ain. So great was the alarm
that leading men of Ohio addressed their delegation in Congress,
insisting upon Van Buren's support. It was a moment of great peril.
The agitators themselves became frightened. A pronounced reaction in
favour of Van Buren threatened to defeat their plans, and the better
to conceal intrigue and tergiversation they deemed it wise to create
the belief that opposition had been wholly and finally abandoned. In
this they proved eminently successful. "Many of the strongest
advocates of annexation," wrote a member of the New York delegation in
Congress, on May 18, nine days before the convention, "have come to
regard the grounds taken by Van Buren as the only policy consistent
not only with the honour, but the true interests of the country. Such
is fast becoming and will soon be the opinion of the whole South."[331]
But the cloud, at last, burst. No sooner had the Baltimore convention
convened than Benjamin F. Butler, the ardent friend and able spokesman
of Van Buren, discovered that the backers of Cass and Buchanan were
acting with the Southerners in the interest of a rule that required
two-thirds of all the delegates in the convention to nominate.
Instantly the air was thick with suggestion, devices, expedients. All
the arts of party emergency went on at an unprecedented rate. The
eloquent New Yorker, his clear, tenor voice trembling with emotion,
fought the battle on the highest moral grounds.

[Footnote 331: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 444.]

With inexhaustible tenacity, force, and resource, he laboured to hold
up to men's imagination and to burn into their understanding the shame
and dishonour of adopting a rule, not only unsound and false in
principle, but which, if adhered to, would coerce a majority to yield
to a minority. "I submit," declared Butler, in closing, "that to adopt
a rule which requires what we know cannot be done, unless the majority
yield to the minority, is to subject ourselves to the rule, not of
reason, but of despotism, and to defeat the true purposes and objects
of this convention--the accomplishment of the people's will for the
promotion of the people's good."[332]

[Footnote 332: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
3, p. 450.

"The real contest took place over the adoption of the rule requiring a
two-thirds vote for the nomination. For it was through this rule that
enough Southern members, chosen before Van Buren