Rock Hill Herald Logo

Celebrate Labor Day like it’s 1840 | Rock Hill Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
  • Customer Service
  • Mobile & Apps
  • Newsletters
  • Archives

    • All News
    • Local News
    • Local Traffic Cam
    • North Carolina
    • South Carolina
    • Business
    • Education
    • NIE
    • Crime
    • More News
    • Andrew Dys
    • Nation/World
    • Politics/Government
    • Weird News
    • Databases
    • Down Home Magazine
    • Physicians Directory
    • Fort Mill Times
    • Fort Mill Times Sports
    • Submit a News Tip
    • Submit a Letter to the Editor
    • All Sports
    • Panthers
    • College
    • Winthrop
    • High School
    • High School Football
    • Auto Racing
    • Politics
    • Elections
  • Obituaries
    • All Opinion
    • Editorial
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Submit a Letter
    • To the Contrary
    • James Werrell
    • Palmetto Opinion
    • All Living
    • Community
    • Weddings
    • Engagements
    • Anniversaries
    • Births
    • Religion
    • Family
    • Home & Garden
    • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • Books
    • Calendar
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Puzzles & Games
    • Rewards
    • Horoscopes

  • Legals
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Virtual Career Fair
  • Homes
  • Classifieds

Opinion

Celebrate Labor Day like it’s 1840

Chicago Tribune

    ORDER REPRINT →

September 04, 2016 08:06 PM

We interrupt the frenzied 2016 political season with reflections on the presidential campaign of 1840. This may change the way you choose to spend Labor Day:

Ahead of that distant year’s contest with Democratic incumbent Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison did not attend the Whig Party convention in Harrisburg, Pa. He stayed home on his Ohio estate. He found out he’d won the nomination … a week later. There was no telegraph yet, and railroads were in their infancy. No one seemed in any rush to break the story. Harrison simply picked up his copy of the Cincinnati Gazette one morning and noticed a brief article stating that, oh, he’d been nominated for the presidency.

After finally getting official notification, Harrison sat down and wrote a letter of acceptance, according to “The Carnival Campaign,” a new book about that race by Ronald G. Shafer.

Another fact from the book about the pace of life back then: A Whig named James Brooks visited Harrison at home in North Bend, Ohio, during the summer of 1840. You might have thought Harrison would be, you know, out on the hustings talking to voters. But no, Harrison, who loved to entertain, was there because it was viewed as unseemly for a presidential candidate to talk too much about himself. Brooks, editor of the pro-Whig New York Express, intended to spend a day at North Bend, but Harrison persuaded him to remain a week. “Seldom if ever have I passed any time of my life more agreeably,” wrote Brooks, who obviously also had no other pressing appointments.

SIGN UP

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to The Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

Do you get the sense those guys operated at a slower rhythm than today’s candidates and second-by-second news cycle?

The point of Shafer’s book is that the Van Buren-Harrison matchup was the first modern presidential campaign (Harrison eventually stumped to huge crowds). But one also could view the 1840 race as one of the last to operate according to the natural pace of olden times. By 1844, Samuel Morse had developed the telegraph. By 1860, morning papers could break the news of Abraham Lincoln’s election. Then things really picked up.

By 1869, a neurologist named George Beard was diagnosing a condition in Americans called neurasthenia, which was basically a combination of stress and information overload. Beard, according to a recent article in The Atlantic, believed the modern world was causing burnout. He blamed “steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and the mental activity of women.”

OK, there’s nonsense at the end of that list, but Beard was on to something with the basic idea. Modern-day neurologist Daniel J. Levitin, in his book “The Organized Mind,” notes that information overload and multitasking overstimulate the brain, causing mental fog and scrambled thinking. The overtaxed brain produces too much of the stress hormone cortisol and fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline. Levitin quotes another expert saying: “When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

Get the point? Or were you distracted by your smartphone?

Perhaps Americans today live in an unnatural era, bombarded by news and overstimulated by instantaneous communication. We sometimes wonder, especially watching the current presidential race, if we’d get more done and think greater thoughts if we could live off the grid like William Henry Harrison. True, we had second thoughts after realizing Harrison died a month after taking office.

Still, this Labor Day, we vow to take an hour or two to disconnect and see how it feels. Please, take your time.

  Comments  

Videos

UNC’s Roy Williams on recruiting and now facing Duke’s Zion Williamson

‘On the court, it’s vicious’: UNC’s Roy Williams on the Duke-Carolina rivalry

View More Video

Trending Stories

‘Committed to improving education’: Chester school board member Patricia Hampton dies

February 18, 2019 10:01 AM

Suspected thief is beaten by store employees until his pulse stopped, NC cops say

February 17, 2019 02:37 PM

Teacher got her long hair cut short because she was tired of 5-year-old Texas bullies

February 17, 2019 12:02 PM

Lancaster man sentenced to 7 years for second violent attack on the same woman

February 18, 2019 01:06 PM

How SC’s Tim Scott made civil rights history

February 17, 2019 12:00 AM

Read Next

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the editor

By Barbara Barkley

bbarkley@heraldonline.com

    ORDER REPRINT →

January 29, 2019 08:27 AM

Letters to the editor, Jan. 27, 2019

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to The Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE OPINION

Opinion

Letters to the editor

December 31, 2018 09:36 AM

Letters to the Editor

Letter to the editor

December 31, 2018 09:25 AM

Opinion

Letters to the editor

December 24, 2018 07:50 AM

Opinion

Letters to the editor

October 29, 2018 08:33 AM

Opinion

Letters to the editor

October 01, 2018 08:41 AM

Opinion

Good options to help Hurricane Florence victims

September 21, 2018 11:40 AM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Rock Hill Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Archives
Advertising
  • Advertising Information
  • Place Obituary, Celebration
  • Place Classified, Legal
  • Local Deals
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story