The speech reviled then-President Martin Van Buren for his supposedly luxurious lifestyle in the White House, while idealizing Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison as a homespun man of the people; compare the idiom "silver spoon".
An old soldier Harrison, who, to rescue thousands of women and children from the scalping knife of the ruthless savage, freely abandoned all the endearments of home and family, endured the icy and piercing blasts of northwestern winters, wading through the deep and cold waters and black swamps of Michigan and upper Canada, sustaining, at times, an almost famished nature upon raw beef, without salt, and often periling life on the field of battle?
Poor simple-minded old veteran, he was, no doubt, foolish enough to believe that, having given the best energies of his body and mind in youth, manhood, and mature age, to serve and defend the honor, the rights, the property, and the lives of his fellow-citizens, he would at least, in common courtesy, be entitled to their respect, if not to their love and gratitude.
The survey of smooth lawns and gently sloping meads, covered with rich coats of white and red clover and luxuriant orchard grass, made no delightful impression on their eyes.
Hence, the reformers have constructed a number of clever sized hills, every pair of which, it is said, was designed to resemble and assume the form of an Amazon's bosom, with a miniature knoll or hillock on its apex, to denote the nipple.