A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

by De Alva Stanwood Alexander

It was evident that the Anti-Renters and Native Americans would draw, perhaps, equally from Whigs and Democrats; but the ranks of Abolitionists could be recruited only from the anti-slavery Whigs. Behind Stewart stood Gerrit Smith, William Jay, Beriah Green, and other zealous, able, benevolent, pure-minded men—some of them wealthy. Their shibboleth was hostility to a slave-holder, or one who would vote for a slave-holder. This barred Henry Clay and his electors.

At the outset the Whigs plainly had the advantage. Spring elections had resulted auspiciously, and the popularity of Clay seemed unfailing. He had avowed opposition to the annexation of Texas, and, although his letter was not based upon hostility to slavery and the slave trade, it was positive, highly patriotic, and in a measure satisfactory to the anti-slavery Whigs. "We are at the flood," Seward wrote Weed; "our opponents at the ebb."[55] The nomination of Wright had greatly strengthened the Democratic ticket, but the nomination of Polk, backed by the Texas resolution, weighted the party as with a ball and chain. Edwin Croswell had characterised Van Buren's letter to Hammit as "a statesmanlike production," declaring that "every American reader, not entirely under the dominion of prejudice, will admit the force of his conclusions."[56] This was the view generally held by the party throughout the State; yet, within a month, every American reader who wished to remain loyal to the Democratic party was compelled to change his mind. In making this change, the "slippery-elm editor," as Croswell came to be known because of the nearness of his office to the old elm tree corner in Albany, led the way and the party followed. It was a rough road for many who knew they were consigning to one grave all hope of ending the slavery agitation, while they were resurrecting from another, bitter and dangerous controversies that had been laid to rest by the Missouri Compromise. Yet only one poor little protest, and that intended for private circulation, was heard in opposition, the signers, among them William Cullen Bryant, declaring their intention to vote for Polk, but to repudiate any candidate for Congress who agreed with Polk. Bryant's purpose was palpable and undoubted; but it soon afterward became part of his courage not to muffle plain truth from any spurious notions of party loyalty, and part of his glory not to fail to tell what people could not fail to see.

As the campaign advanced, the Whig side of it resembled the contest of 1840. The log cabin did not reappear, and the drum and cannon were less noisy, but ash poles, cut from huge trees and spliced one to another, carried high the banner of the statesman from Ashland. Campaign songs, with choruses for "Harry of the West," emulated those of "Old Tip," and parades by day and torch-light processions by night, increased the enthusiasm. The Whigs, deeply and personally attached to Henry Clay, made mass-meetings as common and nearly as large as those held four years before. Seward speaks of fifteen thousand men gathered at midday in Utica to hear Erastus Root, and of a thousand unable to enter the hall at night while he addressed a thousand more within. Fillmore expressed the fear that Whigs would mistake these great meetings for the election, and omit the necessary arrangements to get the vote out. "I am tired of mass-meetings," wrote Seward. "But they will go on."[57]

Seward and Weed were not happy during this campaign. The friends of Clay, incensed at his defeat in 1840, had pronounced them the chief conspirators. Murmurs had been muffled until after Tyler's betrayal of the party and Seward's retirement, but when these sources of possible favours ran dry, the voice of noisy detraction reached Albany and Auburn. It was not an ordinary scold, confined to a few conservatives; but the censure of strong language, filled with vindictiveness, charged Weed with revolutionary theories, tending to unsettle the rights of property, and Seward with abolition notions and a desire to win the Irish Catholic vote for selfish purposes. In February, 1844, it was not very politely hinted to Seward that he go abroad during the campaign; and by June, Weed talked despondingly, proposing to leave the Journal. Seward had the spirit of the Greeks. "If you resign," he said, "there will be no hope left for ten thousand men who hold on because of their confidence in you and me."[58] In another month Weed had become the proprietor as well as the editor of the Evening Journal.

As the campaign grew older, however, Clay's friends gladly availed themselves of Seward's influence with anti-slavery Whigs and naturalised citizens. "It is wonderful what an impulse the nomination of Polk has given to the abolition sentiment," wrote Seward. "It has already expelled other issues from the public mind. Our Whig central committee, who, a year ago, voted me out of the party for being an Abolitionist, has made abolition the war-cry in their call for a mass-meeting."[59] Even the sleuth-hounds of No-popery were glad to invite Seward to address the naturalised voters, whose hostility to the Whigs, in 1844, resembled their dislike of the Federalists in 1800. "It is a sorry consolation for this ominous aspect of things," he wrote Weed, "that you and I are personally exempt from the hostility of this class toward our political associates."[60]

Yet no man toiled more sedulously in this campaign than Seward. "Harrison had his admirers, Clay his lovers," is the old way of putting it. To elect him, Whigs were ready to make any sacrifice, to endure any hardship, and to yield every prejudice. Fillmore was ubiquitous, delivering tariff and anti-Texas speeches that filled all mouths with praise and all hearts with principle, as Seward expressed it. An evident desire existed on the part of many in both parties, to avoid a discussion of the annexation of Texas, and its consequent extension of slavery, lest too much or too little be said; but leaders like Seward and Fillmore were too wise to believe that they could fool the people by concealing the real issue. "Texas and slavery are at war with the interests, the principles, the sympathies of all," boldly declared the unmuzzled Auburn statesman. "The integrity of the Union depends on the result. To increase the slave-holding power is to subvert the Constitution; to give a fearful preponderance which may, and probably will, be speedily followed by demands to which the Democratic free-labour States cannot yield, and the denial of which will be made the ground of secession, nullification and disunion."[61] This was another of Seward's famous prophecies. At the time it seemed extravagant, even to the strongest anti-slavery Whigs, but the future verified it.

The Whigs, however, did not, as in 1840, have a monopoly of the enthusiasm. The public only half apprehended, or refused to apprehend at all, the danger in the Texas scheme; and, after the first chill of their immersion, the Democrats rallied with confidence to the support of their ticket. Abundant evidence of their strength had manifested itself at each state election since 1841, and, although no trailing cloud of glory now testified to a thrifty and skilful management, as in 1836, the two factions, in spite of recent efforts to baffle and defeat each other, pulled themselves together with amazing quickness. Indeed, if we may rely upon Whig letters of the time, the Democrats exhibited the more zeal and spirit throughout the campaign. They had their banners, their songs, and their processions. In place of ash, they raised hickory poles, and instead of defending Polk, they attacked Clay. Other candidates attracted little attention. Clay was the commanding, central figure, and over him the battle raged. There were two reasons for this. One was the fear of a silent free-soil vote, which the Bryant circular had alarmed in his favour. The other was a desire to strengthen the liberty party, and to weaken the Whigs by holding up Clay as a slave-holder. The corner-stone of that party was hostility to the slave-holder; and if a candidate, however much he opposed slavery, owned a single slave, it excluded him from its suffrage. This was the weak point in Clay's armour, and the one of most peril to the Whigs. To meet it, the latter argued, with some show of success, that the conflict is not with one slave-holder, or with many, but with slavery; and since the admission of Texas meant the extension of that institution, a vote for Clay, who once advocated emancipation in Kentucky and is now strongly opposed to Texas, is a vote in behalf of freedom.

In September, Whig enthusiasm underwent a marked decline. Clay's July letter to his Alabama correspondent, as historic now as it was superfluous and provoking then, had been published, in which he expressed a wish to see Texas added to the Union "upon just and fair terms," and hazarded the opinion that "the subject of slavery ought not to affect the question one way or the other."[62] This letter was the prototype of the famous alliteration, "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," in the Blaine campaign of 1884. Immediately Clay's most active anti-slavery supporters were in revolt. "We had the Abolitionists in a good way," wrote Washington Hunt from Lockport; "but Mr. Clay seems determined that they shall not be allowed to vote for him. I believe his letter will lose us more than two hundred votes in this county."[63] The effects of the dreadful blow are as briefly summed up by Seward: "I met that letter at Geneva, and thence here, and now everybody droops, despairs. It jeopards, perhaps loses, the State."[64] A few weeks later, in company with several friends, Seward, as was his custom, made an estimate of majorities, going over the work several times and taking accurate account of the drift of public sentiment. An addition of the columns showed the Democrats several thousands ahead. Singularly enough, Fillmore, whose accustomed despondency exhibited itself even in 1840, now became confident of success. This can be accounted for, perhaps, on the theory that to a candidate the eve of an election is "dim with the self-deceiving twilight of sophistry." He believed in his own safety even if Clay failed. Although the deep, burning issue of slavery had not yet roused popular forces into dangerous excitement, Fillmore had followed the lead of Giddings and Hale, sympathising deeply with the restless flame that eventually guided the policy of the North with such admirable effect. On the other hand, Wright approved his party's doctrine of non-interference with slavery. He had uniformly voted to table petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, declaring that any interference with the system, in that district, or in the territories, endangered the rights of their citizens, and would be a violation of faith toward those who had settled and held slaves there. He voted for the admission of Arkansas and Florida as slave States; and his opposition to Texas was based wholly upon reasons other than the extension of slavery. The Abolitionists understood this, and Fillmore confidently relied upon their aid, although they might vote for Birney instead of Clay.

That Seward rightly divined public sentiment was shown by the result. Polk carried the State by a plurality of little more than five thousand, and Wright by ten thousand, while Stewart polled over fifteen thousand votes.[65] These last figures told the story. Four years before, Birney had received less than seven thousand votes in the whole country; now, in New York, the Abolitionists, exceeding their own anticipations, held the balance of power.[66] Had their votes been cast for Clay and Fillmore both would have carried New York, and Clay would have become the Chief Executive. "Until Mr. Clay wrote his letter to Alabama," said Thurlow Weed, dispassionately, two years afterward, "his election as President was certain."[67]