o placed a letter of
withdrawal in the hands of a Buffalo delegate to be used whenever he
deemed it proper. But twenty-two Southern men declined to be
transferred, while the most piteous appeals to the Scott men of New
York met with cold refusals. They professed any amount of duty to
their party, but as regards the Fillmore combine they were implacable.
They would listen to no terms of compromise while their great enemy
remained in the field. Meantime, the Scott managers had not been
asleep. In the contest over the platform, certain Southern delegates
had agreed to vote for Scott whenever Fillmore reached his finish,
provided Scott's friends supported the fugitive slave plank; and these
delegates, amidst the wildest excitement, now began changing their
votes to the hero of Lundy's Lane. On the fifty-third ballot, the
soldier had twenty-six majority, the vote standing: Scott, 159;
Fillmore, 112; Webster, 21.

The prophecy of Hamilton Fish was fulfilled. Fillmore now realised, if
never before, "the tremendous mistakes he had made." Upon his election
as Vice President, and especially after dreams of the White House
began to dazzle him, he seemed to sacrifice old friends and cherished
principles without a scruple. Until then, the Buffalo statesman had
been as pronounced upon the slavery question as Seward; and after he
became President, with the tremendous influence of Daniel Webster
driving him on, it was not believed that he would violate the
principles of a lifetime by approving a fugitive slave law, revolting
to the rapidly growing sentiment of justice and humanity toward the
slave. But, unlike Webster, the President manifested no feeling of
chagrin or disappointment over the result at Baltimore. Throughout the
campaign and during the balance of his term of office he bore himself
with courage and with dignity. Indeed, his equanimity seemed almost
like the fortitude of fatalism. No doubt, he was sustained by the
conviction that the compromise measures had avoided civil war, and by
the feeling that if he had erred, Clay and Webster had likewise erred;
but he could have had no presentiment of the depth of the retirement
to which he was destined. He was to reappear, in 1856, as a
presidential candidate of the Americans; and, after civil war had rent
the country in twain, his sympathy for the Union was to reveal itself
early and with ardour. But the fugitive slave law, which, next to
treason itself, had become the most offe