n Buren would have a plurality over both Cass and Taylor
in the State of New York. The management of the popular canvass
was intrusted to Democratic partisans of the Silas Wright school,
and this fact had a significant and unexpected influence upon the
minds of anti-slavery Whigs.

In the first flush of the excitement, the supporters of the regular
Democratic nominee were not alarmed. They argued, not illogically,
that the Free-soil ticket would draw more largely from the Whigs
than from the Democrats, and thus very probably injure Taylor more
than Cass. But in a few weeks this hope was dispelled. The Whigs
of the country had been engaged for a long period in an earnest
political warfare against Mr. Van Buren. In New York the contest
had been personal and acrimonious to the last degree, and ordinary
human nature could hardly be expected the bury at once the grievances
and resentments of a generation. Nor did the Whigs confide in the
sincerity of Mr. Van Buren's anti-slavery conversion. His repentance
was late, and even the most charitable suspected that his desire
to punish Cass had entered largely into the motives which suddenly
aroused him to the evils of slavery after forty years of quiet
acquiescence in all the demands of the South. Mr. Seward, who
possessed the unbounded confidence of the anti-slavery men of New
York, led a most earnest canvass in favor of General Taylor, and
was especially successful in influencing Whigs against Van Buren.
In this he was aided by the organizing skill of Thurlow Weed, and
by the editorial power of Horace Greeley. Perhaps in no other
National election did three men so completely control the result.
They gave the vote of New York to General Taylor, and made him
President of the United States.

MR. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD SPEECH.

At an opportune moment for the success of the Whigs, Mr. Webster
decided to support General Taylor. He thoroughly distrusted Cass,
--not in point of integrity, but of discretion and sound judgment
as a statesman. He had rebuked Cass severely in a diplomatic
correspondence touching the Treaty of Washington, when he was
Secretary of State and Cass minister to France. The impression
then derived had convinced him that the Democratic candidate was
not the man whom a Whig could desire to see in the Presidential
chair. In Mr. Van Buren's anti-slavery professions, Mr. Webster
had no confidence. He said pleas