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306 Thus both parties avoided taking any clear position on the one great question which most concerned the future of the Republic. The Democratic Convention had rejected strong pro-slavery resolutions in order to save its chances at the North. The Whig Convention had shouted down anti-slavery resolutions to save its chances in the South. The Democratic party, which contained the bulk of the pro-slavery element, tried to deceive the North by the nomination of a Northern man with Southern principles. The Whig party, whose ruling tendencies were unfriendly to slavery, tried to deceive the South by silencing the anti-slavery sentiment for the moment, and by nominating a Southern man who had not professed any principles at all.

Clay was deeply mortified. Some of his friends had cruelly deceived him, especially those who had promised him the enthusiastic support of Ohio. Neither had he thought it possible that in a crisis the vote of the delegates from Kentucky would fail him. He felt keenly that, in a defeat in which he had been abandoned by his own state, his prestige had suffered. But more than that. The party which he had built up, of which he had been proud, and which had always professed to be proud of him, had thrown him aside for a man who had only at the eleventh hour called himself a Whig, and who did not profess to know anything of Whig principles. He saw in the conduct of his party a confession of moral bankruptcy. He could not per-