that it threw the convention into applause. Collier recalled
Fillmore's fidelity to his party; his satisfactory record in Congress,
especially during the passage of the tariff act of 1842; his splendid,
if unsuccessful canvass, as a candidate for governor in 1844, and his
recent majority of thirty-eight thousand for comptroller, the largest
ever given any candidate in the State. At the time, it looked as if a
unanimous response might be made; but the friends of Lawrence rallied,
and at the close of the ballot Fillmore had won by only six votes. For
Collier, however, it was a great triumph, giving him a reputation as a
speaker that later efforts did not sustain.

To anti-slavery delegates, the Philadelphia convention was a
disappointment. It seemed to lack courage and to be without
convictions or principles. Like its predecessor in 1839 it adopted no
resolutions and issued no address. The candidates became its platform.
In voting down a resolution in favour of the Wilmot Proviso, many
delegates believed the party would prove faithless on the great issue;
and fifteen of them, led by Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, proposed a
national convention of all persons opposed to the extension of
slavery, to be held at Buffalo early in August. "It is fortunate for
us," wrote Seward, "that the Democratic party is divided."[380] But the
New Yorkers, some of whom found encouragement in the nomination of
Fillmore, who had thus far been inflexible upon the slavery question,
patiently waited for the result of the Whig state convention, which
met at Utica on the 14th of September. By this time, as Seward and
Weed predicted, Taylor's nomination had grown popular. Greeley, soon
to be a candidate for Congress, advised the _Tribune's_ readers to
vote the Whig ticket, while the action of the Buffalo convention,
though it united the anti-slavery vote, assured a division of the
Democratic party more than sufficient to compensate for any Whig
losses. Under these circumstances, the Utica convention assembled with
reasonable hopes of success. It lacked the spirit of the band of
resolute Free-soilers, who met in the same place on the same day and
nominated John A. Dix for governor and Seth M. Gates of Wyoming for
lieutenant-governor; but it gave no evidence of the despair that had
settled upon the convention of the Hunkers in the preceding week.

[Footnote 380: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 71.]

One feature of the Whig state conv