multiplied acts of the most
obsequious and crouching servility to his Southern overseers.
Again and again he had crawled in the dust at their feet, and, if
they could not now reward him with the presidency, it seemed utterly
useless for any Northern man to hope for their favor. The "Nicholson
letter" was not all that the South wanted, but it was a very
important concession, and with Gen. Cass as its interpreter it
meant the nearest thing possible to a complete surrender. In this
National Convention the State of New York had two sets of delegates,
both of which were formally admitted, as a compromise; but the
members of the Van Buren or Free Soil wing refused to take their
seats, and thus held themselves in reserve for such revolutionary
work as should afterward seem to them advisable.

The Whig National Convention met in Philadelphia on the 7th of
June. The party seemed completely demoralized by the defeat of
Mr. Clay in the previous canvass, and was now in search of "an
available candidate," and inspired by the same miserable policy of
expediency which had been so barren of results in 1840. The Northern
Whigs appeared to be unanimously and zealously committed to the
prohibition of slavery in our Territories, but equally unanimous
and zealous in the determination to succeed in the canvass. For
more than a year Gen. Taylor had been growing into favor with the
party as a candidate, and he had now become decidedly formidable.
The spectacle was a melancholy one, since it demonstrated the
readiness of this once respectable old party to make complete
shipwreck of everything wearing the semblance of principle, for
the sake of success. General Taylor had never identified himself
in any way with the Whig party. He had spent his life as a mere
soldier on the frontier, and had never given a vote. He had frankly
said he had not made up his mind upon the questions which divided
the parties. He not only refused to be the exponent of Whig
principles, but accepted the nomination of bodies of men not known
as Whigs, who scouted the idea of being bound by the acts of any
national convention. He was a very large slave-owner, and thus
identified in interest, and presumably in sympathy, with the South;
but he could not be induced to define his position. His active
supporters were chiefly from the slave-holding States and those
free States which had generally given Democratic majorities, while
the men most violent in their oppo