the Seminoles and got conquered!"

Mr. Kendall came to the aid of President Van Buren, and resigned
the office of Postmaster-General that he might sustain the
Administration with his powerful pen. He thus brought upon himself
much malignant abuse, but in the many newspaper controversies in
which he was engaged he never failed to vindicate himself and
overwhelm his assailant with a clearness and vigor of argument and
a power of style with which few pens could cope. He was not only
assailed with the rudest violence of newspaper denunciation, but
he was alluded to by Whig speakers in scornful terms, while
caricaturists represented him as the Mephistopheles of the Van
Buren Administration, and Log Cabin Clubs roared offensive campaign
songs at midnight before his house, terrifying his children by the
discharges of a small cannon. Defeat stared him in the face, but
he never quailed, but faced the storm of attack in every direction,
and zealously defended the Democratic banner.

The Whigs of Maine led off by electing Edward Kent Governor, and
five of her eight Congressmen, including William Pitt Fessenden
and Elisha H. Allen, who afterward, when Minister from the Sandwich
Islands to the United States, fell dead at a New Year's reception
at the White House. Delaware, Maryland, and Georgia soon afterward
followed suit, electing Whig Congressmen and State officers. In
October the Ohio Whigs elected Thomas Corwin Governor, by a majority
of nearly twenty thousand over Wilson Shannon, and it was evident
that the triumphant election of Harrison and Tyler was inevitable.
In New York William H. Seward was re-elected Governor, but he ran
over seven thousand votes behind General Harrison, owing to certain
local issues.

For some months before the election the Democrats mysteriously
intimated that at the last moment some powerful engine was to be
put into operation against the Whig cause. Mr. Van Buren himself
was reported as having assured an intimate friend, who condoled
with him on his gloomy prospects, that he "had a card to play yet
which neither party dreamed of." The Attorney-General and the
District Attorneys of New York and Philadelphia were as mysterious
as Delphic oracles, while other Federal officers in those cities
were profound and significant in their head-shakings and winks in
reference to disclosures which were to be made just before the
Presidential election, and which were to blow the Whigs "sky high."

A