, for
which position he did not think he possessed the requisite
qualifications, he would do his best. He discussed nothing, laid
down no principles, and gave no indications of the course he would
pursue. Thurlow Weed was not satisfied with this letter, and sent
the draft of another one, more explicit, and indorsed by Mr.
Fillmore. This General Taylor had copied, and signed it as a letter
addressed to his kinsman, Captain Allison. In it he pledged himself
fully to Whig principles, and it was made the basis of an effective
campaign.

Mr. Webster, who at first denounced the nomination as one "not fit
to be made," was induced, by the payment of a considerable sum of
money, to make a speech in favor of the ticket. Nathaniel P. Willis
wrote a stirring campaign song, and at the request of Thurlow Weed,
the writer of these reminiscences wrote a campaign life of the
General, large editions of which were published at Boston and at
Albany for gratuitous distribution. It ignored the General's views
on the anti-slavery question. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts
Abolitionists and ultra-Webster men, with the Barn-burner wing of
the Democratic party in New York, and several other disaffected
factions, met in convention at Buffalo. They there nominated Martin
Van Buren for President and Mr. Charles Francis Adams for Vice-
President, and adopted as a motto, "Free Speech, Free Soil, Free
Labor, and Free Men." This party attracted enough votes from the
Democratic ticket in the State of New York to secure the triumph
of the Whigs, and Martin Van Buren, who had been defeated by the
Southern Democrats, had in return the satisfaction of effecting
their defeat.

Mr. Calhoun, soured by his successive failures, but not instructed
by them, sought revenge. "The last days of Mr. Polk's Administration,"
says Colonel Benton, "were witness to an ominous movement, nothing
less than nightly meetings of large numbers of members from the
slave States to consider the state of things between the North and
the South, to show the aggressions and encroachments (as they were
called) of the former upon the latter, to show the incompatibility
of their union, and to devise measures for the defense and protection
of the South."

[Facsimile]
H. S. Foote
HENRY STUART FOOTE was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, September
20th, 1800; commenced the practice of law at Tuscumbia, Alabama,
and removed to Mississippi; was United States Senator, 1847-1852;
w