His sub-treasury scheme, accepted as wise and salutary, was
still the cornerstone of the party, buttressed by a tariff for
revenue and opposition to a national bank.

In national affairs, the Democratic party in New York was still a
unit. The Legislature of 1843 had re-elected Silas Wright to the
United States Senate, without a dissenting Democratic vote; and a
state convention, held at Syracuse in September of the same year, and
made up of Radicals and Conservatives, had instructed its delegation
to support New York's favourite son. But a troublesome problem
suddenly confronted Van Buren. President Tyler had secretly negotiated
a treaty of annexation with Texas, ostensibly because of the
contiguity and great value of its territory, in reality, because, as
Calhoun, then secretary of state, showed in his correspondence with
Great Britain, Texas seemed indispensable to the preservation and
perpetuation of slavery. Texas had paved the way for such a treaty by
providing, in its constitution, for the establishment of slavery, and
by prohibiting the importation of slaves from any country other than
the United States. But for three months friends of the treaty in the
United States Senate had vainly endeavoured to find a two-thirds
majority in favour of its ratification. Then, the exponents of
slavery, having secretly brought to their support the enormous
prestige of Andrew Jackson, prepared to nominate a successor to
President Tyler who would favour the treaty.

Van Buren had never failed the South while in the United States
Senate. He had voted against sending abolition literature through the
mails into States that prohibited its circulation; he had approved the
rules of the Senate for tabling abolition petitions without reading
them; he had publicly deprecated the work of abolition leaders; and,
by his silence, had approved the mob spirit when his friends were
breaking up abolition meetings. But, in those days, American slavery
was simply seeking its constitutional right to exist unmolested where
it was; and, although the anti-slavery crusade from 1830 to 1840, had
profoundly stirred the American conscience, slavery had not yet, to
any extended degree, entered into partisan politics. The annexation of
Texas, however, was an aggressive measure, the first of the great
movements for the extension of slavery since the Missouri Compromise;
and it was important to the South to know in advance where the
ex-President stood. His a