deserted Mr. Van Buren. On the last ballot he had voted for James K. Polk, and would do so on the next, despite the threat that had been thrown out, that those who had not voted for Mr. Van Buren would be ashamed to show their faces before their constituents. He threw back the imputation with indignation. He denied that he had violated his pledge; that he had voted for Mr. Van Buren on three ballots, but finding that Mr. Van Buren was not the choice of the Convention, he had voted for Mr. Buchanan. Finding that Mr. Buchanan could not succeed, he had cast his vote for James K. Polk, the bosom friend of General Jackson, and a pure, 'whole-hog' Democrat, the known enemy of banks, distribution, etc. He had carried out his instructions, as he understood them, and others would do the same.

"The crimination and recrimination in the Pennsylvania delegation arose from division among the delegates; in some other delegations the disregard of instructions was unanimous, and there was no one to censure another, as in Mississippi. The Pennsylvania delegation may be said to have decided the nomination. They were instructed to vote for Mr. Van Buren, and did so, but they divided on the two-thirds rule, and gave a majority of their votes for it, that is to say, thirteen votes; but as thirteen was not a majority of twenty-six, one delegate was got to stand aside, and then the vote stood thirteen to twelve. The Virginia delegation, headed by the most respectable William H. Roane (with a few exceptions) remained faithful, disregarding the attempt to release them at Shockoe Hill, and voting steadily for Mr. Van Buren, as well on all the ballotings as on the two-thirds question, which was the real one. Some members of the Capitol nocturnal committee were in the Convention, and among its most active managers, and the most zealous against Mr. Van Buren. In that profusion of letters with which they covered the country to undermine him, they placed the

objection on the ground of the impossibility of electing him; now it was seen that the impossibility was on the other side, that it was impossible to defeat him, except by betraying trusts, violating instructions, combining the odds and ends of all factions; and then getting a rule adopted by which a minority was to govern.

"The motion of Mr. Miller was not voted upon. It was summarily disposed of, without the responsibility of a direct vote. The enemies of Mr. Van Buren having secured the presiding officer at the start, all motions were decided against them; and, after a long session of storm and rage, intermitted during the night for sleep and intrigue, and resumed in the morning, an eighth ballot was taken; and without hope for Mr. Van Buren. As his vote went down, that for Messrs. Cass, Buchanan, and R. M. Johnson rose; but without ever carrying either of them to a majority, much less two-thirds Seeing the combination against him, the friends of Mr. Van Buren withdrew his name, and the party was then without a candidate known to the people. Having killed off the one chosen by the people, the Convention remained masters of the field, and ready to supply one of its own. The intrigue commenced in 1842, in the Gilmer letter, had succeeded one-half. It had put down one man, but another was to be put up; and there were enough of Mr. Van Buren's friends to defeat that part of the scheme. They determined to render their country that service, and therefore withdrew Mr. Van Buren that they might go in a body for a new man. Among the candidates for the Vice-Presidency was Mr. James K. Polk, of Tennessee. His interest as a Vice-Presidential candidate lay with Mr. Van Buren, and they had been much associated in the minds of each other's friends.

It was an easy step for them to support for the first office, on the loss of their first choice, the citizen whom they intended for the second. Without public announcements, he was slightly developed as a Presidential candi

date on the eighth ballot; on the ninth he was unanimously nominated, all the President-makers who had been voting for others (for Cass, Buchanan, Johnson) taking the current the instant they saw which way it was going, in order that they might claim the merit of conducting it. 'You bring but seven captives to my tent, but thousands of you took them,' was the sarcastic remark of a king of antiquity at seeing the multitude that came to claim honors and rewards for taking a few prisoners. Mr. Polk might have made the same exclamation in relation to the multitude that assumed to have nominated him. Their name was legion; for, besides the unanimous Convention, there was a host of outside operators, each of whom claimed the merit of having governed the vote of some delegate. Never was such a multitude seen claiming the merit, and demanding the reward for having done what had been done before they heard of it.

"The nomination was a surprise and a marvel to the country. No voice in favor of it had been heard; no visible sign in the political horizon had announced it. Two small symptoms, small in themselves and equivocal in their import, and which would never have been remembered except for the event, doubtfully foreshadowed it. One was a paragraph in a Nashville newspaper, hypothetically suggesting that Mr. Polk should be taken up if Mr. Van Buren should be abandoned; the other, the ominous circumstance that the Tennessee State Nominating Convention made a recommendation (Mr. Polk) for the second office, and none for the first; and Tennessee being considered a Van Buren State, this omission was significant, seeming to leave open the door for his ejection, and for the admission of some other person. And so the delegates from that State seemed to understand it, voting steadily against him, until he was withdrawn.

"The ostensible objection to the last against Mr. Van Buren was his opposition to immediate annexation. The

shallowness of that objection was immediately shown in the unanimous nomination of his bosom friend, Mr. Silas Wright, identified with him in all that related to the Texas negotiation, for Vice-President. He was nominated upon the proposition of Mr. Robert J. Walker, a mainspring in all the movements against Mr. Van Buren, whose most indefatigable opponents sympathized with the Texas scrip and land speculators. Mr. Wright instantly declined the nomination, and Mr. George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was taken in his place."

CHAPTER V.

MR. CALHOUN'S DISAPPOINTMENT-DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM THE RACE-THE RESULT-MR. CLAY

IT

COULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT.

Tis quite evident that this Convention had no intention of nominating Mr. Calhoun. Even some of those who had made pretensions of that kind to him did not mean to support him. These wily managers knew they could not elect Mr. Calhoun, not even if the whole people had been avowedly in favor of the immediate annexation of Texas, war or no war. Yet no man had greater right to complain of the conduct of this Convention than Mr. Calhoun. He had set in motion the scheme by which Mr. Van Buren was overthrown and the Texas question largely adopted throughout the North, and he expected to profit by it. But Mr. Calhoun's nullification record had destroyed him forever in the North, and the extent to which he carried the dogma of States Rights never could be made acceptable to the people of that part of the Union. General Jackson, and these and a few other things, had utterly destroyed his chances for the Presidency, and that the Democratic leaders knew. Mr. Calhoun had aided in breaking up the unrepublican Congressional caucus for nominating the President