the fact that the vote in favor of the minority resolution was all from the South. The report with which it was presented argued that the nominee of the convention was understood to be of the opinion that Congress had no right to interfere with the question of slavery either in the states or in the territories; that the majority report adopted the principle only so far as it applied to the states; and that the minority, in order to meet the issue frankly, wished to adopt it with reference to the territories also. A number of the southern delegates who voted against the resolution explained that they thought the subject was sufficiently covered by the report of the majority. Clearly, however, the vote was significant of the general desire to suppress the agitation concerning slavery. A further proof of the same feeling appeared in the evident indisposition of the convention to discuss the Wilmot Proviso, and the prompt calls to order whenever the question was approached.1

The Whig national convention met at Philadelphia, June 7, 1848. It had to choose from three possible nominees for the presidency-Clay, Scott, and Taylor. The masses of the party had by no means lost their enthusiasm for Clay, but he had been three times defeated. Scott had been a presidential possibility for many years, partly from the military reputation gained in the War of 1812; and he had received some votes for the Whig nomination 1 Niles' Register, LXXIV., 328, 349.

at the Harrisburg convention in December, 1839.1 On the eve of the Mexican War the Whigs turned to him again for a moment; but his indiscretion prevented him from taking the tide in his affairs at the flood. While he remained perforce in Washington, Taylor was making himself the hero of the war and rapidly forestalling Scott in the popular estimation. At the outbreak of the war, public meetings in Trenton and New York put forward Taylor for the presidency, and after the battle of Buena Vista a movement in his favor swept over almost the entire Union.3

Taylor's strength in the convention was evident from the outset; but he was a slave-holder from the lower South and was much distrusted by some of the northern Whigs. An effort was made to defeat him by some of his own utterances; while acknowledging himself a Whig, he had expressly denied that he was a party candidate. An Ohio delegate introduced a resolution pledging the convention to nominate no candidate who was not committed to the Whig policy, but it was generally disapproved and was ruled out of order. Most of the New York and Ohio delegates withheld their votes from him to the last, but on the fourth ballot he was nominated by a decisive majority. For vice

1 Niles' Register, LVII., 250; Scott, Autobiography, 355-359. 2F. W. Seward, Autobiography of W. H. Seward, 772. 'Niles' Register, LXXII., 97, 112, 128, 294, 334, etc.

See his letter to Allison, April 22, 1848, in Ibid., LXXIV., 8.

president, Millard Fillmore of New York was nominated on the second ballot. The Ohio delegation then made an effort to obtain a vote in favor of the Wilmot Proviso; but a resolution to that effect was tabled on motion of a Pennsylvania delegate, by a large majority, and the convention adjourned without making any declaration of principles whatsoever.1

Taylor was a man of high character and strong personality, with extensive experience in war, but practically none in politics. He was probably the strongest candidate that the Whigs could have put forward, but scarcely the fittest. To have nominated a man with a consistent Whig record, and especially a strenuous opposer of the war, would have been to court defeat. Taylor's reputation as the real hero of the struggle was the decisive influence in the convention and at the polls. His slave-holding antecedents, while they had no serious effect in alienating the voters of the North, strengthened him greatly in the South. The saving elements in his personality were his courage, his conscientiousness, and his common-sense. These helped him through difficulties where the training and the instincts of the mere politician were of small avail. Though his inexperience threw him on the advice of others, his good judgment and unbending resolution kept him steady amid the confusion of opposing counsels, and pointed out the best and wisest course.

1 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 135.

The convention was followed by a movement to consolidate the different elements of opposition to both Cass and Taylor. Most important of these was the New York Barnburners, who had various scores, both old and new, to settle with Cass and his friends; they held a convention at Utica on June 22, and nominated Van Buren for president, and Henry Dodge of Wisconsin for vice-president. Then there were the supporters of the Wilmot Proviso, both Whigs and Democrats, who were displeased by what they regarded as the evasive policy of their own parties, and were ready to assist in forming another. Of these the Democrats objected to Cass because he opposed the proviso, and the Whigs opposed Taylor for reasons already stated. Henry Wilson says that after the nomination of Taylor at Philadelphia a meeting of fifteen of the more irreconcilable Whig delegates was held in the building in which the convention had met,' six of them from Ohio, and steps were taken towards calling a national convention of those opposed to the extension of slavery. It was agreed that the call should come, if it could be so arranged, from a convention already appointed to meet at Columbus, Ohio, June 22. The arrangement was made, and a national Free Soil convention was called to meet at Buffalo on August 9.

It was not difficult for those two elements, though varying widely in their motives, to unite with each 1 Wilson, Slave Power, II., 142–144.

other, and with the already politically separate Liberty men, or abolitionists, on the common ground of the Wilmot Proviso. The convention met at the appointed time, with four hundred and sixty-five delegates from eighteen states, including the three slave states Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The first ballot to nominate a candidate for the presidency stood 244 for Van Buren to 181 for John P. Hale of New Hampshire.' These candidates represented fitly the two elements participating in the convention: Hale had abandoned the Democratic party for conscience' sake, staking his political prospects on the issue; Van Buren was wrecking the party for the sake of revenge on Cass. The vote, however, cannot be taken as a test of strength; for there were many supporters of the Wilmot Proviso who still repelled the charge of abolitionism."

The original nominee of the Barnburners for vicepresident, Dodge, had declined, and it now became necessary to put another in his place; the right man was found in Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, son of John Quincy Adams, who was nominated by acclamation. The convention then adopted a platform of resolutions in favor of cheap postage, retrenchment, election by the people of all

1 Lalor, Cyclopædia, II., 288; Wilson, Slave Power, II., 156. 'Schouler, United States, V., 104; cf. McLaughlin, Cass, 257. 'Text in Niles' Register, LXXIV., 110; Stanwood, Hist. of the Presidency, 239-241.