Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/307

Rh party. Van Buren was their nominee for the presidency and Charles Francis Adams for the vice-presidency. Seward, Greeley and Thurlow Weed, on account of dislike to Van Buren, the anti-slavery candidate, supported Taylor with such earnestness and skill as to carry New York and thus make Taylor president. Webster took decided ground for Taylor and Clay came also to his support. The contest between Cass and Van Buren finally became in New York, in a very large degree, a struggle between Democratic factions in which the anti-slavery feeling was &quot;an instrumentality to be temporarily used and not a principle to be permanently upheld. This truth, stated by an eminent New England statesman, may be held in mind as evidence that the issues of 1848 did not honestly involve any principle on the slavery question. No moral, or economic, or social principle prevailed, but almost entirely the conflict occurred in New York State, especially on the lower fields of local politics. Van Buren, the nominee of the anti-slavery party, had no moral convictions on slavery. His record was such as to provoke the distrust of the anti- slavery Whigs. The Democrats of New York sustained him because he was the leader of a State faction in their party. The Barnburners against the Hunkers was the real issue, and the prize contended for was not freedom for the slave, but supremacy of a faction in the politics of a State. &quot;Truthful history will hold this to have been the chief object of the struggle with many who vowed allegiance at Buffalo to an anti-slavery creed strong enough to satisfy Joshua R. Giddings and Charles Sumner. With Cass defeated and the Marcy side of the party severely were ready to disavow their political escapade at Buffalo.&quot;

Analysis of the political issues and elections of 1848 clearly discloses the subordination of the great slavery question to the demands of personal antagonisms. Con-