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the slavery question into governmental politics were vain.' Old issues were rapidly losing effectiveness as the basis of party division and were becoming absorbed in the new; and of these, in turn, slavery soon overshadowed all the rest. The progress of sectionalization was seriously threatening the bonds of the Union.

1 See his MS. Diary, e.g., January 14, 19, 1847.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ELECTION OF 1848

(1847-1848)

N the midst of the general enthusiasm aroused by the military successes of 1847, and the excitement resulting from the precipitation of the slavery issue, the alignment of parties was begun for the next presidential campaign. To this test the party leaders had been anxiously looking forward, some of them for years. How far their conduct may have been determined by their interpretation of the Delphic hum of the presidential bee it would be hard to say. Polk often complained to the pages of his diary that Buchanan's ambition to be president diminished his usefulness in the cabinet.1 The president thought also that dissatisfaction with his appointments and premature contests to decide who should be his successor had changed the nominal Democratic majority in Congress to a practical Whig majority.' It was, indeed, the irony of fate

1 1See the entries for December 23, 1847, and February 25, 1848.

1 Polk, MS. Diary, January 22, 1847; cf. Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 158–161.

that the particular president who has perhaps come nearer than any other to the accomplishment of the entire programme with which he entered office should have felt himself so sad a victim of party defection. His very successes had roused strong and relentless opposition, had divided his party into factions, and was finally threatening it with complete disruption. Buchanan believed, with reason, that the Democratic reverses in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1846 were due to the hard-won victory in the passage of the Walker tariff. That it had been a dearer triumph still by which Polk snatched the nomination from Van Buren in 1844 was to be made evident in the political outcome of 1848.

1

The first party to hold its national convention preparatory to the campaign for a successor tc Polk was that of the Native Americans, then of small importance, and its nomination counted for but little. The convention met at Philadelphia in September, 1847. It declined to put forward a candidate for the presidency, but recommended General Taylor. For vice-president it nominated General A. S. Dearborn of Massachusetts."

The next nomination was made by the Liberty, or Abolition, party, whose convention met in New York City in November, 1847. The men selected as its candidates were John P. Hale of New Hampshire for president, and Leicester King of Ohio for

' Polk, MS. Diary, November 5, 1846.
'Niles' Register, LXXIII., 79.

vice-president.' Hale had a record which made him the logical nominee of the abolitionists; but the anti-slavery men of the free states repudiated the extreme of Garrisonian abolition, and the votes of the political abolitionists were too few to do more than decide between the candidates of the stronger organizations. Therefore, when the nomination of Van Buren divided the Democrats, Hale withdrew in his favor. In June, 1848, a radical section of the abolitionists known as the Liberty League nominated Gerrit Smith of New York for president, and Charles E. Foote of Ohio for vice-president; but those nominations seem to have attracted no votes. An "industrial congress," composed of representatives of labor organizations, which met at Philadelphia June 13, 1848, and nominated Gerrit Smith and William S. Waitt of Illinois was equally ineffective.❜

The national convention of the Democratic party met at Baltimore May 22, 1848. Before it could proceed to the business of nomination or of platform-making it had to settle a contest over the representation of New York, which was so important as to require consideration in detail. This contest was really the aftermath of the struggle of 1844. The New York Democracy was now divided into the two opposing factions of "Hunkers" and "Barnburners," each named by the other; the Barnburners 1 Niles' Register, LXXIII., 2 ' Ibid,, LXXIV., 8. For the proceedings, see ibid., 69–77, 324-329, 348.

172.

being radical reformers, who were humorously characterized as willing to burn down the political barn in order to get rid of the rats. "Hunkers" has been explained as meaning those who "hunkered" for office,' but this appears uncertain. With the former were identified Van Buren and Silas Wright. Though the nomination for the vice-presidency was offered to Wright in 1844 and was declined," he made the race for governor of New York that fall, and won by a majority about five thousand greater than Polk's; and his friends claimed for him the credit for the national victory of the Democrats. On the other hand, it was charged that the smaller majority for Polk was due to the neglect of the presidential canvass by Wright and Van Buren.

There is no reason to believe that Polk thought SO. On the contrary, he offered the secretaryship of the treasury first to Wright, and, when he declined it, to B. F. Butler, another Barnburner, whose appointment would have been satisfactory to that element; but Butler also declined, because he could not be secretary of state. The place was then offered to the Hunker William L. Marcy, and was accepted. Polk refused to align himself positively with either faction; but in 1846, when Wright

1 Niles' Register, LXXIV., 325; Von Holst, United States, III., 359 n.; McLaughlin, Cass, 237. 2 See p. 130, above. Benton, Thirty Years' View, II., 626; cf. Cong. Globe, 29 Cong., 2 Sess., 361.

Hammond, Silas Wright, 532; cf., however, Benton, Thirty Years' View, II., 650.

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