Delaware was fixed upon, but Reverdy
Johnson withdrew his name. Watkins Leigh of Virginia and Governor
Dudley of North Carolina were successively designated, but they
declined. While this was passing the Vice Presidency was repeatedly
offered to New York, but we had no candidate. Albert H. Tracy was
eminently qualified for usefulness in public life. He entertained a
high and strict sense of official responsibility, and had he not
previously left us he would have been nominated. John Tyler was
finally taken because we could get nobody else to accept."[315]

[Footnote 315: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
77.]

The Harrisburg convention, unlike its unselfish predecessors,
adjourned without a platform or declaration of principles; nor did the
candidates, in accepting their nominations, indulge in political
discussion. Votes were wanted from all who opposed Van Buren's
administration--from the strict constructionist friends of Tyler,
although opposed to the whole Whig theory of government, as much as
from the followers of Harrison, who believed in protective tariffs
and internal improvements.

Such action contrasted strangely with the work of the national
Democratic convention which met at Baltimore on May 6, 1840. If
despondency filled the air, the delegates at least had the courage of
their convictions. After unanimously renominating Van Buren, it
declared for a limited federal power, for the separation of public
moneys from private banks, and for the constitutional inability of
Congress to interfere with slavery in the States, pronouncing the
efforts of Abolitionists both alarming and dangerous to the Union; it
opposed internal improvements by the general government; the fostering
of one industry to the injury of another; the raising of more money
than was needed for necessary expenses; and the rechartering of a
national bank. If this declaration did not shape the phrases, and
marshal the sentences of future platforms of the party, it embraced
the principles upon which Democracy went up to victory or down to
defeat during the next two decades; and it must have carried Van Buren
through successfully had not his administration fallen upon evil
times.

The President, with great moral courage and keen-sighted wisdom, met
the crisis of 1837 with an admirable bearing. The statesman suddenly
displaced the politician. In the three months intervening between the
suspension of specie payments and the e