territory and captured Monterey, and these victories made his name a
household word throughout the country. Instead of permitting Taylor to
proceed with the war that he had so successfully conducted up to that
time, the administration decided to practically retire him. General
Scott was called to plan an independent campaign from Vera Cruz to
the capital of Mexico. It was openly charged that the administration
feared the popularity of “Old Zach,” as Taylor was generally called
by the people, and that it had little fear of Scott as a Presidential
candidate. Scott planned his campaign; was furnished with an
independent army, and when he arrived at Vera Cruz he stripped General
Taylor of nearly all his regulars, leaving him an army of but little
over 4000, most of them volunteers. Santa Anna, whose return to Mexico
had been sanctioned by our Government, made himself Military Dictator.
He gathered an army of 22,000 of the best Mexican troops and made a
rapid movement to strike and crush General Taylor at Buena Vista. The
history of that battle is well known. Taylor not only defeated but
routed the Mexicans, and thereby made himself the next President of the
United States.
General Scott made a most brilliant campaign, fighting repeated
battles, and finally captured the City of Mexico, when the
administration involved him in bitter controversy, as was easily done
with General Scott, and had him tried by a court of his inferiors
in the Capitol of the enemy he had conquered. Brilliant as was his
military campaign he returned home with little if any increased
prestige, and every schoolboy in the land was huzzaing for “Old Zach,”
or for “Old Rough and Ready.”
There seems to be poetic justice in the marvellous historical fact
that with the large amount of territory conquered from Mexico, and the
additional territory afterward purchased by the Gadsden treaty, the
South did not gain a single Slave State, and it quickened the issue of
slavery that greatly hastened its destruction just when it hoped to
attain omnipotence.
It was uncertain after the war of Mexico was inaugurated and the
certainty of the acquisition of Mexican territory accepted just when
and in what shape the issue of the extension of slavery would be
presented. To the surprise of the friends of the administration it
came much sooner and in much graver form than they had anticipated.
On the 8th of August, 1846, President Polk sent a message to Congress
asking for an appropriation to be placed at the President’s disposal
to enable him to negotiate an advantageous treaty of peace with the
Mexican Government, and a bill was promptly presented to the House
appropriating $32,000,000 for immediate use in negotiations with
Mexico. There were a number of able and earnest antislavery Democrats
in the House, and among them David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania. When the
bill, making the large appropriation to obtain peace with Mexico, that
obviously meant the acquisition of Southern territory, was presented
to the House, repeated conferences were had between the antislavery
Democratic leaders, and what has since been known as the “Wilmot
Proviso” was originally drawn by Judge Brinkerhoff, then a Democratic
Congressman from Ohio, and finally revised and agreed upon, to be
offered as an amendment to the Mexican Appropriation bill.
The Speaker was adverse to the antislavery Democrats, and it was
uncertain whether any of them could obtain the floor to offer the
amendment. The result was that a copy of the proviso was furnished
to some half a dozen, with the understanding that each should
take advantage of any opportunity to obtain the floor during the
consideration of the bill and offer the amendment. The opportunity
happened to come to Mr. Wilmot, and he offered the following amendment,
that is the original of what is now known as the “Wilmot Proviso.”
“_Provided_, That as an express and fundamental condition to the
acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United
States, by virtue of any treaty that may be negotiated between them,
and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated,
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part
of said territory except for crime whereof the party shall be first
duly convicted.”
This proviso came like a bombshell into the ranks of the
administrationists, and they were unable to defeat it. It was carried
in Committee of the Whole by a vote of 83 to 64, with only 3 Democrats
from the Free States opposing it. When the measure was reported to the
House, Mr. Tibbatts, of Kentucky, moved that it do lie on the table,
and the motion was defeated by 93 to 79. The bill was engrossed for
third reading by 85 to 80, and passed finally without further division,
with a motion to reconsider laid on the table by vote of 83 to 73. Thus
what is now known as the Wilmot Proviso was embodied by the House in
the Appropriation bill for negotiating peace with Mexico.
The Wilmot Proviso raised the slavery issue in the most direct form,
and it played an important part in the Presidential contest of 1848.
It was simply a repetition of the clause prohibiting slavery that was
put in the ordinance of 1787 by Thomas Jefferson, when the Northwestern
Territory was ceded by Virginia to the United States. It was a very
embarrassing issue to many Northern Democrats, and to a few Southern
Whigs who inclined to prevent slavery extension. General Cass, who was
made the candidate for President in 1848, originally declared himself
in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, but he learned a year later that no
man could maintain his fellowship with the Democratic party under the
Polk administration and support the prohibition of slavery in the
Territories.
When the discussion of candidates for the Presidential contest of 1848
became active, General Cass was addressed on the subject of slavery by
A. O. P. Nicholson, of Nashville, Tenn., in which he inquired of Cass
whether he was in favor of the acquisition of Mexican territory, and
what his views were as to the Wilmot Proviso. General Cass answered,
December 24, 1847, in which he declared himself in favor of the
acquisition of Mexican territory and against the Wilmot Proviso, on
which point he said: “I am strongly impressed with the opinion that a
great change has been going on in the public mind upon this subject, in
my own as well as others, and that doubts are resolving themselves into
convictions that the principle it involves should be kept out of the
national Legislature and left to the people of the Confederacy in their
respective local governments.” But for this declaration Cass would not
have been the Democratic candidate for President in 1848, and that
declaration also opened the door for the Van Buren bolt that defeated
Cass in the great ambition of his life.
In addition to the serious political complications which confronted
the Polk administration and threatened the defeat of the Democratic
party at its close, the Oregon dispute with England, that had been made
one of the chief features of the Polk campaign of 1844, was sensibly
adjusted by Secretary of State Buchanan, but in utter disregard of the
Democratic declarations and ostentatious professions of the campaign.
In that contest the Democrats from every stump declared that the
boundary line between Oregon and England must be “54° 40´, or fight”;
but when the issue became a question of statesmanship and diplomacy, a
treaty was made fixing 49° as the boundary, and thus confessing that
the claim of the Democrats in the campaign was made either in ignorance
or insincerity.
Another of the troubles that confronted the Democracy was the intense
factional dispute in New York between what were known as the Hunkers
and the Barnburners. The Hunkers were so called in derision by their
enemies as men who always hunkered after office, and the Barnburners
were so called by their opponents because it was charged that to
correct evils in the party, they were ready to follow the foolish
farmer who burnt his barn to rid it of rats.
Silas Wright, who had lost the Vice-Presidency in 1844 by his devotion
to Van Buren, and was finally compelled to run for Governor to save
the State, suffered a severe defeat in 1846 when a candidate for
re-election. That defeat was charged by Van Buren and his friends to
the perfidy of the Hunkers. So intense was the bitterness between these
factions that they could not agree on delegations to the national
convention, and two opposing delegations were chosen, the Barnburners
being antislavery Democrats and the Hunkers the regular or pro-slavery
Democrats. The national convention met at Baltimore on the 22d of
May, 1848, with every State represented, and New York with a double
delegation. Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, was made President, and the
two-thirds rule was adopted by a vote of 175 to 78. For two days the
convention wrangled over the disputing delegations from New York, and
after protracted and angry debate a motion was finally passed by 126 to
124 admitting both delegations, each to cast half the vote of the State.
While this was a comparative victory for the Barnburners, they withdrew
from the convention, and the Hunker delegation refused to participate
in the proceedings. The prominent candidates before the convention for
President were Cass and Buchanan, with Cass immensely in the lead and
reasonably certain to be nominated before the convention met. He had
a large plurality on the 1st ballot, but did not reach the requisite
two-thirds vote until the 4th, as is shown by the following table,
giving the ballots in detail:
════════════════════════╤════════╤═════════╤════════╤═════════
│ First. │ Second. │ Third. │ Fourth.
────────────────────────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┼─────────
Necessary to a choice │ 168 │ 168 │ 169 │ 169
Lewis Cass, Mich. │ 125 │ 133 │ 156 │ 179
James Buchanan, Penn. │ 55 │ 54 │ 40 │ 33
Levi Woodbury, N. H. │ 53 │ 56 │ 53 │ 38
George M. Dallas, Penn. │ 3 │ 3 │ ―― │ ――
W. J. Worth, Tenn. │ 6 │ 6 │ 5 │ 1
John C. Calhoun, S. C. │ 9 │ ―― │ ―― │ ――
W. O. Butler, Ky. │ ―― │ ―― │ ―― │ 3
════════════════════════╧════════╧═════════╧════════╧══════════
The convention adjourned after the nomination of Cass to meet in
evening session to select a candidate for Vice-President, and without
any preliminaries the ballot was had as follows:
Wm. O. Butler, Ky. 114
J. A. Quitman, Miss. 74
John Y. Mason, Va. 24
Wm. R. King, Ala. 29
Jas. J. McKay, N. C. 13
Jefferson Davis, Miss. 1
A 2d ballot was had and ended in the unanimous nomination of Butler.
The platform of the party was not reported until the fifth and final
day of the convention, and it was altogether the most elaborate
declaration of principles ever made by a political party in national
convention. Immediately after the first resolution as we give it
followed the full text of the Democratic platforms adopted in 1840 and
1844, and to the fifth resolution of the platform of 1844 the following
sentence was added: “And for the gradual but certain extinction of
the debt created by the prosecution of a just and necessary war after
peaceful relations shall have been restored.” The Democratic platform
of 1848, therefore, included the platforms of 1840 and 1844, with the
following new declarations of faith:
_Resolved_, That the American Democracy place their trust in the
intelligence, the patriotism, and the discriminating justice, of the
American people.
_Resolved_, That the war with Mexico, provoked on her part by years of
insult and injury, was commenced by her army crossing the Rio Grande,
attacking the American troops, and invading our sister State of Texas;
and that, upon all the principles of patriotism and the laws of
nations, it is a just and necessary war upon our part, in which every
American citizen should have shown himself on the side of his country,
and neither morally nor physically, by word or deed, have given aid
and comfort to the enemy.
_Resolved_, That we should be rejoiced at the assurance of a peace
with Mexico, founded on the just principles of indemnity for the past
and security for the future; but that, while the ratification of the
liberal treaty offered to Mexico remains in doubt, it is the duty of
the country to sustain the administration in every measure necessary
to provide for the vigorous prosecution of the war, should that treaty
be rejected.
_Resolved_, That the officers and soldiers who have carried the
arms of their country into Mexico have crowned it with imperishable
glory. Their unconquerable courage, their daring enterprise, their
unfaltering perseverance and fortitude when assailed on all sides by
innumerable foes—and that more formidable enemy, the diseases of the
climate—exalt their devoted patriotism into the highest heroism, and
give them a right to the profound gratitude of their country and the
admiration of the world.
_Resolved_, That the Democratic National Convention of thirty
States, composing the American Republic, tender their fraternal
congratulations to the National Convention of the Republic of France,
now assembled as the free suffrage representatives of the sovereignty
of thirty-five millions of republicans, to establish governments on
those eternal principles of equal rights, for which their Lafayette
and our Washington fought side by side in the struggle for our
national independence; and we would especially convey to them and to
the whole people of France our earnest wishes for the consolidation of
their liberties, through the wisdom that shall guide their counsels,
on the basis of a democratic constitution, not derived from the grants
or concessions of kings or dynasties, but originating from the only
true source of political power recognized in the States of this Union:
the inherent and inalienable rights of the people, in their sovereign
capacity, to make and to amend their forms of government in such a
manner as the welfare of the community may require.
_Resolved_, That with the recent development of this grand political
truth—of the sovereignty of the people and their capacity and power
for self-government, which is prostrating thrones and erecting
republics on the ruins of despotism in the Old World—we feel that a
high and sacred duty is devolved, with increased responsibility, upon
the Democratic party of this country, as the party of the people,
to sustain and advance among us constitutional liberty, equality,
and fraternity, by continuing to resist all monopolies and exclusive
legislation for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many;
and by a vigilant and constant adherence to those principles and
compromises of the Constitution, which are broad enough and strong
enough to embrace and uphold the Union as it was, the Union as it is,
and the Union as it shall be, in the full expansion of the energies
and capacity of this great and progressive people.
_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be forwarded, through the
American Minister at Paris, to the National Convention of the Republic
of France.
_Resolved_, That the fruits of the great political triumph of 1844,
which elected James K. Polk and George M. Dallas President and
Vice-President of the United States, have fulfilled the hopes of the
Democracy of the Union in defeating the declared purposes of their
opponents to create a national bank; in preventing the corrupt and
unconstitutional distribution of the land proceeds, from the common
treasury of the Union, for local purposes; in protecting the currency
and labor of the country from ruinous fluctuations, and guarding the
money of the people for the use of the people; by the establishment
of the constitutional treasury; in the noble impulse given to the
cause of free trade, by the repeal of the tariff of 1842, and the
creation of the more equal, honest, and productive tariff of 1846;
and that, in our opinion, it would be a fatal error to weaken the
hands of a political organization by which these great reforms have
been achieved, and risk them in the hands of their known adversaries,
with whatever delusive appeals they may solicit our surrender of that
vigilance which is the only safeguard of liberty.
_Resolved_, That the confidence of the Democracy of the Union in
the principles, capacity, firmness, and integrity of James K. Polk,
manifested by his nomination and election in 1844, has been signally
justified by the strictness of his adherence to sound Democratic
doctrines, by the purity of purpose, the energy and ability which
have characterized his administration in all our affairs at home and
abroad; that we tender to him our cordial congratulations upon the
brilliant success which has hitherto crowned his patriotic efforts,
and assure him in advance that, at the expiration of his Presidential
term, he will carry with him to his retirement the esteem, respect,
and admiration of a grateful country.
_Resolved_, That this convention hereby present to the people of
the United States Lewis Cass, of Michigan, as the candidate of
the Democratic party for the office of President, and William O.
Butler, of Kentucky, as the candidate of the Democratic party for
Vice-President of the United States.
After the platform had been reported, Mr. Yancey, of Alabama,
offered an additional resolution providing, “That the doctrine of
non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the
people of this Confederacy, be it in the States or Territories
thereof, by any other than the parties interested in them, is the true
Republican doctrine recognized by this body,” but it was rejected by a
vote of 216 to 36. Yancey’s resolution stated just what the convention
believed, but what it did not dare express.
Notwithstanding the serious complications which confronted the
Democrats at the opening of the campaign of 1848, they started out with
every prospect of electing their national ticket. Cass was accepted as
the ablest of the Democratic leaders of that day, and his nomination
seemed to inspire the Democrats to earnest effort for his election.
There was then no apprehension of the Van Buren bolt that grew to such
immense proportions before the campaign closed, and made the defeat of
Cass inevitable.
The Whigs were in an unfortunate position to go before the country.
They had opposed the Mexican war vehemently, had protested against
the acquisition of Mexican territory, and were certain to be divided
on sectional lines arising from the additional Territories and future
States our expansion was sure to give us. They were in the same
position in which they found themselves in 1839, when they had to unite
discordant elements of opposition to Van Buren to win the victory. The
idolatry for Clay was yet cherished in all its intensity, and although
enfeebled by age, he yielded to the earnest importunities of his
friends, and announced himself as candidate for the nomination, though
all intelligent and dispassionate Whig leaders knew that he was not
available.
General Scott had been clouded by serious differences with the
administration, in which his volubility had served his enemies a
good purpose, and Webster never had a large popular following as a
Presidential candidate. It was the first national convention that I
ever witnessed, being then a boy editor in the interior and not old
enough to vote for the men I supported. It was held in Chinese Hall, in
Philadelphia, where the Continental Hotel now stands, and was dominated
by the wonderfully able political leaders and statesmen which the South
produced in ante-bellum days. They knew that they could not meet the
slavery issue in the new Territories, and they presented General Taylor
to the convention, and, without a pledge from Taylor himself, they
formally pledged themselves to the convention that if not nominated he
would not be the candidate of any other party, and would support the
ticket.
The Whig National Convention convened at Philadelphia on the 7th of
June, with a full representation from every State excepting Texas.
Ex-Governor John M. Morehead, of North Carolina, presided. The
conferences of the Whig leaders were anything but harmonious, and
there were indications at times of an open and very serious rupture.
Clay’s friends knew that it was the last battle that ever could be
made for him. Their idolatry for Clay made them earnest, enthusiastic,
even desperate, although most of them could not but foresee that his
nomination was impossible, and that his election, if nominated, would
be quite improbable.
The friends of Clay and Scott did not take kindly to General Taylor.
He had been nominated some time before by a Native American National
Convention that then represented but an inconsiderable following
principally in the Eastern cities, and he had never distinctly declared
his devotion to the Whig policy. Congressman L. D. Campbell, of Ohio,
offered a resolution just before the balloting began, declaring that
the convention should not entertain the candidacy of any man for
President or Vice-President “who had not given assurances that he
would abide by the action of the convention; that he would accept the
nomination and that he would consider himself the candidate of the
Whig party.” An angry debate was avoided by the President ruling the
resolution out of order. Mr. Campbell appealed, but the appeal was
lost. Mr. Fuller, of New York, then offered a resolution declaring that
no man should be nominated for President unless “he stands pledged to
support in good faith the nominees and to be the exponent of Whig
principles.” This was also ruled out of order, and an appeal was tabled.
Even after Taylor had been nominated, Mr. Allen, of Massachusetts, who
afterward bolted the party and supported Van Buren as a Free Soiler,
offered a resolution declaring that the Whig party would abide by the
nomination of Taylor on condition that he would accept the nomination
as the candidate of the Whig party, and adhere to its great fundamental
principles of no extension of slavery territory, no acquisition of
foreign territory by conquest, protection to American industry, and
opposition to Executive usurpation.” That was ruled out of order,
as were several other resolutions aiming at some expression on the
question of slavery.
The Southern Whig leaders saw that the only possible way to save the
Whigs in the South was to nominate a Southern man; General Taylor was
the only Southern man whom they believed could command favor in the
North, and they wanted no expression from the convention on any of
the delicate and perilous issues which confronted them. A number of
leading Southern delegates, headed by Balie Peyton, of Tennessee, gave
their formal pledge to the convention that General Taylor would accept
the nomination and would abide by the decision of the party, and that
he could safely be trusted as an exponent of the Whig policy. The
convention had three ballots before a choice was reached for President,
as follows:
═════════════════════╤══════╤═══════╤══════╤═══════
│First.│Second.│Third.│Fourth.
─────────────────────┼──────┼───────┼──────┼───────
Zachary Taylor, La. │ 111 │ 118 │ 133 │ 171
Henry Clay, Ky. │ 97 │ 86 │ 74 │ 32
Winfield Scott, N. J.│ 43 │ 49 │ 54 │ 63
Daniel Webster, Mass.│ 22 │ 22 │ 17 │ 14
John McLean, Ohio. │ 2 │ ―― │ ―― │ ――
John M. Clayton, Del.│ 4 │ 4 │ 1 │ ――
═════════════════════╧══════╧═══════╧══════╧═══════