those
ends for which all governments are in theory established." Can this
resolution command an endorsement at the beginning of the twentieth
century?

The States of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont adopted resolutions of
sympathy with Hungary and of arraignment of Austria and Russia.

[* This chapter was published substantially as it appears here in the
_New England Magazine._ Copyright, 1903, by Warren F. Kellogg.]

XIX
THE COALITION AND THE STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1853

The controversy over slavery, which wrought a division in the Whig and
Democratic parties as early as the year 1848, led to a reorganization
of parties in 1849, under the names of Whig, Democratic, and Free-soil
parties, respectively. Of these the Whig Party was the largest, but
from 1849 to 1853 it was not able to command a majority vote in the
State, and at that time a majority vote was required in all elections.
There was a substantial agreement between the Democratic and Free-soil
parties upon the leading questions of State politics. Of these
questions a secret ballot law and the division of counties for the
election of senators, and the division of cities for the election of
representatives, were the chief. Under the law then existing the
county of Middlesex, for example, elected six senators, and each year
all were of the same party. Boston was a Whig city, and each year it
chose forty-six members of the House on one ballot, and always of the
Whig Party. What is now the system of elections was demanded by the
Democratic and Free-soil parties. The change was resisted by the
Whig Party. In 1849 I was nominated by the Democratic Party for the
office of Governor, and a resolution was adopted denouncing the
system of slavery. In that year coalitions were formed in counties and
in cities and towns between Democrats and Free-soilers, which
demonstrated the possibility of taking the State out of the hands of
the Whig Party, if the coalitions could be made universal. This was
accomplished in 1850, and in 1851 I became Governor by the vote of the
Legislature, and Mr. Sumner was elected to the United States Senate.
It was the necessity of the situation that the two offices should be
filled, and the necessity was not less mandatory that one of the
places should be filled by a Democrat, and the other by a member of the
Free-soil Party. There were expectations and conjectures, no doubt,
but until the Legislature assembled in 1851