Great Men And Small Deeds

( Originally Published 1898 )

THE new regime, which was a continuation of the old, began pleasantly, and with strong men in abundance. In addition to Jackson, Clay and Webster — The Preserver of the Union, The Great Pacificator, and the Defender of the Constitution, as they were respectively nick named—there were still Chief-justice Marshall, though this was his last appearance at an inauguration, John Quincy Adams, the ex-President, and of future Presidents, Van Buren, Polk, Millard Fillmore, Tyler, Buchanan, and Franklin Pierce; besides such men of mettle as Choate, Everett, Horace Binney, Wise, Corwin, and Dave Crockett. Calhoun, "the weird specter of an idea," as Schouler calls him, was in his place in the Senate, and altogether, so far as ability was concerned, Congress never showed to better advantage. The difficulty was, that the ability was so distributed that it got in its own way; there was a plentiful lack of harmony and cooperation. The debates were sure to be interesting, but the action would be small; the attempt to accomplish anything was likely to have no better success than attended the efforts of the man who tried to lift himself by his own waistband.

Jackson, however, thought he could do something; and now that his policy had received so emphatic an indorsement at the polls, he believed that he could come near dispensing with Congress. He made three changes in his Cabinet, sending Livingstone to France and filling his place in the State secretaryship with McLane, who was succeeded by Duane as Treasury secretary. Duane was the son of a former henchman of Jackson's, and the latter believed that he could use him for his grand, secret purpose of eviscerating the Bank. Duane turned out a disappointment in this regard; but the President, as we shall see, had another card up his sleeve.

Meanwhile, by way of demonstrating the extent of his popularity, he undertook a tour to the Eastern States, which, in spite of certain accidents and mishaps, some of them of a comical character, produced an immense enthusiasm among the masses; but it came to a sudden termination at Concord, New Hampshire, where the President turned short about; and was back in Washington in three days. The reason put forward was that his health would not stand the strain of so much hospitality; but a stronger reason was doubtless his wish to get his campaign against the Bank in working order betimes. Congress being now scattered, he had a free hand; and it presently became known that he meant to with-draw from the Bank the government deposits, amounting to more than half of the whole; and, what was quite as serious for the Bank, he would accompany this act by giving his reasons for it : which were, in brief, that he did not consider the money safe there; he believed it was being used to corrupt the country and Congress; and he would not be a party to nourishing the parasite which was absorbing the vital forces of the nation. Of course, if this were credited, the Bank would be- discredited in proportion, and would be obliged to wind up its affairs forthwith.

Jackson took but few into his confidence; but one of these had to be Duane, because only the Secretary of the Treasury had the legal right to withdraw the deposits. After much hesitation and anguish of mind, Duane declined to do it; and Jackson thereupon dismissed him (he refusing to resign) and put in his place a gentleman by the name of Taney, who was a thorough-going advocate of anti-Bank principles. Taney did his duty; not actually drawing out the whole nine millions in one lump, but providing for its removal at a rate altogether too rapid to be comfortable for Mr. Biddle. Biddle, however, had had some warning, which he had utilized to the utmost of his power by contracting his loans; and this of course had an effect on the country; money became dear and wages low. The distress was more in the anticipation of evil than in the actuality of it; for the money taken out of the :Bank was deposited in State banks throughout the land, and only time seemed needed to reassure business. Biddle issued a protest which was intended to have a humorous and defiant twang to it; but this was another of Biddle's mistakes; his recognition of the fact that Jackson was not a man to be jested with was strangely delayed.

Clay, who had made himself the champion of the Bank in Congress, was now to make the next move; but he could do little more than move a censure of the President; for it was impossible to return the deposits to the Bank. The Great Pacificator was likewise disgruntled by Jackson's treatment of a land-bill which he had introduced in the last days of the previous session, which proposed to distribute the receipts from the sale of the public lands among the states, pro rata. Benton had a plan to throw the lands open to what was practically free settlement; and to allow those states in which the unoccupied lands were situated to have control of them. Jackson had kept Clay's bill, on the ground that it had come in too late for him to decide upon it; he now sent it to Congress with his veto. The veto was justifiable, though Jackson's grounds for imposing it may have been questionable; it was a job by which Clay had hoped to influence votes, and the gift of so much money to the states could not but have a demoralizing effect. It would encourage speculation, if nothing more. The dispute about this bill was but a preparatory skirmish to the main attack on the President's bank policy, which now began; and the contest lasted long after Jackson had left the White House for good.

The advocates of the Bank in the Senate and House made the most of the business alarm in the country, and did whatever eloquence could to inflame it. Their success was great; monster petitions were sent to Jackson asking him to reverse his policy, and painting the approaching destruction of the financial interests in lurid colors; and the petitions were supplemented by swarms of anxious persons delegated to remonstrate by word of mouth. The friends of Jackson began to fear that the pressure would be too strong; but he himself was immovable; he did not believe there was any real distress; it was only the stock-jobbers and moneyed' cormorants who were in trouble, and the more of such trouble the better. The arguments of Webster, the impassioned appeals of Clay, had as little effect. The latter, addressing Van Buren in his place, entreated him to go to the President and bid him "pause and reflect that there is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go; and let him not drive this brave, generous, and patriotic people to despair." Van Buren listened with attention and gravity; but then, as if to indicate that though the heavens fall, there was no reason why sensible men on the inside should not continue to exist and be comfortable, he walked down the aisle and begged the panting orator for a pinch of snuff; after which he walked back and resumed his chair.

At the expense of much breath on both sides, the Senate finally passed a resolution directing the return of the deposits to the Bank. But the House reversed this ruling by a large majority, reporting that the state banks ought to retain the custody of the funds in question. The Senate, however, passed Clay's resolution censuring the President; but Benton rose and moved for its removal from the records, and announced that he should repeat the motion from time to time until it was adopted. There was great dispute over Jack-son's nominations, Taney being rejected for the Treasury, and Stevenson for England; upon which Jackson left the latter post vacant for two years; when another Congress confirmed Stevenson. At the end of this "panic session" which had talked so much and done so little, the death of Lafayette was announced, and the members went home with crape on their arms. But in April, the Bank campaign had been continued by a committee appointed to investigate the Bank's books. The Bank squirmed out of this ordeal, and during the following winter obtained the appointment of a Senatorial committee for the same purpose, which, for reasons best known to itself, sent in a very favor-able report. But the suspicions of the people were confirmed, and their verdict went the other way.

The foes of the Bank were somewhat embarrassed to find a substitute for it; the swarm of state banks had obstructed the stream of finance with a vast quantity of small paper currency, which was discounted till no one could tell what his money was really worth. Jackson finally attempted to stop the issue of paper below five dollars in face value; at the same time causing gold and silver to be coined; which had a temporary good effect. But he understood little about finance, and had no doubt been rash in tearing down one system before any preparation had been made for a substitute. He was attacked in many quarters; and, on the other hand, the resistance of the poor to the rich which he had seemed to encourage found expression in riots, by which much property was destroyed. In January, 1835, Lawrence, a young English house-painter out of a job, fired two pistols at Jackson as he was leaving the Capitol; both shots missed; Lawrence was knocked down, locked up, and finally put in an insane asylum. This affair had no effect upon Jackson's course; and the fall elections were on the whole favorable to him. The deposits were not returned to the Bank, and for the present the opposition seemed to have no stomach for further fighting. At about this time, more-over, the last installment of the national debt was paid off, and Jackson's administration got the credit of it. His star was still full high advanced.

But his success in defeating the aims of those arrayed against him, had the result of uinting them in a new party, professing to derive from the old Whigs of 1776, and adopting their designation. The idea took over the country, and the Whigs seemed to crystallize almost at once into a homogeneous body. Both South and North contributed to its elements. On the other hand, a socialistic wing of the Jackson Democracy was organized under the nickname of loco-focos, bestowed on account of their having relighted with loco-foco matches the gas which the Tammany Democrats had turned out in the hall where both had assembled. Of the two great parties, the Whigs, as has been remarked, had the better men, though the Democrats had the better principles; but the latter were handicapped, as regarded their personnel, by the system of rotation in office, which made political services instead of merit the condition of tenure. The Whigs resembled the Federalists in their leanings to wealth and education, but had learned to give more consideration to the mass of the people; and they soon showed some measure of success. They gained support in several hitherto Democratic states. But Pennsylvania could not be won over; and the young William H. Seward was defeated for the governorship of New York. This attitude of the two great states fiinshed the Bank, all except the ultimate ceremonies. But the new party felt in itself the promise of future power, and organized for future triumphs. Several Presidential candidates were named by it in different states; Webster in Massachusetts, McLean in Ohio, White in Georgia, Harrison in Indiana and Ohio; and in favor of the latter, Webster withdrew his name, Clay also supporting him. The Democrats nominated Van Buren, who was Jackson's choice. During the interval before the election, there was a singular out-burst of disorder all over the country, expressing itself in riots, lynchings, strikes, and all manner of riotous disturbances; partly due no doubt to the young country "feeling its oats," and discovering by experience the difference between liberty and license; partly to the half-comprehended effect upon ignorant minds of the Democratic ideas, which seemed to deny rights to any except the common people. There was also a hostile feeling against the Papacy, of which many terrible things were prophesied; and finally there was the far more lasting element of trouble originating in the collisions between slave sympathizers and their opponents. The new abolition doctrines, of which William Lloyd Garrison was the ablest and most unrelenting exponent, were to be a fire-brand for more than twenty years to come. The abolitionists demanded instant extinction of slavery because it was morally wrong; and since the Constitution allowed the system, they would do away with the Constitution, so far as it commanded union; and were quite as insistent as the Southerners themselves in their demand for separation. The weight of opinion at the North was not in sympathy with the logical extremists; and the negro himself was almost as much restricted in northern communities as he would have been in the South. The lines of caste were as sharply drawn. Garrison's paper, the "Liberator," was as uncompromising and unflattering as he could make it; and his powers were anything but contemptible. His fierce arraignment of the Constitution set the majority in the North, as well as the whole South, against him. His importation of a British anti-slavery speaker to address American audiences (England having just emancipated the Jamaican negroes) made things worse; there were furious popular outbreaks against abolitionists, their meetings and their works; and the slave seemed not to be profiting by his champions. In October, 1835, Garrison was mobbed in Boston, and came near being hanged by the populace; but he only set up his press elsewhere, and continued his attacks. Sentiment was inflamed to a degree hardly credible in these less ardent times. Garrison's friends were quite as passionate as his foes. A negro uprising in Virginia was ascribed to the in stigation of emancipation societies; and certainly the pamphlets which were circulated in the South were calculated to inspire negro rebellions. The abolitionists offered no plan for freeing slaves and at the same time compensating their owners; they declared the owners to be criminals who de-served nothing but ruin. All this was very impractical; but it had its good effect; for had it not been for Garrison and his followers, and the rage they aroused on both sides, the collision between South and North might have been indefinitely staved off, and with it our national relief from an incubus from which South and North alike are to-day glad to be free.

But if the abolitionists were extremists, the Southern slaveholders were no less so. Their attitude was haughty in the last degree; they worked the constitutional lash for all it was worth. They cracked their whips and demanded that abolitionists should be sent south to be hanged ; and they introduced a gag law into Congress, forbidding any petitions on the subject of slavery to be so much as considered. This stirred up the venerable John Quincy Adams in defense of the right of petition. He had none of the obsequiousness which characterized too many of the public men at the North, in their attitude toward Southern arrogance; he did not favor the abolitionists, but he would countenance no infringement of liberty. "I hold the resolution a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, of the rules of this House, and of the rights of my constituents" ; and thenceforward he fought it until it was repealed. There was no stronger or braver man in Congress, and none of honesty so unimpeachable. The Southerners feared to bring in a vote of censure against him; though at one time he stood in peril of personal violence. In reply to the dogma that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery in the states, he declared that under the war-power in cases of civil disorder, the government might interfere and control it. And it was upon the basis of this assertion that the government did interfere twenty-five years later.

The debt of the nation being paid, Clay contrived to use the surplus to accomplish the principle of his land-distribution bill already referred to. It was agreed that the surplus remaining in the Treasury should be deposited in the state banks, ostensibly on terms similar to those in which the regular deposits had been transferred to them; but as a matter of fact, the money thus distributed remained the property of the states; another proof that a surplus is not so good a thing as a moderate national debt. Still, this method of disposing of the surplus was better than to yield it to open speculation, which was the growing vice of the time.

Arkansas was admitted as the twenty-fifth state in the Union, open to slavery, and Michigan followed on the free side. The election now coming on, Van Buren was found to have a majority of forty-nine electoral votes; the Vice-President, chosen by the legislature from several competitors, was Richard M. Johnson. Webster got Massachusetts' fourteen votes, and South Carolina again cast her votes for complimentary purposes only. Van Buren was pledged to continue the policy of his predecessor; and, contrary to expectation, the anti-slavery agitation had no influence on this contest. There could be no doubt that, despite its faults, Jackson's administration was approved by the country. He had been successful at home and abroad. The French claims had been paid, not without belligerent demonstrations on both sides; but Louis Philippe was too insecure on his throne to risk a war, especially in defense of a violated promise to pay. Other European nations settled their claims with us, or entered into friendly business relations, and commerce increased. Treaties were made with the Spanish-American republics, though great distrust was felt as to the stability of these little states, and the temptation to extend our boundaries was perceptible. For Jackson, indeed, it had been a temptation and something more. The Texas affair, whose first chapters date back fifteen years or more before this time, affords the first illustration of an annexation policy. The South had wished the region to be incorporated as a slave state; but Monroe had wisely pre-vented it. It was now a province of Mexico. Mexico her-self was too feeble a state to secure respect. But the eastern boundary between Texas and the United States had been fixed at the Sabine River by a treaty negotiated by Clay in 1831. It was Jackson's purpose to keep freedom and slavery balanced. In 1835 he proposed to Mexico to sell not only Texas, but California; but Santa Anna, the Mexican President, refused. Meanwhile a large number of American colonists were settled in Texas, and had intimated their desire for annexation to the Uinted States; this was regarded in the North as a plot to add slaveholding states to the Union. On the other hand, the Mexican government adopted measures which exasperated the American settlers; and under the leadership of Sam Houston, they established a government at Austin, and received material aid from Southern slave-holders. In the battle of San Jacinto, following the massacre of the Alamo, Santa Anna was defeated and taken prisoner. Jackson took a favorable view of all this, and sent United States troops to keep order. To avoid the appearance of forcing an infraction of the treaty, a number of old spoliation claims were revived, in settlement of which Texas might be seized. A rupture with the Mexican government was thus brought about, and all made ready for the next step; which, however, had to be left for Van Buren to make, since Jackson's tenure of power was now at its end. It is impossible not to admit that the conduct of this affair does not reflect credit upon Jackson's reputation for candor. The instinct for conquest of the soldier overcame the scruples which should have controlled the civil magistrate.

The finances of the country were left in a muddle which Jackson himself could neither comprehend nor control. The state banks were multiplied, and speculation, especially in western lands, was unrestrained. Cities were laid out on paper, and land worth little or nothing per acre was sold at a good price per front foot. Large importations of foreign goods were paid for in bullion, which was thus sent out of the country; and a circular issued by Jackson shortly before the end of his term to pay for public lands in hard money caused the gold and silver remaining to find its way into the Treasury. A panic and failures were inevitable; eight states failed, property lost value, and trade was arrested. Van Buren inherited this legacy of disaster, and bore the brunt of it; for it had not declared itself at the time Jackson withdrew.

Jackson was an extraordinary man; but his fortune was at least as extraordinary as he; no dreamer of romances would have trusted his imagination to invent such a man ruling in such a way over free America. He was as absolute as any despot; yet he was a champion of the Constitution and a true patriot; an illiterate man, in the conventional sense ; and yet with as able an intellect, and as keen an insight into many political mill-stones, .as men of far higher culture. He never made a mistake with the people; what he did, they liked, and what he liked, they supported. It did not seem to make much difference what views he held; they were certain to be indorsed by the public, if for no better reason, because Jackson held them. His work was often good; but the influence of his example in our politics cannot be commended. He made sycophancy an institution, because his subordinates feared him; he encouraged the lower elements of society, because he hated too narrowly the pretensions of wealth and society. He would not admit that there could be two sides to a question; there was but one side, and he was always on it. He made every-thing personal; and in this way he stamped his own personality so deeply upon history, that the impression can never be effaced; and yet, so singular was he, that few of his biographers claim fully to understand him. He was frank and blunt, passionate and trenchant; and yet some of the men who were nearest him declare that he was an actor, politic, and crafty. It is certain that he could dissimulate; he would not have been so successful a soldier had he not possessed the faculty of strategy. But like all men of great caliber, he had two men in him, one or the other of which predominated at different times, without any deliberate purpose of duplicity. So strong a man did not need to be a dissimulator, save as it were on the inspiration of the moment, when he might be partly moved by a grim sense of humor. That narrow brain of his was also deep, and he enjoyed out-maneuvering his antagonists as well as crushing them. No one who has looked into the intricacies of public life can have failed to observe how almost impossible it often is for the man in ostensible authority to force his purpose through the myriad obstacles and "pressures" which conflicting and plotting interests supply; but Jackson came as near doing it as any ruler of whom there is record, even though he were a despot in his own right, instead of only the chief magistrate of a free people.

Van Buren inaugurated an epoch of smaller men, not to be broken until Lincoln entered the White House. He was, apparently, a sincere hero-worshiper; and Jackson was the god of his idolatry, and the acknowledged model whose ex-ample it was his best ambition humbly to imitate. A more independent or less politic man might have been offended at the pains Jackson took to smooth the way for him; but Van Buren expressed only gratitude; as if a puppet should praise the hand which pulled its strings.

The first thing which Fate brought to pass upon the new President's amiable administration was that panic of 1837 to which we have already alluded. In this calamity every element which could render it complete seemed to combine; there was nothing to redeem the situation far or near; the failure of the crops made it necessary even to purchase grain abroad. The condition of finance was such that the mind shudders to contemplate it; legislatures were forced to pass acts legalizing suspension; not a bank in the country paid bullion. The pet banks which had received the national deposits fared no better than the rest. There seemed to be no money left in the world; notes might be paid for debts, and the next day the bank issuing them might fail. On the other hand, Congress and the President received their salaries in gold; which was not calculated to improve their popularity in the country. Van Buren was compelled to call an extra session to take counsel on the predicament.

To Congress, after reciting the condition of things, he proposed the measure which is his chief title to fame, though its effect upon himself was to defeat his political aspirations. He pointed out the evils inseparable from an alliance of any sort between banks and the government, and advocated abolishing such alliance altogether. In place of it, he would create an independent treasury, or, as it has come to be called, a sub-treasury, where the funds of the government could find a safe and convenient asylum. It was a good plan, as experience has proved; but it was new to those before whom it was laid, and their first instinct was to distrust it. It would give the government too much power, and would lock up in vaults bullion which ought to be circulating in the country. Moreover, the plan seemed incomplete; it was one end of a remedy, with the other left to conjecture. What should be done to secure a sound national currency? Further, it was suspected that the plan might be a disguised attack upon all banks; and that the proposed issue of treasury notes would renew the paper troubles under another form. The real difficulty in this and other affairs of Van Buren's administration, was the lack of confidence in its political integrity—a distrust which was quite as unjustifiable, to say the least, as it would have been if directed toward his predecessor. Van Buren was so artful a manager that it was hard to believe he would draw the line this side of unscrupulousness. The fact was, that Van Buren meant to be Jackson without Jackson's faults; but it would seem that Jackson's faults had been half the secret of his success; and when those were eliminated, the spell of Jacksonian Democracy lost its power.

This sub-treasury scheme, and the necessary retention of the next installment of the surplus promised to the banks, gave the new Whigs a desirable grievance on which to appeal to the people. The party was started with great enthusiasm, though they were obliged to restrict themselves to criticism rather than to suggest remedies. All the nice, clean, respect-able folks belonged to it, with monopolies and protection in their train; it had friends in the South, and its advocacy of a national government was agreeable. Besides, it had the benefit of the distaste for the hard-handed Democracy which was beginning to be felt by natural reaction. A good issue was all that was needed to carry the country. On the other hand, Calhoun created a surprise by abandoning his hollow alliance with Clay, and advocating "unbanking the banks" ; he called the connection of government with banks an "unholy alliance." Clay and Webster arraigned the sub-treasury plan as a first step toward an Executive Bank, with tyranny as its aim. But the corrupt collapse of Biddle's Uinted States Bank, which was now accomplishing, showed that Jackson and Van Buren were right in the stand they had taken against it, and was a practical reply to the eloquence of the orators on the other side.

But it was the slavery question which, in spite of all efforts to down it, persisted in raising its threatening front in Congress and the country. The Abolitionists had made the conscience of the North uneasy, and divided their councils, while antagonizing the South to an intense degree. The Democrats were controlled by the South; the Whigs were opposed to slavery extension, or to the domination of the slavery cause, but could not go the length of the Abolitionists, who were ready to surrender the Constitution on abstract moral grounds. Abstract right was all very well; but did a man owe nothing to the Constitution, and to the Union which it demanded? Was one man justified in requiring another to conform to his own moral principles or prejudices? The Abolitionists troubled themselves little about arguments; slavery must be abolished, Union or no Union. There was a discrimination to be observed here; we are not yet far enough advanced in human brotherhood to be able to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations, with a view to improving them, unless, as recently in Cuba, we find a decadent and barbarous nation inflicting savage cruelties upon a people struggling for freedom at our very doors. But a nation has a right to regulate, within limits, the conduct of its own citizens, when it plainly outrages morality, and threatens the common weal. For the nation is a homogeneous body, in which the sickness of one part affects all. If slavery was in itself an evil and a menace, the United States had a right to restrain or extirpate it; and it was only be-cause the United States was composed of separate states that this right was obscured. The Southern states took the ground of separate nations, and based. their claims thereon. But whatever political hair-splitting might pretend, the effect upon our free states of slavery in our slave states was utterly different from what would be upon us the effect of slavery in a nation really foreign. Our Congress was composed of representatives from all states; and as it was evident that slavery produced radical divergences in points of national policy, either government must be carried on by a system of compromises, with all the dangers and obstructions which that involves; or one party must finally over come and dominate the other; or the two must part. At present, we were trying the compromise alternative: for the rest, although it was possible for the North to dominate the South, the contrary was not possible, since the physical conditions at the North did not admit of slave labor being used there, all questions of morality aside; whereas in the South free labor might succeed. The alternative of separation remained; but that must be by common agreement of all parties; that agreement wanting, it might be accomplished by force, provided the force available were sufficient for the purpose. It turned out not to be sufficient, when the experiment was tried. But was the South justified in trying the experiment? The answer, on general principles, must be in the affirmative. She had a fair chance of success, and no further justification has ever been deemed necessary, when one body of people wished to divide itself from another. The Constitution could not stand in the way; treaties and paper compacts of all kinds are outgrown and cast aside every day; they are valid so long as they are useful, and no longer. Our Constitution has lasted because its provisions are far-seeing and sensible, and because it admits of remodeling as circumstances may require. But the right of the South to secede—if it could—was confused with a question quite distinct from it: the question whether she had a right to secede in order to continue slavery. Admitting slavery to be wrong, however convenient, is any people justified in bringing on a devastating war for the sake of supporting a wrong? The answer, on moral grounds, must be in the negative. But should the South therefore be condemned? How often, in the history of the world, has a nation molded its national policy against its interests, out of respect for the moral law? Besides, the South had been brought to believe that slavery was not wrong; they quoted Holy Writ in its support, and were furnished by Calhoun and others with many special reasons in addition. The very fact that it was assailed blinded them to its faults. They would fight for it not only as a matter of right, but of affection also—as for a beloved thing which had been attacked. Upon the whole, we may relieve ourselves of the apprehension that several million inhabitants of this country were any worse than the other millions, because they rebelled. They were subjects of human nature and creatures of circumstance, like all other sons of Adam; and Providence used them in its own ways for purposes greater than either they or we could know.

As for the Abolitionists, they cannot be praised for political sagacity; but they did not covet that sort of praise. They deserve the name of martyrs to their moral convictions; some of them, like Lovejoy, were called upon to shed their life-blood literally in defense of their opinions; others, like Jonathan Cilley, were shot on the "field of honor" because they ventured to criticise Southern views—though Cilley was not an Abolitionist in any rabid sense of the term; he was simply not an advocate of slavery. No doubt the Abolitionists exasperated the South exceedingly. But, on the other hand, the Southerners were altogether too haughty and touchy, and too incautious in their expressions of scorn and contempt for the Northerners. They were intolerant to an almost incredible degree; and the patience the Northerners often showed is only less remarkable. They would not permit the subject of slavery to be alluded to or hinted at, in their presence. It was something holy, sacred—or perhaps it was a raw sore. This sensitiveness is almost unique in political records, and could be accounted for in various ways. Its origin is probably to be found in the moral question involved; men quarreled about it just as they do about religious creeds; and nobody, not engaged in the discussion, can understand why they so quickly lose their tempers.

Another attempt to annex the free state of Texas (as it now called itself) failed to gain government support; but arrangements were made for a board of arbitration to decide upon the American claims against Mexico. A decision was also wanted regarding the precise location of our Maine boundary line; and quarrels on this point were complicated by a petty rebellion in Canada, which led some hasty spirits to imagine, quite erroneously, that Canada wished to join our Union. In the South, Osceola, after a spirited resistance to our prolonged effort to put down the Seminoles, was captured, and soon after died in prison ; but the war lingered along several years more. The war was never popular, and cost more than it was worth; and Van Buren, as usual, got all the blame. The sub-treasury bill finally passed, on the 30th of June, 1840, and was artfully approved by the President on the Fourth of July; but the financial and business condition was still gloomy. But the most important occurrence of the time had been the Whig Convention which assembled in December, 1839, at Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, with Barbour in the chair. Whom would they nominate for the Presidency? Clay was the most prominent candidate; but he had been engaged in so many battles that it seemed doubtful if he could carry the election. Harrison and Winfield Scott were the alternative men; for Webster had no sure following except in his own section. After three days' voting, Harrison was chosen, and Tyler, the friend of Clay, was given the second place, more out of compliment to the latter than on his own account; and also to please Southern delegates. Clay had told his friends to sacrifice him if the good of the party demanded it; but he was bitterly disappointed, nevertheless, to be taken at his word. Seward was accused of having aided in defeating him, in combination with his allies Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed, who were at the convention; but in truth it was the common sense of the majority of the convention; and there probably never had been a moment in his whole career when Clay could have reasonably counted on the united support of the country. He could see that it was better to be right than to be President; but it was possible to be too brilliant to be President, and, certainly, to be too fertile in compromises. Large defections from the Democrats increased the strength of the party, till in spite of the advantage of position possessed by the Democrats, and the prestige of past success, the Whigs seemed to have the people.

The Democrats of course nominated Van Buren; they had no one else, and no one could have served their turn better. The campaign had no very sharp issues; the best issue for the Whigs seemed to be that they were new and enthusiastic ; but the ardor of the combatants has never been surpassed, and there was hardly a voter in the land who did not cast his vote. The unique spectacle was presented of vast open-air political gatherings where not the voters only, but their wives and children, congregated to see, hear and shout. Enormous processions moved to and fro; they carried emblems of their cause, and mottoes, and they shouted refrains; all the fine young fellows in America seemed to be Whigs, and all confident of victory. They were tired of the autocrat; they wanted a strong but quiet and law-abiding man, who had a good temper and could recognize other elements in the government besides the Executive. The rare assortment of famous orators which the country possessed at this time was turned loose upon the crowds, and made them tenfold more enthusiastic and confident than ever. The nation may be said to have enjoyed this campaign; and for many a year afterward one might hear veterans recalling to one another, with chuckles, the glorious excitement of those days, when their throats were hoarse with shouting "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too!" And what lakes of hard cider were drunk out of pure patriotism, and what cities of log cabins overspread the landscape ! What caricatures also, in which the hard-handed Democrats found themselves figured by little Matty Van Buren, in kid gloves and a gilded coach, while the leader of the supposed aristocracy was a plain soldier farmer, who worked with his hands and lived poor and simple. But the fact was that the sentiment of the nation was wholly against aristocracy, and any intimation of an opposite feeling always involved the party betraying it in disaster. The Whigs, so far from suffering for lack of an issue, actually made capital out of their deficiency; they had the more leisure for hooting down their adversaries. The final result of it all was a stupendous victory for the Whigs, who beat the Democrats by two hundred and thirty-four votes against sixty. A third party, called the Liberty Party, also polled a few votes here and there for itself; it was supposed to be constituted of the moral reformers who were becoming singularly numerous about this time; every ism having its followers, from Transcendentalism down. The Liberty Party was to be heard from again later.

Van Buren took his defeat with his usual steadiness, and his next message was the best and boldest he ever wrote. He warned against renewing the public debt, a large part of which would be held by foreign investors; and the state debts were already threatened in some places with repudiation. He renewed the argument against the National Bank; and as if to accent his words, that sinister institution, with Biddle at its head, found in its lowest deep a lower deep to fall into; its final collapse, followed by the revelation of more than its worst enemies had charged of rascality and rottenness, took place in 1841. Biddle lingered three years longer, and then died of mortification rather than shame; for he was too callous in iniquity to feel the latter.

Van Buren began life as the son of a poor farmer, and reached the Presidency. He was not the creature of chance, but of hard work and great sagacity; he had a wonderful brain, and many great virtues; and if he had vices, they were not of such a character as to be known. He had been trained in early life by Aaron Burr, and there were no arts of management with which he was not familiar; he probably designed to lift himself to the top by such arts, and by the help of greater men, such as Jackson; and he succeeded. But if, as was also probable, he meant, on attaining the supreme place, to lay aside all his tricks of fence and intrigue, and show himself as a man of independent convictions and sincere character, he failed; because the reputation of a lifetime could not be dissipated in four years; and his evil inheritance from Jackson was too much to carry off. Another handicap from which he suffered was his small stature and plump figure, which made it impossible to take him seriously; he may have been no shorter, and no plumper, than the great Napoleon; but he did not produce the same effect on beholders. He was too polite, soft-spoken, and too deft a steersman. Such men are very useful in politics, and when they are reasonably honest, as Van Buren certainly was, they may be something more. Van Buren's sub-treasury scheme was sound statesmanship, separating as it did private from public finance. But he had contrived to avoid personal quarrels all his life; he had been friendly to everybody; and finally no one believed he was the friend of anybody, and none stood his friend at the critical hour. And what good he accomplished was not credited to him, and was not recognized during his tenure of power. His defeat on the occasion of this first appeal for re-election was emphasized by the refusal of the people to reinstate him on the other two occasions when he was nominated for the Presidency; their "sober second thought" had no reversal for him. But he lived to be eighty years old, and doubtless reconciled himself to a fate which after all was not so bad for a poor farmer's boy!

Besides the steam-engine and the steamboat, science added to the breadth of life by the daguerreotype and the electric telegraph, at this period ; for though Morse's first telegraph line was not opened till 1844, his patent was granted in 1837. Exploration was carried on chiefly by the Wilkes expedition, which sailed nearly ninety thousand miles, and investigated tropic islands and polar snows. Literature was beginning to be an appreciable quantity among us, in spite of the competition of pirated books from England; Emerson had published his earlier essays, which are still as much read as ever, and better understood; Bryant and Longfellow had proved that Americans could be poets. Irving's reputation was already of long standing; Cooper was our only great novelist so far; though a young man named Nathaniel Hawthorne had become known to a few as showing promise in some short tales and sketches. Ben-nett had founded his newspaper, and Hoe, the inventor of steam-presses, was led thereto by the wearisomeness of working the press of his little sheet, "The Sun," by hand. Mean-while honest and doctrinaire Horace Greeley had set the "Tribune" going; and American journalism was an accomplished fact, though little witting of what it was to be-come. In short, the gate of modern times was swinging ajar.

This is a country of contrasts ; but there had been no greater contrast between successive Presidents than that between Harrison and his predecessor. Van Buren had spent his life amid policies, stratagems and intrigues, seeing the seamy side of human nature, and deprived of all possibility of keeping in touch with natural impulses and sincere feelings. He had climbed upward by art and interest, by cuninng compromises and concessions; he had regarded men as instruments, and life as a calculation. But Harrison was a countryman; a soldier of proved quality, but only accidentally and incidentally, because circumstance compelled it. He was transparent and honest, with a warm heart and a tender conscience; endowed with manly diginty, and strength of will and self-respect, which could call to order even the impatient audacity of Clay; but approachable by all, kindly, friendly; desirous only to do good to his country, and leave a spotless record behind him. His gray hair and clear dark eyes gave his aspect a certain distinction which was fully carried out by the quality of his mind and character; he had a strength and ability which old politicians like Clay and Webster hardly gave him credit for, finding him below the mark in certain superficial attributes of the public man. But after all we can but surmise what Harrison might have accomplished; he had barely grasped the wand of office, when he fell.

He had lacked but two years of fulfilling the allotted span of man when he came to Washington; nor would he have survived so long, but for his temperate outdoor life in his Ohio home; for his constitution had never been robust. His campaign, as we have seen, had been unusually exciting, and he had several times addressed the people. He made the journey to Washington at an inclement season, with the accompainments of public demonstrations along the way, to which he responded heartily, as his nature prompted. When he reached the capital, the pressure on his strength was increased instead of being relaxed; the day of inauguration was cold and gloomy, and he spoke in the open air for an hour. His address was friendly and conciliating in tone, and gave promise of purity and independence in administration; he would abate abuse of patronage, would not invade Southern susceptibilities, would not advocate a currency exclusively metallic. In the manner and general tone, rather than in special phrases, he made it evident that he intended to do good and dispense justice to all. Even his opponents trusted him and honored him.

Immediately began the scramble for place, in which the Whigs showed themselves full as active as the Democrats had been, though during the campaign they had been noisy in denouncing the spoils system. But it might be argued that after a spoils system has been once begun, it can never end; for if a man gets an office, not for merit but for service done, he should be ousted at the first opportunity—which would of course be when the next change of party occurred. But inasmuch as his successor is no better than he, the vicious routine can never end. As a matter of fact, it is a constant surprise, not that our civil service is so bad, but that it is no worse; the men who clamor for office (and no others get it) being uniformly the least fitted to receive it Harrison offered the portfolio of State to Clay, who declined it, but recommended two of his friends for places in the Cabinet. Harrison then gave Webster the option of being either State or Treasury secretary, and he took the former. Webster and Clay were already rivals for that which neither would ever attain. But they had combined to put Harrison in the saddle, and he, perhaps in acknowledgment of their service, pledged himself in his inaugural not to seek a second nomination. He might have spared him-self that trouble.—The other men in the Cabinet, though respectable, possessed no marked ability; they were fairly competent to their duties.

From sunrise till midnight the President was kept busy tossing the morsels of patronage to the roaring pack of wild ainmals who surged round him. There were more offices than ever before, and more applicants for each office; and every Congressman had his group of friends to recommend. Harrison worked along systematically and intelligently, doing the best he could. On the 17th of March he convened an extra session for the last of May; but about the first of April he caught a chill from careless exposure, which his frame lacked vitality to resist. It developed into pneumonia, and he died on the 4th of the month. "Sir," said he, addressing some imaginary interlocutor as he lay on the brink of the next world, "I wish you to understand the true principles of the government; I wish them carried out; I ask no more."

His death startled and saddened the nation. He was the first President who had died with his term uncompleted; and he was the object of a more widespread personal affection than most public men. All that could be done was to give him a great funeral; thousands followed in the train; there was complaining of bugles and trample of muffled drums, and a black, open car, with white horses and heaps of mounded flowers. In the hearse lay the body of a poor country gentleman, whom a nation had trusted, whom they had lifted to the highest place in their gift, and for whom they heartily grieved. He was buried in the cemetery of Congress; but afterward, at his friends' request, his body was removed to his home at North Bend on the Ohio, a more fitting resting place for a President who was so little of a politician.

Among those who followed the procession was John Tyler, the former Vice-President, now President by the grace of God. He had come .post-haste from Virgiina on learinng the news which elevated him to the unhoped-for dignity. He continued the Cabinet in their places, and his address seemed to pledge him to carry out the dead man's policy. He promised that there should be no further war between the government and the currency. In short, his attitude was just what it ought to have been, and the nation felt relieved from a momentary anxiety. Tyler was Harrison over again, mutato nomine. But gentlemen in Congress, who knew him better, may have suspended their full confidence until further developments.

In fact, however, no one at this time knew Tyler; he did not know himself. He found himself suddenly in the place of power, and was at first subdued by the shock; his nature was susceptible of fine impressions, and he may have told himself that this was a great opportunity vouchsafed by Providence, of which he would make the highest use he could. His record showed him to be a man who had taken no decided or irrevocable line on prominent questions; either from caution or from lack of conviction, he had kept a middle course, though not without occasional reproach of bad faith, which he had zealously sought to repel. But he was now called upon to fill one of the most conspicuous positions in the world, where he must avouch himself one thing or the other; a position to which he had not been elected, and which he entered under unique circumstances. His first instinct, natural to one of 'his temperament, was to deprecate criticism, and conciliate public opiinon; afterward he would review his situation more coolly, and map out his plans.

Tyler was a tall, slight, fair man, with delicate brown hair, which he wore rather long; he was of good family, and always showed high breeding in his manners, which were also affable and attractive, especially to women. He thought well of himself, physically, mentally and morally; and believed that he had a very sensitive conscience. His mind ran to fine discriminations, to hair-splitting; and this quality he found useful in accounting to himself for his own con-duct, and squaring it with his rule of right and honor. He could, so to say, argue one thing into another, and thus establish an apparent consistency between acts which a more straightforward moralist would have called irreconcilable. Thus far in life he had been free from grave responsibilities, and his views of public matters had been colored by circumstances, and by his own chance predilections; he saw some things in Democracy that he liked, and accepted other things which belonged to the Whig policy. He was independent; there was no reason why he should not be so—until the time should come when his further political career depended upon his allying himself finally with one side or the other. When that time should come, he would still have the option of remaining independent and keeping out of responsibilities; or of accepting responsibilities and respecting allegiance to party.

In accepting the office of Vice-President, he had not felt that this epoch of final choice had arrived. He belonged to that wing of the Whig party which was nearest to the moderate wing of the Democratic party; it was of no con-sequence, because the office itself carried no weight. He might have been a Democratic Vice-President almost as well as a Whig one. But he was now President, and there could be no half measures. If he felt that he could not be a true Whig, it was his duty to resign. If he was not willing to carry out the policy of Harrison, and to act in harmony with the Whig majority in the legislature, he had no business in the White House.

But it was easy for a hair-splitter like Tyler to persuade himself that the alternative was not so sharp as this; and if he hesitated himself, there was no lack of advisers to strengthen his resolution. A little knot of Virginians, to whom Clay gave the name of the corporal's guard, soon attached itself to him, and helped him to make up his mind, and to gloss over his scruples. Of this group, Wise and Beverly Tucker were the ablest. Under their ministrations, his first timidity gradually gave way. He was after all a Southerner and a slaveholder; that was in his nature; and when a conflict between the nature and the mental conclusion occurs, nature prevails, and the mind proceeds to con-firm its action. Nature, in this case, was also on the side of self-interest, and of personal feeling. Tyler suddenly realized that he was in a position of supreme power, if he chose to make the most of it ; and he at the same time conceived the ambition to be re-elected at the end of his term, on his own merits, and thus do away with the stigma of having been only an accidental President. The ambition was in itself legitimate; although he had vehemently declared against the principle of a second term, before it occurred to him that he might get it.

Tyler could also reflect that there was nothing wrong in being moderate; and between moderation and treason, in a party man, the line is not always easily drawn. But a still stronger temptation to abandon the Whigs was found in the rivalry between Tyler and Henry Clay, who arrogated to himself, not without good reason, the real leadership of the party, and who obviously expected Tyler to carry out his commands. Tyler and Clay had been friends for twenty years ; but when Clay called upon Tyler, a month after Harrison's death, and refused to support Tyler's scheme of a district bank, they quarreled, and were thenceforth enemies. Tyler knew that Clay was the next candidate for President in 1844; and he resolved that he would defeat him for the prize. He was sure that he could count upon the support of the South, and he believed that he could win more in the North than Clay could. He could harmonize the parties; or he could make a party of his own and lead it to victory. Thus, partly by accident, partly by selfish ambition and private pique, and partly by the urgency of others, Tyler was forced into an attitude which history has failed to approve. He betrayed the party by which he had been placed in power, and his administration was a continual battle between Congress and himself, in which neither achieved any decisive victory.

As a dramatic episode, this administration is full of human interest; for on either side of Tyler were contending Clay and Webster. Webster's course is not readily reconciled with unselfish desire for the public welfare; and his behavior was less frank than Clay's, who never disguised that the Presidency was his goal. Webster was Tyler's Secretary of State, and he defended his financial policy, and took his part against Clay; after all the rest of the Cabinet had resigned, he remained, ostensibly in order to conclude delicate negotiations with England, with whom we were on the brink of war over the questions of the northeast boundary, and the right of search in the slave-trade. Edward Everett was our representative in England, and Lord Ashburton, son of Baring the banker, came to Washington with full powers to settle the difficulty or to declare a settlement impossible. It was finally arranged, creditably to both sides, but Webster still lingered in the Cabinet. He hoped to improve opportunities to defeat Clay; but events were not to be controlled. Tyler's main fight with Congress was over the financial problem; expedients to supply the place of the defunct United States Bank were suggested and defeated. Clay had one plan, Tyler another; Congress went far toward meeting Tyler's views, on the promise, given by him, that he would immediately sign the amended bill ; but he broke his pledge, and vetoed it. His vetoes were numerous, and the necessary two-thirds majority to pass bills over his veto could not be secured, in the peculiar state of parties. At length he was formally read out of his party; he tried to form another by inviting men from both sides; but neither the Democrats nor the Whigs would accept his overtures. In March, 1842, Clay bade farewell to Congress in a fare-well speech, it being his intention never again to sit in the body; though in fact he returned seven years later under Fillmore. He was deeply moved, and he moved others ; the Senate adjourned till the next day, and Calhoun, Clay's former friend, who had been estranged from him for five years, met him as he left the Chamber, with outstretched hands, and the two great men embraced each other with a common impulse. It is seldom, in public affairs, that the great men of the country are on the same side; they oppose one another, and thus defeat one another's power for good. In the Coloinal and Revolutionary days, the hostility of England banded our leaders all together in one cause, and we have seen the results, even against the greatest odds; but now, when the Republic was established, and the country developed and capable of the highest prosperity, we see its possibilities hampered by the feuds of those who were most highly endowed to benefit it. Their mutual jealousies and personal ambitions made them forget their duty. History must take note of these men, and ignore to a great extent the mass of the population, who knew little of their disputes, successes and failures, and lived from day to day busied with their private concerns. Attempts have indeed been made to write the history of the people, and of other peoples besides the American; but it is found impossible to make the story clear without the annals of the Presidents and the monarchs, their doings and vicissitudes. For through them alone does the story advance, and the sequence of cause and effect appear. The people, for whose sake the rulers exist, and by whom they are created, serve but as the side scenes and background of the tale. We can depict them in broad lines ; we can note the changes of costume and manners from generation to generation; we can brighten the scene with anecdotes and apologues; but these do but serve, in the end, to give substance and firmness to our understanding of the dominant and guiding few. To however great a degree we extend our canvas and multiply our figures, the result is the same. We cannot but feel some resentment at the restriction, remembering how much more agreeable or not less inthralling would be many a tale of private experience which never can reach history's page. But in truth, history must body forth the state and make of it the semblance of a living entity; and discipline her pen to mark only those features which concern the state's character and acts. The novelist holds the other field, and the future student of mankind will perhaps not assign him the second place.

Tyler was misunderstood even by his corporal's guard; they thought him easier to manage than he was. His facile manner did not prevent him from manifesting a stubborn fiber of determination; upon his own plane, and in his own depth, he would do as he pleased. He had an emotional but shallow nature; tending to the use of strong adjectives in public and private utterances, but his tears and smiles came from no great depth, and were soon forgotten. His heart may have amused him, but it never troubled him, and it never controlled his policy. But it is the heart which gives insight; and this is what Tyler lacked. He saw reasons and distinctions in abundance; but he did not under-stand the temper or desires of the nation, nor comprehend their opiinon of him. He was most disposed to believe what pleased his self-esteem most; he was active, skillful, resourceful, and airily cheerful, and became constantly less scrupulous about the means he employed to prevail. He thought to use Webster to help him crush Clay; but he meant to get rid of Webster himself as soon as he had served his turn-What precisely was his relation to Calhoun cannot be certainly known; but it is probable that the great South Carolinian furnished him with whatever distinct policy he had. The true character of his designs was not fully fathomed until the Texas question reappeared; it then became evident that Tyler intended to back its admission as a slave territory, and the North finally turned its back on him. It was a curious result after the generous enthusiasm of the Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-too campaign.

The revision of the tariff was one of the measures which were dear to the Whigs, but Tyler vetoed two of their bills, and the compromise bill which received his signature favored the Nullification party. The compromise tariff bill which Clay had devised years before had been of benefit to manufacturers and to the whole country; and in the South the value of the cotton crop had so increased that the saying "Cotton is King" passed into a proverb. But Clay's bill had provided that the scaling down of duties should be suddenly accelerated at the end of the term; which of course cut off the revenue abruptly. In order to secure our credit, it was necessary to change the law. The Whigs wanted to make revenue the end and protection only incidental to it. Such an act was passed for the emergency, but when its time limit expired there were difficulties again. Fresh action had to be taken. After Tyler had vetoed a provisional and a regular tariff bill, Congress emitted a protest charging him with misusing the veto power; and debated whether to adjourn and leave him without a revenue. But it was finally agreed to omit from the bill the features to which Tyler had objected, and the latter had his triumph over Clay once more. Another cause of mortification to us was the state debts, whioh were due to the speculation which preceded the panic of 1837 ; they were owing chiefly in Europe, which desired to make the national government responsible for them. Mississippi threatened to repudiate her debt in 1841; but the other states, led by Pennsylvania, refused to follow her example. It was at this time that Dickens visited America, and his criticisms stung the more for the basis of truth that was in them. But slavery, even more than finance, gave point to his pen; for Tyler was bringing this trouble toward its climax. The South was growing constantly more arrogant, and the North was to some degree intimidated. Adams and the younger but not less valiant Giddings of Ohio alone defied them in Congress, and issue was joined for the present on the fugitive slave law. Finally, in 1842, the Supreme Court handed down a decision making the slaveholder independent of extradition laws which might hinder him in recapturing his runaways; but the free states often disobeyed this ruling.

The mid-term elections distracted public attention from other things. Clay's retirement from Congress had not, of course, prejudiced his claim to the Presidency; he was nominated, and it seemed hardly possible he could be defeated. Webster's position was now peculiar. He was still a member of the Cabinet, and he made a speech in Faneuil Hall commending Tyler, though not in very hearty terms. He had hoped to rally the Northern Whigs, believing that they would nominate him instead of Tyler; but the only effect of his speech was to discourage them; and the open attitude of Clay won him the Whig preference over both Tyler and Webster. But Webster could not yet reach such a pitch of magnanimity as to support Clay; he preferred to get out of the country and forget politics for a time. An attempt was made to get the English mission for him by inducing Everett to go to China; but it failed; and Webster, without cause assigned, resigned his place in the Cabinet, Tyler promptly though politely accepting his resignation. There was danger of Webster's final extinction at this juncture; but it happened that Bunker Hill Monument had just been completed, and he was asked to deliver the oration, as he had done at the laying of the cornerstone. His speech on this occasion was so impressive that it revived his popularity, and the Whigs opened their arms to him once more, though it was too late for any question of the Presidency. It was now that the reconciliation with Clay, perfunctory or not, was effected; but meanwhile the mid-term elections had favored the Democrats, and Clay was not so sure of success as he had been. Moreover, in the Texas annexation question Tyler had the means of dividing Whig councils.

Texas, after the defeat of the Spanish at San Jacinto, had posed as an independent republic, and had been acknowledged as such by America and also in Europe. But Mexico, with the blind stubbornness which marks the Spanish character, and resembles that of their own cattle, would acknowledge nothing, and kept up a dribbling warfare on the borders. Sam Houston, President of the republic, wished it to be annexed to this country; but Tyler had feared hitherto to consent, lest he be deserted by the Northern states. But now he was no longer withheld by this consideration, and he made overtures, which Houston, after some hesitation on his side, due to doubts whether the country would support the President, accepted. Mexico meantime had announced that she would consider annexation an act of war. Her attitude was more foolish than wrong; and she had begun paying our claims against her in hard money, though she stripped her people to do it. Texas, at this time, meant the whole southwest country which now includes the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California, and the Lone Star State itself. With slavery and the cotton crop established there, the South would gain a decisive preponderance in the Union.

Houston had stipulated that he should be protected by United States troops against invasion by Mexico. Tyler accordingly stationed troops on the border; Commodore Jones had before been dispatched with a squadron to the Pacific, where he took temporary possession of Monterey. All this time, the country, Congress, and even Webster, had been kept in ignorance at what was going forward.

Upshur and Gilmer, members of the Cabinet, were Tyler's confederates. While the negotiations were at an interesting stage, they were both killed, together with other distinguished persons, while witnessing experiments with a new big gun, which exploded, Tyler himself narrowly escaping. Calhoun was selected to fill Upshur's place. He afterward claimed that Texas annexation was his work; but Tyler never conceded it. Rumors of the plot now got abroad, and South divided against North upon Texan admission. At the national conventions, both Clay and Van Buren, who was the leading Democratic candidate, declared against annexation. The Tyler convention, which was not regarded as regular, made immediate annexation the leading plank in its platform. But the Van Buren Democrats were divided on the question, and Cass was advocated by the Virginia delegates as their candidate. After some balloting, James K. Polk of Tennessee was unexpectedly nominated, and was pledged to annexation. Reoccupation of Oregon was also a leading principle with the Democrats; the whole Pacific slope had gradually been settled by streams of emigrants from the East. Meanwhile the Senate voted against admitting Texas, except with the concurrence of Mexico. Each branch of the government was obstructing the other.

The campaign of 1844 seemed bound to terminate in favor of Clay; he was certainly one of the best known and most popular men in the country. Polk was hardly known at all, and had always taken subordinate positions; but he was "safe and simple." Jackson advocated him; and finally Tyler, perceiving the hopelessness of his canvass, retired in his favor. "The Democracy of the North are the natural allies of the South," said a Richmond paper. Both Clay and Polk being slave-holders, it was suggested that the best man to win with would be the least risky one, who was Polk. There were outside complications : no-popery riots, and the appearance of the Liberty Party with Birney as their nominee. The anti-slavery society agitated, under the lead of Garrison and Wendell Phillips, for the dissolution of the Union. Adams, Seward and Giddings backed Clay as an anti-annexationist. But Clay was being denounced as an abolitioinst in the South, while in the North he was arraigned as slavery's friend. His instinct to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds was doing him an ill turn at this crisis of his destiny. He even allowed an expression to escape him which was quoted as making him favor Texas annexation. In the end, it was New York which decided the election, as it has done more than once since. It went for Polk by only five thousand majority; but for the Liberty Party, it would have given twice as many for Clay. Massachusetts did not vote till after the result was assured; then, under the stimulus of Webster at Faneuil Hall, it gave its whole vote to the defeated candidate. It was pleasant to see a great man thus true to the cause of his rival; though it may have been that Webster was not wholly cast down by Clay's defeat.

The Texas annexation bill now came before Congress with the current in its favor; a pretext of British intervention was set up, which would make it an independent and non-slave-holding state; after an intricate debate, the bill passed both Houses, under the lead of Benton. Yet the act might have been still longer delayed had not a revolution in Mexico overthrown Santa Anna, its President, and put Herrera in his place. On the first of March, 1845, Tyler signed the bill. Texas was a part of the Union; four states might be formed out of her; in those below the Missouri Compromise line, slavery would be optional; those above it should be free. The matter of the war with Mexico was left for Polk to deal with.

The annexation of Texas is the only noteworthy incident of Tyler's admiinstration; for the Patroon war in New York, and Dorr's rebellion in Rhode Island, had no special 1 significance, except as showing the growth, irregular but inevitable, of the freedom of the individual in the state.