than Taylor; but Taylor had won fame on the field of Buena Vista, during the Mexican War, and he had not been in favor of carrying that war forward to the banks of the Rio Grande, the disputed boundary between Texas and Mexico. He was urged in the convention as the most available man for the nomination, and the word "availability" was repeated with much scorn by Mr. Clay's friends afterwards. Lincoln was a delegate to the Whig convention that nominated Taylor, and he was enthusiastically in favor of the "Hero of Buena Vista," as the General was styled by his admirers. General Taylor's manners were very blunt, and his usual address was abrupt. His followers gave him the title of "Rough and Ready," and the name was used as a battle-cry all through the campaign. Indeed, the Whigs resorted to all the tricks and devices that had made the "Log-Cabin and Hard-Cider" campaign of Harrison and Tyler so successful. Lincoln was not only enthusiastically in favor of Taylor's nomination, but he was confident of his election. In a letter to a friend, written a few days after the Philadelphia convention, he said that, in his opinion, the Whigs would have "a most overwhelming and glorious triumph," and he added: "One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us-Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows."

This queer list of party factions shows how parties were then beginning to break up. The Barn

burners were the antislavery seceders from the Democratic party in New York. The Tyler men were those who adhered to the fortunes and alleged principles of John Tyler, who, having been elected Vice-President with General Harrison by the Whigs, afterward became President by the death of Harrison, and then went over to the Democratic party, taking with him a fraction of his own party. In August of that year, 1848, the New York antislavery Democrats assembled at Buffalo, New York, and organized the Free-Soil party. It was pledged, not to the abolition of slavery, but to its restriction to the territory it already occupied. The new party was determined that the soil of the territories then in existence, and thereafter to be acquired, should be free; that there should be no more slave labor outside of the States in which slavery existed, and that every citizen of the United States should have full liberty to speak his sentiments concerning any topic before the people, even concerning slavery. The slaveholders had begun to suppress newspapers that were against slavery, and to oppress men who dared to say that slavery was not right and just. The battle-cry of the Free-Soilers in that canvass was "Free Soil, Free Labor, and Free Speech.' They nominated Martin Van Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-President. The Free-Soilers of that day included many eminent men, some of whom had come out of the Democratic party on account of its cringing attitude to slavery in the United States. Among the Free-Soilers were Salmon · P. Chase, afterward Chief Justice of the Supreme

Court of the United States; Charles Sumner; Henry Wilson, afterward Senator from Massachusetts, and then Vice-President of the republic; William Cullen Bryant; John P. Hale, then and afterward a Senator from New Hampshire; and many others.

The Democrats, meantime, had nominated for President Lewis Cass. This gentleman, as we have seen, had had a very slight taste of war in the skirmish known as the battle of the Thames; and, as the Whig candidate was hurrahed for as a military hero, the Democrats attempted very unsuccessfully to give Cass a military reputation. The experiment failed. The slavery question, which could not any longer be kept down, was judiciously omitted from the platforms of the Whigs and the Democrats. The Free-Soilers were sufficiently outspoken in their platform; but we shall find that the speakers of the other two parties, after all, were obliged to say something about the great but much-dreaded question. William H. Seward, afterwards Senator and Secretary of State, said, in a speech supporting Taylor's candidacy: "Freedom and slavery are two antagonistic elements of society in America." "The party of freedom seeks complete and universal emancipation." Daniel Webster, who also supported Taylor, insisted that the Whigs were the real FreeSoilers. Lincoln avowed himself to be "a Northern man, or, rather, a Western Free-State man, with a constituency I believe to be, and with personal feelings I know to be, against the extension of slavery." The Congressional recess began in August, and Lincoln went immediately to New England, where he

took the stump for Taylor. His speeches were characterized by their keenness of analysis, wit, humor, and unanswerable logic. He was in close communication with the Whig leaders, in Illinois, and continually wrote them, giving them advice, counsel, and hints for the conduct of the campaign. Some of these letters are very interesting as showing the thoroughness of Lincoln's methods. In a letter to his partner, W. H. Herndon, he says: "Let every one play the part he can play best. Some can speak, some can sing, and all can halloo." When he had filled his engagements in New England and New York he returned at once to Illinois, where he threw himself into the canvass with great fervor, speaking day and night until the election, which occurred in November, 1848.

When the votes were counted, it was found that General Taylor was elected, having 163 electors, while Cass had 137. Van Buren, not having carried any one State, had no electors. Of the total number of votes cast in all the States, Taylor had 1,360,752; Cass had 1,219,962; Van Buren had 291,342. Great was the joy of the Whigs; bonfires and illuminations flamed, and the Whig newspapers broke out with cuts, big type, and other devices to show manifest exultation, unknown in these days. There was a general feeling of satisfaction all over the North, for it was felt that the election of Taylor would, somehow, prevent the further extension of slavery. In fact, although probably very few, except such shrewd politicians as Lincoln, saw it, the triumph of the Whigs, assisted by the Free-Soil party, was

making ready for the formation of a new party that was to bring to pass what none then thought possible -the abolition of slavery. It should be borne in mind that the votes cast for Van Buren would have elected Cass had they all been given to him. And the bulk of those votes had come out of the Demo

cratic party.

When Congress reassembled in December of that year, after the Presidential election, the aspect of things was materially changed. Lincoln and other ardent Whigs were no longer in a hopeless minority in the country, and the Northern Democrats, who believed that they had been sacrificed in the interest of Southern slavery, were angry and sullen. They were ready to wreak their spite on their Southern Democratic friends. One of these, Mr. Root of Ohio, very soon introduced a resolution favoring the organization of the new Territories, California and New Mexico, with constitutions that should exclude slavery; this caused great uproar. The Territories in question had been acquired by the treaty under which the quar el with Mexico was settled; and it had been hoped and expected by the South that slavery would be extended there, as it had been in Texas. When the Root resolution came to a vote in the House, the Southern men were solidly against it; eight Northern Democrats were with those of the South; and all the Whigs from the North and all the Northern Democrats but the eight referred to voted for it. The resolution, however, got no farther than the Senate, where it was killed by the slavery majority.