Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The course of events which disabled Mr. Polk as a candidate proved equally decisive against all the members of his cabinet; and by the process of exclusion rather than by an enthusiastic desire among the people, and still less among the leaders, General Cass was selected by the Democratic Convention as candidate for the Presidency, and William O. Butler of Kentucky for the Vice-Presidency. The Democracy of New York, in consequence of the divisions arising under the governorship of Mr. Wright, sent two full delegations to the convention, bearing credentials from separate organizations. The friends of Mr. Marcy bore the name of Hunkers; the followers of Mr. Wright ranged themselves under the title of Barnburners,— distinctions which had prevailed for some years in New York. It was in fact the old division on the annexation of Texas, and now represented the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic party. The National Convention sought in vain to bridge the difficulty by admitting both delegations, giving to them united the right to cast the vote of the State. But the Barnburners declined thus to compromise a principle. On a question of bread, the half-loaf is preferable to starvation, but when political honor and deep personal feeling are involved, so material an adjustment is not practicable. The Barnburners retired from the convention, disclaimed all responsibility for its conclusions, and proceeded in due time to organize against the ticket of Cass and Butler. The Hunkers, left in the convention as the sole representatives of the New-York Democracy, were startled at the situation and declined to vote. They were anxious that the nomination of Cass should not appear to be forced on the Barnburners by the rival faction. It thus happened that New York, which for twenty years under the skillful leadership of Mr. Van Buren had dictated the course of the Democracy, was now so shorn of influence through the factions engendered by his defeat, that a Presidential nomination was made, not only without her lead, but without her aid or participation.

CASS BOLTED BY VAN BUREN'S FRIENDS.

The Democratic candidate was a man of high character. He had served creditably in the early part of the war of 1812, had been governor of Michigan Territory from 1813 to 1831, had been five years Secretary of War under General Jackson, and had gone to France as minister in 1836. He remained at the court of Louis Philippe, where he received eminent consideration, for six years. When he returned to this country in 1842, at sixty years of age, he undoubtedly intended to re-enter political life. He landed at Boston, and was received with enthusiasm by the New-England Democrats, especially of that class who had not been in special favor during the long rule of Jackson and his successor. Popular ovations were arranged for him as he journeyed westward, and, by the time he reached his home in Detroit, General Cass was publicly recognized as a candidate for the Presidency. These facts did not escape the jealous and watchful eye of Mr. Van Buren. He was aggrieved by the course of General Cass, feeling assured that its direct effect would be to injure himself, and not to promote the political fortunes of the General. But the rivalry continued to develop. Cass remained in the field, a persistent candidate for nomination, and in the end proved to be, perhaps, the most powerful factor in the combination which secured the triumph of Polk. He had deeply wounded Mr. Van Buren, and, as the latter thought, causelessly and cruelly. He had disregarded a personal and political friendship of thirty years' duration, and had sundered ties which life was too short to re- unite. Cass had gained no victory. He had only defeated old friends, and the hour of retribution was at hand.

When the delegation of Barnburners withdrew from the Baltimore Convention of 1848, they were obviously acting in harmony with Mr. Van Buren's wishes. Had they been admitted, according to their peremptory demand, as the sole delegation from New York, they could have defeated Cass in the convention, and forced the nomination of some new man unconnected with the grievances and enmities of 1844. But when the demand of the Barnburners was denied, and they were asked to make common cause with the assassins of Wright, as James S. Wadsworth had denominated the Hunkers, the indignantly shook the dust of the city from off their feet, returned to New York, and forthwith called a Democratic convention to meet at Utica on the 22d of June.

Before the time arrived for the Utica Convention to assemble, the anti-slavery revolt was widely extended, and was, apparently, no less against Taylor than against Cass. There was agitation in many States, and the Barnburners found that by uniting with the opposition against both the old parties, a most effective combination could be made. It was certain to profit them in New York, and it promised the special revenge which they desired in the defeat of Cass. The various local and State movements were merged in one great convention, which met at Buffalo on the 9th of August, with imposing demonstrations. Many of those composing it had held high rank in the old parties. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was selected as president. The convention represented a genuine anti-slavery sentiment, and amid excitement and enthusiasm Martin Van Buren was nominated for President, and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-President. The Barnburners, the anti-slavery Whigs, and the old Abolitionists, co-operated with apparent harmony under the general name of the Free-soil party; and the impression with many when the convention adjourned was, that Mr. Van Buren would have a plurality over both Cass and Taylor in the State of New York. The management of the popular canvass was intrusted to Democratic partisans of the Silas Wright school, and this fact had a significant and unexpected influence upon the minds of anti-slavery Whigs.

In the first flush of the excitement, the supporters of the regular Democratic nominee were not alarmed. They argued, not illogically, that the Free-soil ticket would draw more largely from the Whigs than from the Democrats, and thus very probably injure Taylor more than Cass. But in a few weeks this hope was dispelled. The Whigs of the country had been engaged for a long period in an earnest political warfare against Mr. Van Buren. In New York the contest had been personal and acrimonious to the last degree, and ordinary human nature could hardly be expected the bury at once the grievances and resentments of a generation. Nor did the Whigs confide in the sincerity of Mr. Van Buren's anti-slavery conversion. His repentance was late, and even the most charitable suspected that his desire to punish Cass had entered largely into the motives which suddenly aroused him to the evils of slavery after forty years of quiet acquiescence in all the demands of the South. Mr. Seward, who possessed the unbounded confidence of the anti-slavery men of New York, led a most earnest canvass in favor of General Taylor, and was especially successful in influencing Whigs against Van Buren. In this he was aided by the organizing skill of Thurlow Weed, and by the editorial power of Horace Greeley. Perhaps in no other National election did three men so completely control the result. They gave the vote of New York to General Taylor, and made him President of the United States.

MR. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD SPEECH.

At an opportune moment for the success of the Whigs, Mr. Webster decided to support General Taylor. He thoroughly distrusted Cass, —not in point of integrity, but of discretion and sound judgment as a statesman. He had rebuked Cass severely in a diplomatic correspondence touching the Treaty of Washington, when he was Secretary of State and Cass minister to France. The impression then derived had convinced him that the Democratic candidate was not the man whom a Whig could desire to see in the Presidential chair. In Mr. Van Buren's anti-slavery professions, Mr. Webster had no confidence. He said pleasantly, but significantly, that "if he and Mr. Van Buren should meet under the Free-soil flag, the latter with his accustomed good-nature would laugh." He added, with a touch of characteristic humor, "that the leader of the Free- spoil party suddenly becoming the leader of the Free-soil party is a joke to shake his sides and mine." Distrusting him sincerely on the anti-slavery issue, Mr. Webster showed that on every other question Mr. Van Buren was throughly objectionable to the Whigs.

The Marshfield speech, as this effort was popularly known at the time, had great influence with the Northern Whigs. Mr. Webster did not conceal his belief that General Taylor's nomination was "one not fit to be made," but by the clearest of logic he demonstrated that he was infinitely to be preferred to either of his competitors. Mr. Webster at that time had the confidence of the anti-slavery Whigs in a large degree; he had voted for the Wilmot Proviso, and his public course had been that of a just and conservative expositor of their advanced opinion. From the day of the Marshfield speech, the belief was general that Van Buren would draw far more largely from the Democrats than from the Whigs; that his candidacy would give the State of New York to Taylor, and thus elect him President. The loss of Whig votes was not distasteful to Mr. Van Buren after the prospect of his securing the electors of New York had vanished. Had he drawn in equal proportion from the two parties, his candidacy would have had no effect. It would have neutralized itself, and left the contest between Cass and Taylor as though he had not entered the race. By a rule of influence, whose working is obvious, the tenacity of the Democratic adherents of Van Buren increased as the Whigs withdrew. The contest between Cass and Van Buren finally became in New York, in very large degree, a struggle between Democratic factions, in which the anti-slavery profession was an instrumentality to be temporarily used, and not a principle to be permanently upheld. As the Whigs left Van Buren, the Democrats left Cass, and the end of the canvass gave a full measure of satisfaction, not only to the supporters of Taylor, but to the followers of Van Buren, who polled a larger vote for him than was given to Cass. New York, as in 1844, decided the contest. The friends of Van Buren had not simply beaten Cass at the polls, they had discredited him as a party leader. In the pithy phrase of John Van Buren, they had exposed him to the country as the candidate "powerful for mischief, powerless for good."

The total vote of New York was, for Taylor, 218,603; for Cass, 114,318; for Van Buren, 120,510. The canvass for the governorship was scarcely less exciting than that for the Presidency. Hamilton Fish was the Whig candidate; John A. Dix, then a senator of the United States, ran as the representative of Mr. Van Buren's Free- soil party; while the eminent Chancellor Walworth, who had recently lost his judicial position, was nominated as a supporter of Cass by the Regular Democracy. Mr. Fish had been candidate for Lieutenant- governor two years before on the Whig ticket with John Young, and was defeated because of his outspoken views against the Anti-Renters. Those radical agitators instinctively knew that the descendant of Stuyvesant would support the inherited rights of the Van Rensselaers, and therefore defeated Mr. Fish while they elected the Whig candidates for other offices. Mr. Fish now had his abundant reward in receiving as large a vote as General Taylor, and securing nearly one hundred thousand plurality over the Van Buren candidate, while he in turn received a small plurality over the representative of General Cass.