h, to a very
remarkable degree. The annexation pill was swallowed by many
Democrats whose support of him had been deemed morally impossible.
In New York, where the opposition was strongest, leading Democrats,
with William Cullen Bryant as their head, denounced the annexation
scheme and repudiated the paragraph of the National platform which
favored it, and yet voted for Polk, who owed his nomination solely
to the fact that he had committed himself to the policy of immediate
and unconditional annexation, thus anticipating the sickly political
morality of 1852, when so many men of repute tried in vain to save
both their consciences and their party orthodoxy by "spitting upon
the platform and swallowing the candidate who stood upon it."
History will have to record that the action of these New York
Democrats saved the ticket in that State, and justly attaches to
them the responsibility for the very evils to the country against
which they so eloquently warned their brethren. The power of the
spoils came in as a tremendous make-weight, while the party lash
was vigorously flourished, and the "independent voter" was as
hateful to the party managers on both sides as we find him to-day.
Those who refused to wear the party collar were branded by the
"organs" as a "pestiferous and demoralizing brood," who deserved
"extermination." Discipline was rigorously enforced, and made to
take the place of argument. As regards the tariff question, Mr.
Polk's letter to Judge Kane, of Philadelphia, of the 19th of June,
enabled his friends completely to turn the tables on the Whigs of
Pennsylvania, where "Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842," was
blazoned on the Democratic banners, and thousands of Democrats were
actually made to believe that Polk was even a better tariff man
than Clay. This letter, committing its free-trade author to the
principle of a revenue tariff, with "reasonable incidental protection
to our home industries," was translated into German and printed in
all the party papers; and as a triumphant effort to make the people
believe a lie, and a masterpiece of political duplicity employed
by the great party as a means of success, it had no precedent in
American politics. In later times, however, it has been completely
eclipsed by the scheme of "tissue ballots," and other wholesale
methods of balking the popular will in the South, by the successful
effort to cheat the nation out of the right to choose its Chief
Magistrate i