its intensity. The conflict, which was
sharp and ended in the election of Daniel S. Dickinson for the
six-years term, in spite of the strong opposition of the Radical
members of the caucus, was a triumph for the Conservatives, and a
defeat for the friends of Governor Wright. The closing years of the
great statesman's life were overcast by shadows; adverse influences
were evidently in the ascendant, not only at Washington, but close
about him and at home."--Morgan Dix, _Memoirs of John A. Dix_, Vol. 1,
p. 194.]

To add to the chagrin of the Radicals, President Polk now invited
William L. Marcy, a Conservative of great prestige, to become
secretary of war. The Radicals did not know, and perhaps could not
know the exact condition of things at the national capital; certainly
they did not know how many elements of that condition told against
them. President Polk, apparently with a desire of treating his New
York friends fairly, asked Van Buren to recommend a New Yorker for his
Cabinet; and, with the approval of Silas Wright, the former President
urged Benjamin F. Butler for secretary of state, or Azariah C. Flagg
for secretary of the treasury. Either of these men would have filled
the place designated with great ability. Polk was largely indebted to
Van Buren and his friends; Butler had given him the vote of New York,
and Wright, by consenting to stand for governor at the urgent
solicitation of Van Buren, had carried the State and thus made
Democratic success possible. But Polk, more interested in future
success than in the payment of past indebtedness, had an eye out for
1848. He wanted a man devoted solely to his interests and to the
annexation of Texas; and, although Butler was a personal friend and an
ornament to the American bar, he hesitated, despite the insistence of
Van Buren and Wright, to make a secretary of state out of the most
devoted of Van Buren's adherents, who, like the sage of Lindenwald
himself, bitterly opposed annexation.

In this emergency, the tactics of Edwin Croswell came to Polk's
relief. The former knew that Silas Wright could not, if he would,
accept a place in the Cabinet, since he had repeatedly declared during
the campaign that, if elected, he would not abandon the governorship
to enter the Cabinet, as Van Buren did in 1829. Croswell knew, also,
that Butler, having left the Cabinet of two Presidents to re-enter his
profession, would not give it up for a secondary place among Polk's
advisers