. The overthrow of
Mr. Van Buren was a crisis in the history of the Democratic party,
and implanted dissensions which rapidly ripened into disaster.
The one leading feature, the forerunner of important political
changes, was the division of delegates on the geographical line of
North and South. Though receiving a clear majority of the entire
convention on the first ballot, Mr. Van Buren had but nine votes
from the slave States; and these votes, singularly enough, came
from the northern side of the line of the Missouri Compromise.
This division in a Democratic National Convention was, in many of
its relations and aspects, more significant than a similar division
in the two Houses of Congress.

Though cruelly wronged by the convention, as many of his supporters
thought, Mr. Van Buren did not himself show resentment, but
effectively sustained his successful competitor. His confidential
friend, Silas Wright, had refused to go on the ticket with Mr.
Polk, and George M. Dallas was substituted by the quick and competent
management of Mr. Robert J. Walker. The refusal of Mr. Wright led
the Whigs to hope for distraction in the ranks of the New-York
Democracy; but that delusion was soon dispelled by Wright's acceptance
of the nomination for governor, and his entrance into the canvass
with unusual energy and spirit. It was widely believed that
Jackson's great influence with Van Buren was actively exerted in
aid of Polk's election. It would have cruelly embittered the few
remaining days of the venerable ex-president to witness Clay's
triumph, and Van Buren owed so much to Jackson that he could not
be indifferent to Polk's success without showing ingratitude to
the great benefactor who had made him his successor in the Executive
chair. Motives of this kind evidently influenced Mr. Van Buren;
for his course in after years showed how keenly he felt his defeat,
and how unreconciled he was to the men chiefly engaged in compassing
it. The cooler temperament which he inherited from his Dutch
ancestry enabled him to bide his time more patiently than men of
Scotch-Irish blood, like Calhoun; but subsequent events plainly
showed that he was capable of nursing his anger, and of inflicting
a revenge as significant and as fatal as that of which he had been
made the victim,--a revenge which would have been perfect in its
gratification had it included Mr. Calhoun personally, as it did
politically, with General Cass.

Mr. Clay's letter