nsolidation of power to be the chief danger
of the country, and the barrier of state rights, great and small, to be
its only protection even against the Supreme Court. Gallatin took
broader ground, and found encouragement in the excellent working of
universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to legislative
bodies. But he was opposed to the extension of the principle to
municipal officers having the application of the proceeds of taxes,
forgetting that universal suffrage is the lever by which capital is
moved to educate labor and relieve it from the burdens of injury,
disease, and physical incapacity at the expense of the whole. Without
stopping to argue these debatable questions, Mr. Gallatin, with
practical statesmanship, determined to maintain in power the only agency
by which he could at all shape the political future, and he threw
himself into the canvass with zeal.

Crawford had unfortunately been stricken with paralysis, and the choice
of a vice-president became a matter of grave concern. Mr. Gallatin was
selected to take this place on the ticket. To this tender he replied
that he did not want the office, but would dislike to be proposed and
not elected, and he honestly felt that as a foreigner and a residuary
legatee of Federal hatred his name could not be of much service to the
cause. Still, he followed the only course by which any party can be held
together, and surrendered his prejudices and fears to the wishes of his
friends. The Republican caucus met on February 14, 1824, in the chamber
of the House of Representatives. Of the 216 members of the party only 66
attended. Martin Van Buren, then senator from New York, managed this,
the last congressional caucus for the selection of candidates.

The solemnity given to the congressional nominations, and the publicity
of the answers of candidates, Mr. Gallatin held to be political
blunders. In fact the plan was adroitly denounced as an attempt to
dictate to the people.

Crawford was nominated for president by 64 votes, Gallatin for
vice-president by 57. This nomination Mr. Gallatin accepted in a note to
Mr. Ruggles, United States senator, on May 10, 1824. But there were
elements of which party leaders of the old school had not taken
sufficient account. Macon was right when he said that "every generation,
like a single person, has opinions of its own, as much so in politics as
anything else," and that 'the opinions of Jefferson and those who were
with him