ing open war. In the East
and Northwest, where the abolitionists were numerous, the leaders were
equally resolute in their purpose that slavery should not profit by the
war with Mexico. Horace Greeley, William H. Seward, and Salmon P. Chase,
a vigorous anti-slavery leader of Ohio, who now came into national
prominence, were the most powerful spokesmen of the various elements of
the opposition, and they were actively laying the foundations of an
abolition and sectional party which should ere long outvote the South.

The candidacy of Zachary Taylor, strongly supported by Thurlow Weed,
checked and even defeated the sectional purposes of the radicals. Taylor
was the master of a great plantation in Louisiana, and John J.
Crittenden, of Kentucky, Ballard Preston, of Virginia, and Alexander
Stephens, of Georgia, all good pro-slavery men, rallied at once to the
popular military chieftain. Clay was promptly snubbed and Webster's
claims were unceremoniously brushed aside. The Whig Convention of 1848
met in Philadelphia in May. It was under the control of Weed and his
Southern allies. Taylor was nominated, and Webster, Clay, and the other
disgruntled leaders finally gave him their support. Nothing was said of
the great issue, the spread of slavery over the new accessions; and the
party, as in 1840, went before the country without a platform. Nor was
the candidate allowed to make speeches or write public letters, which
was doubtless wise, for Taylor knew little of public questions. It was
said that he had never voted, and he claimed to belong to no party. The
Whigs took him on his reputation as a soldier and on the recommendation
of the great New York "boss." His candidacy probably saved the party
from breaking into two hostile wings.

When the Democratic Convention assembled in Baltimore in May, 1848, Cass
met with little opposition. His stout imperialism had won him the
leadership of the expansionist West and South. The radical pro-slavery
men of the lower South, who feared his former friendliness to the Wilmot
Proviso leaders, had been satisfied, with a few exceptions, by the
Nicholson letter of December, 1847, in which Cass laid down the doctrine
that the settlers in any new region should be allowed to determine for
themselves whether they would have slaves or not. It was the same idea
which Douglas made famous in his Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, and which
the country then dubbed "squatter-sovereignty." Cass was nominated and