g the
re-enactment of the independent treasury law, the passage of the
Walker tariff act, and the work of the constitutional convention,
with an expression of hope that the Mexican War, which had commenced
on the 12th of the preceding May, might be speedily and honourably
terminated. The address concluded with a just eulogy of Silas Wright.
At the moment, the contest seemed at an end; but the sequel showed it
was only a surface settlement.

If Democrats were involved in a quarrel, the Whigs were scarcely a
happy family. It is not easy to pierce the fog which shrouds the
division of the party; but it is clear that when Seward became
governor and Weed dictator, trouble began in respect to men and to
measures. Though less marked, possibly, than the differences between
Democratic factions, the discord seemed to increase with the
hopelessness of Whig ascendancy. Undoubtedly it began with Seward's
recommendation of separate schools for the children of foreigners, and
in his pronounced anti-slavery views; but it had also festered and
expanded from disappointments, and from Weed's opposition to Henry
Clay in 1836 and 1840. Even Horace Greeley, already consumed with a
desire for public preferment, began to chafe under the domineering
influence of Weed and the supposed neglect of Seward; while Millard
Fillmore, and those acting with him, although retaining personal
relations with Weed, were ready to break away at the first
opportunity. As the Whigs had been in the minority for several years,
the seriousness of these differences did not become public knowledge;
but the newspapers divided the party into Radicals and Conservatives,
the former being represented by the _Evening Journal_ and the
_Tribune_, the latter by the New York _Courier and Enquirer_ and the
Buffalo _Commercial Advertiser_.

This division, naturally, led to some difference of opinion about a
candidate for governor; and, when the Whig state convention met at
Utica on September 23, an informal ballot developed fifty-five votes
for Millard Fillmore, thirty-six for John Young, and twenty-one for
Ira Harris, with eight or ten scattering. Fillmore had not sought the
nomination. Indeed, there is evidence that he protested against the
presentation of his name; but his vote represented the conservative
Whigs who did not take kindly either to Young or to Harris. Ira
Harris, who was destined to bear a great part in a great history, had
just entered his forty-fourth year.