of John
Van Buren, they had exposed him to the country as the candidate
"powerful for mischief, powerless for good."

The total vote of New York was, for Taylor, 218,603; for Cass,
114,318; for Van Buren, 120,510. The canvass for the governorship
was scarcely less exciting than that for the Presidency. Hamilton
Fish was the Whig candidate; John A. Dix, then a senator of the
United States, ran as the representative of Mr. Van Buren's Free-
soil party; while the eminent Chancellor Walworth, who had recently
lost his judicial position, was nominated as a supporter of Cass
by the Regular Democracy. Mr. Fish had been candidate for Lieutenant-
governor two years before on the Whig ticket with John Young, and
was defeated because of his outspoken views against the Anti-Renters.
Those radical agitators instinctively knew that the descendant of
Stuyvesant would support the inherited rights of the Van Rensselaers,
and therefore defeated Mr. Fish while they elected the Whig candidates
for other offices. Mr. Fish now had his abundant reward in receiving
as large a vote as General Taylor, and securing nearly one hundred
thousand plurality over the Van Buren candidate, while he in turn
received a small plurality over the representative of General Cass.

The result of the two contests left the Van Buren wing, or the
Barnburners, in majority over the Hunkers, and gave them an advantage
in future contests for supremacy, inside the party. Truthful
history will hold this to have been the chief object of the struggle
with many who vowed allegiance at Buffalo to an anti-slavery creed
strong enough to satisfy Joshua R. Giddings and Charles Sumner.
With Cass defeated, and the Marcy wing of the party severely
disciplined, the great mass of the Van Buren host of 1848 were
ready to disavow their political escapade at Buffalo. Dean Richmond,
Samuel J. Tilden, John Van Buren, C. C. Cambreleng, and Sanford E.
Church, forgot their anti-slavery professions, reunited with the
old party, and vowed afresh their fidelity to every principle
against which they had so earnestly protested. Mr. Van Buren
himself went with them, and to the end of his life maintained a
consistent pro-slavery record, which, throughout a long public
career was varied only by the insincere professions which he found
it necessary to make in order to be revenged on Cass. But it would
be unjust to include in this condemnation all the New-York Democrats
who went into the Bu