-Whig or anti-Van Buren lyrics. The Whig Party also made extremely effective use of campaign rallies, meetings, and bonfire events to build and fuel a grassroots following for Harrison. The slang term “booze” was invented due to the widespread consumption of whiskey sold in log-cabin-shaped packages and distributed by the E. G. Booz Distillery of Philadelphia to promote the Whig ticket. Even the phrase “keep the ball rolling” can be traced to the Whig campaign stunt of curiously rolling a large ball around Whig political rallies throughout 1840. The role of campaign songs was pronounced. The lyrics to one such Whig campaign song included the following doggerel:
What has caused the great commotion, motion, motion
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on,
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
And with them we’ll beat the little Van, Van, Van;
Van is a used-up man,
And with them we’ll beat little Van!
Political cartoons continued their comparatively new role as effective image-statements drawing quick and entertaining contrasts between the candidates. Harrison’s Western frontiersman/ordinary fellow/log-cabin builder/hard cider drinker/no-nonsense ploughman/Indian fighting, Red Coat stomping war hero/humble friend of the people imagery played out well in the cartoons and songs, and Van Buren’s New York refinements and Eastern manners served as all-too-easy targets for exaggerated and unflattering comparisons. Van Buren, pinned with the pejorative “Sweet Sandy Whiskers” and denounced as “King Mat,” was (quite falsely) accused by Whig politicians of indulging in opulent hedonism at the expense of the taxpayers, imbibing fine wines and clothed in delicate laces while General Harrison’s simpler taste ran toward buckskins and the ubiquitous cider. In truth, Van Buren’s White House was comparatively frugal and Harrison was not above extravagance, but the fiction was nonetheless swallowed by voters and thus politically devastating to the Democratic ticket.
The Democrats countered with attempts to humanize Van Buren, assigning to him the endearment of “Old Kinderhook” after his hometown, and pointing to his long record as a seasoned Jacksonian and heir to the ideals of Jefferson. President Jackson himself emerged from retirement to stump for his former vice president and political ally, but the presence of Jackson only served to remind voters of the clear differences between the two men, and it is likely to have caused Van Buren more harm than good in the comparison. Van Buren initially desired to avoid demagoguery and focus on issues, but the nature of the campaign eventually took hold, forcing the Democrats to play the image game as well. Typically, aspersions were exchanged in kind. Believing, rightly or wrongly, that Harrison’s “war hero” legend was built on the thin foundations of a minor player in the War of 1812, the Democrats attacked the general’s authenticity, competence, and manhood. “Granny Harrison, the Petticoat General” was the nasty insult that Democrats hurled at the aging challenger. Working hard to demolish the general’s war record, the Democrats accused Harrison of lacking political sensibility and moral spine, more the ignorant and effeminate poser than self-made rugged warrior. To the Democrats, Old Tippecanoe was in reality a dainty “General Mum.” The Democrats delighted in referring to Harrison’s speech coaches as a “Conscience-Keeping Committee,” and they pointed out that the “doddering” general was really guided by the “leading strings” of his managers. Defamation and opprobrium were greedily pitched to and fro between the major parties. To the dismay of the Democrats and Van Buren, the attacks on Harrison did not stick. In the end, the Whigs amassed larger crowds, marshaled more effective support in the press, and sounded the populist chord more convincingly. President Van Buren, whose policies were well within the Jacksonian democratic vision, was simply unable to compete against the broad appeal of the log-cabin campaign.
On Election Day, the popular vote between Harrison and Van Buren was relatively close, or at least the closest tally in the popular vote since it was first recorded in 1824, with Harrison receiving just over 1,275,000 and Van Buren in the vicinity of 1,130,000 votes or approximately 53 percent to 47 percent (1840 marked the first election year in which any candidate for political office received over one million popular votes—four years earlier, Van Buren set a record with slightly over 760,000 popular votes, now substantially exceeded by both the winner and the loser of the 1840 campaign). A new third party, the abolitionist Liberty Party, managed to gain just approximately 7,000 votes for its candidates, James G. Birney, a Kentucky native residing in New York, and Pennsylvania’s Thomas Earle. The Electoral College produced a more impressive decision, as Harrison enjoyed a landslide with 234 electoral votes against Van Buren’s 60. Harrison carried twenty-one of the twenty-six states, including all the large states except Virginia, and significantly, the forty-two electoral votes won by the Whig ticket in Van Buren’s home state of New York—a devastating blow to the president, who had well earned his reputation as a master politician by deftly navigating and, at least in the past, controlling the complexities of New York politics. Van Buren now became the third incumbent president to be denied a second term (John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the other two).
To everyone’s dismay, thirty-two days after being sworn in as the nation’s ninth president, William Henry Harrison died as a result of contracting a virulent strain of pneumonia, the onset of which was due, as many have believed and as legend still holds, to prolonged exposure to inclement weather during the inauguration, the result of an exceedingly protracted speech that Harrison delivered on that bitterly cold afternoon. Upon Harrison’s death, Virginia’s John Tyler became the first of eight vice presidents who would assume the office of the presidency upon the death of a president.
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Cohen, Martin, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller. The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations before and after Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Collins, Gail, Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Sean Wilentz. William Henry Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 9th President. New York: Times Books, 2012.
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