lemn pledges voluntarily given. He had
been inaugurated with the applause and confidence of a nation. He
was sustained in the end by a helpless faction of a disorganized
party.

The distinguished secretary of State suffered with the President.
Mr. Marcy had personally disapproved the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, but he made no opposition, and the people held him
equally if not doubly guilty. It was said at the time that New-
York friends urged him to save his high reputation by resigning
his seat in the cabinet. But he remained, in the delusive hope
that he should receive credit for the evil he might prevent. He
was pertinently reminded that the evil he might prevent would never
be known, whereas the evil to which he consented would be read of
all men. New York had hopelessly revolted from Democratic control,
and Mr. Marcy's name was not presented as a Presidential candidate,
though he was at that time the ablest statesman of the Democratic
party. Mr. Douglas was also unavailable. He had gained great
popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri
Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in
the North. His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly
for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to
sustain him,--had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an
opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti-
slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate. General Cass
was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation
with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas. He had voted to repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered
in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining
years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have
been more emphatic.

The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North.
By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the
ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the
prominent statesmen from that section. Southern men designed to
put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats
every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the
fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South. If they
had wished it, they could have nominated a Southern candidate who
was at that moment far stronger than any other man in the Democratic
party. General Sam Houston h