ed, not developed. Both the old parties
held their national conventions as usual, in 1852, with every State
represented in both by full delegations. There were peculiar
troubles in each. In the Democratic convention the dissensions
had been in large part inherited, and had reference more to persons
than to principles, more to the candidate than to the platform.
While something of the same trouble was visible in the Whig ranks,
the chief source of contention and of party weakness was found in
the irreconcilable difference of principle between all the Southern
Whigs and a large number of the Northern Whigs. In the South they
were unanimous in support of the Compromise. In the North they
were divided.

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The Democratic National Convention met in Baltimore on the first
day of June, 1852. General Cass, though he had reached his seventieth
year, was again in the field. Mr. Buchanan, then sixty-one years
of age, was the candidate next in strength, and Stephen A. Douglas
was third. Douglas was but thirty-nine years old, the youngest
man ever formally presented for the Presidency by a State delegation
in a National convention. Governor Marcy was fourth in the order
of strength. There were scattering votes for other candidates,
but these four were seriously and hopefully urged by their respective
supporters. Marcy was in many respects the fittest man to be
nominated, but the fear was that the old dissensions of the New-
York Democracy, now seemingly healed, would open afresh if the
chief of one of the clans should be imposed on the other. Douglas
was injured by his partial committal to what was known as the
doctrine of "manifest destiny,"--the indefinite acquisition of
territory southward, especially in the direction of the West Indies.
Cass was too old. Buchanan lacked personal popularity; and, while
he had the Pennsylvania delegation in his favor, a host of enemies
from that State, outside the convention, warred against him most
bitterly. No one of these eminent men could secure two-thirds of
the delegates as required by the iron rule, and on the forty-ninth
ballot Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who had been among the
"scattering" on several preceding votes, was unanimously nominated.
The suggestion of Pierce's name was not so spontaneous and sudden
as it was made to appear. The precise condition of affairs was
discerned before the c