Georgia, and Indiana, would have given Clay a majority of 103 electoral votes. These were not the only peculiar features of the election. The Abolitionists defeated Clay. The Whigs were wroth against the new political faction before the election. The New York "Tribune" brought forward evidence satisfactory to itself that Birney sought a Democratic nomination in New York, and tried to catch Democratic votes. In all probability there was no truth in the charge, but it was believed at the time. Had the Abolitionists voted for Clay he would have had a popular majority of 24,119; he would have received the electoral votes of New York, 36, and Michigan, 5; and he would have been elected by 146 electoral votes against 129 for Mr. Polk. No doubt the Abolitionists acted with entire consistency in refusing to vote for Henry Clay, and no doubt it is as impossible to tell what might have happened if Clay had been elected as it would be to guess what would have been the course of history if Van Buren had not written his Texas letter; but at all events the election of Clay would have postponed the annexation of Texas, and possibly it would have averted the Mexican war.

Another noteworthy incident of the election was what was known as the Plaquemines fraud. It will be noticed in the above table that the Polk majority in Louisiana is 699. The parish of Plaquemines, below New Orleans on the Mississippi, had voted in previous years, and was returned as voting in 1844, as follows:

The Democratic vote was larger by 697 than ever before, almost exactly the whole Democratic majority in the State. The vote was also suspicious in this, that the Democratic vote returned was greater in number than the entire white male population, of all ages, in the parish in 1840. The explanation that was given by the Whigs was that the steamboat Agnes went down from New Orleans with a load of passengers

under the charge of a political magnate of Plaquemines, and that these passengers stopped at three different places and cast each time a unanimous vote for Polk and Dallas. The steamboat Planter took down one hundred and forty others, who also voted early and often for the same ticket. These assertions were not only made, but sworn to, by many witnesses, including some persons, one of them a minor, who voted several times each, under the direction of the learned judge who managed the affair. The story bears all the marks of truth. If it is not true, it is at least singular that it was ten years after 1844 before Plaquemines parish could muster half as many Democratic votes as it gave that year to Polk.

Though the Whig newspapers rang with the charges of fraud, and though the accusation was supported by strong testimony, nothing was done about it. The election was lost, and a rectification of the fraud would not have changed the result. The Whigs submitted quietly; and when the electoral count took place in 1845, in the usual manner, no objection whatever was made, and Polk and Dallas were in due form declared elected.

The inauguration took place in the form which had now become usual. The President and the President-elect rode together, this time, in an open carriage; and a feature of the procession was a small band of Revolutionary veterans on foot. Inasmuch as this ceremony took place sixty-two years after the treaty of peace, the political enthusiasm of these aged men was as remarkable as was the inhumanity of the managers who suffered them to take such a part in the display of the day.

XVIII

THE "FREE SOIL" CAMPAIGN OF 1848

THE slavery question, which had been growing in importance fitfully, as a political issue, since the contest and compromise on the admission of Missouri in 1820, dominated the politics of the country in the election of 1844, and thereafter until it was decided by secession, war, and emancipation. Not that parties, statesmen, and politicians ranged themselves as advocates or opponents either of slavery as an existing institution or of the extension of slavery, until the critical moment of the struggle was near at hand. But every great measure, beginning with the annexation of Texas, was considered and decided with chief reference to the extension, the maintenance, the restriction, or the overthrow of the "peculiar institution' of the South. The opponents of slavery became bolder and more aggressive; its defenders more vigilant, more resentful of attacks upon it, more rigid in their ostracism of public men at the North who did not accept their principles, more resolute, in the event of a denial of their "rights," in their purpose to seek those rights by a separation from the Union. As the feeling grew more intense, and the language of extreme partisans increased in violence, well-meaning men tried to prolong the peace by compromises and by endeavors to turn the current of political thought to other subjects. How vain it was to attempt to reconcile irreconcilable things, to repress the "irrepressible conflict," the history of the next few years shows most plainly.

The South was better prepared for the conflict when it became acute than was the North. It was more united. It had control of one of the parties; it terrorized the other. It knew what it desired, and was ready to make demands and to insist upon them, no matter what might be the consequences. Thus it won the first victory of the great campaign, in the annexation of Texas, and followed it up during the next administration by the war with Mexico and the acquisition of

more territory available, as was supposed, for the spread of the slavery system. Soon after the shocking accident on the "Princeton," on February 28, 1844, in which the Secretary of State, Mr. Upshur, and the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Gilmer, lost their lives, Mr. Calhoun was made Secretary of State. Henry A. Wise asserts, in his "Seven Decades of the Union," that he offered the position to Mr. Calhoun without authority from the President, who nevertheless acquiesced in the selection so irregularly made of the most important member of his cabinet. Mr. Calhoun negotiated a treaty for the annexation of Texas, and was believed to be the active agent in defeating the nomination of Van Buren, who opposed the measure. The Senate rejected the treaty, 16 senators only favoring and 35 opposing it. Subsequently joint resolutions were offered, and passed by the House of Representatives, providing for the annexation. The resolutions would surely have failed in the Senate but for the addition of an amendment giving the President discretionary power to bring in Texas under a new treaty to be submitted to the Senate. Even this could not secure the bare majority required until Mr. Polk, the President-elect, was known to have pledged himself to act, not under the House resolutions, but under the Senate amendment. Mr. Tyler affixed his signature to the resolutions on March 1, 1845. The same night he dispatched a special messenger to Texas to consummate the annexation. Mr. Polk, inaugurated three days afterward, refused to recall the messenger. The opponents of annexation regarded the proceeding as a case of remarkably sharp practice.

Mr. Polk was not a great man. His Democratic supporters, and particularly the Southern men who controlled the party, had no cause of complaint either of unwillingness on his part to take the radical views they entertained on questions between the South and the North, or of lack of courage in acting upon those views. The Mexican war, which every one knew to be an inevitable consequence of the intrigue to annex Texas, was entered upon without hesitation. The Independent Treasury, Van Buren's pet measure, - which had been overthrown by the Whigs, was reëstablished. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Robert J. Walker, was given a free hand in drafting a tariff bill, and Congress passed it, the famous tariff of 1846, framed in the most strict conformity to the wishes of the Southern Democrats. In the platform of the party the title of

was

the United States to "the whole of the territory of Oregon asserted to be "clear and unquestionable;" and the " reoccupation " of Oregon was linked with the reannexation of Texas, as great American measures." The whole of Oregon, as spoken of in those times, meant the territory lying north of Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington, to the line of 54° 40′ north latitude. "Fifty-four forty, or fight," was a Democratic rallying cry in the North, as the acquisition of Texas was in the South. After the election there was no enthusiasm on the Oregon question; an agreement was made, without a murmur of Democratic dissatisfaction, upon the line of 49°.

On every one of the three questions the Whigs were decidedly against the administration. They deprecated the Mexican war; they opposed the sub-treasury and the ad valorem low tariff of 1846; they jeered at the government for the meekness shown in accepting the northern boundary line offered by Great Britain. Yet slavery was to decide the canvass of 1848, not as a direct issue between the two great parties, but by dividing one of them and so giving the victory to the other. The opportunity of the anti-slavery men came to them from a peculiar situation developed in the politics of the State of New York. It would be almost true to say that there has never been a time when the Democrats of New York have not been divided into at least two factions. They have exhibited a remarkable power of getting together on election day, but at all other times they have been at war with each other. Some of their dissensions have already been mentioned. In the early days of the republic the contests were largely personal struggles between rival leaders, Burr, the Clintons, and the Livingstons. During the second administration of Jackson a large faction was formed, professing extremely radical views, which called itself the Equal Rights party, but was termed by its adversaries the Loco-foco party. The name originated in an incident that occurred in New York city just before the election in 1835.1 It was the custom to submit nominations to a general meeting of Democratic citizens. The Equal Rights men, determined to oppose the Tammany nominations, appeared in large numbers at the meeting called in Tammany Hall. A scene of great confusion

1 Some authorities give the date erroneously as 1834. See History of the Loco-foco Party, by F. Byrdsall, chap. i.