supported the Compromises
of 1850 and had been bitterly denounced for it. Whittier had expunged
his name from the list of the great and the good. He had wanted to be
President too. Men like General Harrison had secured the prize over his
head. He was reduced to the rejection of the proffered Vice Presidency.
He had been Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. He
had supported the bank, the tariff, implied powers, and Hamiltonism. He
had followed Clay's leadership. Still he had risen to great heights of
oratory and legalistic reason. Carlyle had called him a logic machine in
pants. His debate with Hayne, however, was to furnish the material for
one of the greatest of state papers, to be written less than a decade
from this day. From the hills of Massachusetts he failed to see the
West. Young Douglas had fronted him and told him of the power of the new
and growing country along the Mississippi River. Old America was
passing. The West was asking for the highest recognition. Douglas was
thirty-nine and seemed to be the man for President.

I did not pretend to be a politician, but only an observer and Douglas'
friend. I read everything that was written about the questions of the
day, the newspapers, the _Congressional Record_. It was clear to me that
the Democrats had been split in 1848 by their attitude toward the Wilmot
Proviso, which was intended to keep slavery from the Texan territory.
Then came the Compromises under a Whig administration. The Compromises
were hated by the South and cursed by the Abolitionists in the North.
The Democrats were united by an acquiescence in the Compromises. And now
the Whigs were divided because of them. They had played foxy in '48 by a
no-platform. They were unable to have one, because they had no united
voice. The Free Soil party had collapsed in Illinois. Altogether hopes
ran high for the Democrats. But who should be the candidate?

Douglas! He seemed to me the ideal man, as Webster seemed the ideal man
to admiring Whigs. But Douglas, like Webster, was doomed to fail, at
least in this convention. The prize was captured by Franklin Pierce,
whom no one knew, but it was not until the forty-ninth ballot. On the
forty-eighth ballot Douglas had thirty-three votes to Pierce's
fifty-five. Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost.
Young America was put aside for a fair-sized man from New Hampshire.

The Whigs met the same month in Baltimore. Webster, soon to die,