party. He made the great blunder of not recognizing the strength
and leadership of Van Buren and Silas Wright. He had been led to
distrust them, had always felt aggrieved that Wright refused to
run on his ticket as Vice-President, and was annoyed by the fact
that, as candidate for governor, Wright received several thousand
votes more than the electoral ticket which represented his own
fortunes. This fact came to him in a manner which deeply impressed
it upon his memory. At that time, before railroad or telegraph
had hastened the transmission of news beyond the Alleghanies, Mr.
Polk in his Tennessee home was in an agony of doubt as to the result
in New York. The first intelligence that reached him announced
the certain victory of Wright, but left the electoral ticket
undecided, with very unpleasant rumors of his own defeat. When at
last the returns showed that he had a plurality of five thousand
in New York, and was chosen President, it did not suffice to remove
the deep impressions of those few days in which, either in the
gloom of defeat or in the torture of suspense, he feared that he
had been betrayed by the Barnburners of New York as a revenge for
Van Buren's overthrow at Baltimore. As matter of fact the suspicion
was absolutely groundless. The contest for governor between Silas
Wright and Millard Fillmore called out intense feeling, and the
former had the advantage of personal popularity over the latter
just as Mr. Clay had over Mr. Polk. Mr. Wright's plurality was
but five thousand greater than Mr. Polk's, and this only proved
that among half a million voters there may have been twenty-five
hundred who preferred Mr. Clay for President and Mr. Wright for
governor.

PRESIDENT POLK AND MR. VAN BUREN.

But there was no manifestation of feeling or apparent withholding
of confidence on the part of Mr. Polk when the result was finally
proclaimed. On the contrary he offered the Treasury Department to
Mr. Wright, feeling assured in advance, as the uncharitable thought,
that Wright could not leave the governorship to accept it. When
the office was declined, Mr. Polk again wrote Mr. Wright, asking
his advice as to the New-York member of the cabinet. Mr. Wright
submitted the names of three men from whom wise choice could be
made,--Benjamin F. Butler, who had been attorney-general under
President Jackson; John A. Dix, then recently chosen to the United-
States Senate; a