During the height of the 1840 presidential campaign season, the
Democratic editor, Charles Gordon Greene, printed in his Boston Morning
Post the following lampoon of the September 10 Bunker Hill Whig
Convention: “ ‘Madam, I am astonished that you do not wave your
handkerchief; I thought that the women were all whigs,’ said a gentleman
to a lady while the procession was passing by them on Thursday. ‘You are
mistaken, sir,’ was the answer – ‘the whigs are all women.’ ” Greene
efficiently slung this partisan mud at the 80,000 men and women who
demonstrated their support for the Whigs at the gathering. The editor
fastened upon the opposition's previous pronouncement that “ ‘The
Ladies are all Whigs’ ” and inverted it to effeminize men who would vote for William Henry Harrison. “The Whigs are all women,” “Colonel”
Greene now declared. On this page of one of Boston's most widely read
dailies, the gender of both Whig men and women was questioned and
distinctions between them became blurred in unflattering ways. Greene
thus defiled both sexes with one swift printed gesture.