nd Azariah C. Flagg, eminent in the party, and
especially distinguished for his administration of financial trust.
Mr. Polk, under other and adverse influence, saw fit to disregard
Mr. Wright's counsel, and selected William L. Marcy, who was hostile
to Wright, and distrusted by Van Buren, for Secretary of War. From
that moment the fate of Mr. Polk as candidate for re-election was
sealed. The cause might seem inadequate, but the effect was
undeniable. The Democratic party at the outbreak of the civil war,
sixteen years afterwards, had not wholly recovered from the divisions
and strifes which sprung from the disregard of Mr. Van Buren's
wishes at that crisis. No appointment to Mr. Polk's cabinet could
have been more distasteful than that of Mr. Marcy. He had lost
the State during Mr. Van Buren's Presidency in the contest for the
governorship against Mr. Seward in 1838, and thus laid the foundation,
as Mr. Van Buren believed, for his own disastrous defeat in 1840.
The disputes which arose from Marcy's appointment in the cabinet
led to Wright's defeat for re-election in 1846, when John Young,
the Whig candidate, was chosen governor of New York. To three men
in the cabinet the friends of Mr. Wright ascribed the Democratic
overthrow,--Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Robert J. Walker, and Mr. Marcy,--
each anxious for the Presidency, and each feeling that Mr. Wright
was in his way. Mr. Wright died suddenly the year after his defeat,
and it was supposed for a time that harmony in the New-York Democracy
might be restored over his grave. But his friends survived, and
their grief was the measure of their resentment.

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