to
important historical facts in this connection. He knew that they
all abhorred slavery, and he could prove it, if it were desired,
from the testimony of Jefferson, Madison, and Washington themselves.
There was not an Abolitionist of the wildest character, the ex-
President affirmed, but might find in the writings of Jefferson,
at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and during his
whole life, down to its very last year, a justification for everything
their party says on the subject of slavery, and a description of
the horrors of slavery greater then they had power to express.

Henry A. Wise had been Mr. Clay's instrument in securing the
nomination of Mr. Tyler as Vice-President, and was the most
influential adviser at the White House. He was then in the prime
of his early manhood, tall, spare, and upright, with large,
lustreless, gray-blue eyes, high cheek bones, a large mouth, a
complexion saffron-hued, from his inordinate use of tobacco, and
coarse, long hair, brushed back from his low forehead. He was
brilliant in conversation, and when he addressed an audience he
was the incarnation of effective eloquence. No one has ever poured
forth in the Capitol of the United States such torrents of words,
such erratic flights of fancy, such blasting insinuations, such
solemn prayers, such blasphemous imprecations. Like Jeremiah of
old, he felt the dark shadow of coming events; and he regarded the
Yankees as the inevitable foes of the old Commonwealth of Virginia.
He had hoped that the caucus of Whig Representatives, at the
commencement of the session, would have nominated him for Speaker.
But John White, of Kentucky, had received the nomination, Mr. Clay
having urged his friends to vote for him, and Mr. Wise, goaded on
by disappointed ambition, sought revenge by endeavoring to destroy
the Whig party. He hoped to build on its ruins a new political
organization composed of Whigs and of such Democrats as might be
induced to enlist under the Tyler banner by a lavish distribution
of the "loaves and fishes." President Tyler's vanity made it easy
to secure him as a figure-head, and it was an easy task to array
him in direct opposition to the Clay Whigs, when John M. Botts
wrote an insulting letter, in which he recommended his political
associates to "head Captain Tyler, or die."

As the close of the extra session approached, the breach between
President Tyler and the Whig party was widened, and those who had
elec