ed in keeping them in the Whig party by
re-electing their leader. Fillmore, and other candidates, earnestly
protested against the policy of discarding tried and faithful friends,
and of conferring the highest and most important place in the gift of
the party upon a new recruit whose fidelity could not be trusted;
"but, strong as those gentlemen were in the Whig party, they were
unable to overcome a conviction in the minds of the Whig members of
the Legislature," says Weed, solemnly, as if the Whig members of the
Legislature really did have something to do with it, "that in view of
the approaching presidential election Mr. Tallmadge was entitled to
their support. He was, therefore, nominated with considerable
unanimity."[312] It was a great shock to Fillmore, which he resented a
few years later. Indeed, Weed's dictatorship, although quiet and
gentle, was already raising dissent. Albert H. Tracy, indignant at
Seward's nomination over the heads of older and more experienced men,
had withdrawn from politics, and Gamaliel H. Barstow, the first state
treasurer elected by the Whigs, resigned in a huff because he did not
like the way things were going. Weed fully realised the situation.
"There are a great many disappointed, disheartened friends," he wrote
Granger. "It has been a tremendous winter. But for the presidential
question which will absorb all other things, the appointments would
tear us to pieces."[313] To his door, Seward knew, the censure of the
disappointed would be aimed. "The list of appointments made this
winter is fourteen hundred," he writes, "and I am not surprised by
any manifestation of disappointment or dissatisfaction. This only I
claim--that no interest, passion, prejudice or partiality of my own
has controlled any decision I have made."[314]

[Footnote 312: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 1, p.
461.]

[Footnote 313: _Ibid._, Vol. 2, p. 86.]

[Footnote 314: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 483.]

But there was one wheel lacking in the Weed machine. The Democrats
controlled the Senate, obstructing bills deemed by the Whigs essential
to the public welfare, and refusing to confirm Seward's nominations.
By preventing an agreement upon a candidate, preliminary to a joint
ballot, they also blocked the election of a United States senator.
This situation was intolerable to Weed. Without the Senate, little
could be accomplished and nothing of a strictly partisan character.
Bes