With the enactment of the Compromise bills, the preparations for the campaign of 1852 were practically concluded. Although the Fugitive Slave law excited intense feeling, the Compromise legislation as a whole was generally accepted throughout the country. Conservative influences everywhere were exercised toward discouraging further political differences about slavery; and for more than three years no new issue on the subject arose in Congress.

Democratic Party

National convention held in Baltimore, June 1-5, 1852; chairman, John W. Davis, of Indiana. The two-thirds rule was again adopted, a large majority being in its favor.

There was a very spirited, but not bitter, contest for the Presidential nomination. The principal candidates on the first ballot were Lewis Cass, of Michigan, 116 votes; James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, 93; Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, 20; and William L. Marcy, of New York, 27. During the struggle each of these four candidates at some stage had the lead, but not sufficiently to secure even a majority. On the thirty-fifth ballot the name of Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, for the first time appeared among those voted for, 15 votes being cast for him. He was nominated almost unanimously on the forty-ninth ballot.

William R. King, of Alabama, was nominated for Vice-President by a unanimous vote on the second ballot.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Platform:

Resolutions 1 to 7, inclusive, were those having the same numbers in the platform of 1848.

"8. Resolved, That it is the duty of every branch of the government to enforce and practice the most rigid economy in conducting our public affairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raised than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government and for the gradual but certain extinction of the public debt.

"9. Resolved, That Congress has no power to charter a national bank; that we believe such an institution one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of a concentrated money power and above the laws and the will of the people; and that the results of Democratic legislation in this and all other financial measures upon which issues have been made between the two political parties of the country have demonstrated to candid and practical men of all parties their soundness, safety, and utility in all business pursuits.

"10. Resolved, That the separation of the moneys of the government from banking institutions is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the government and the rights of the people.

"11. Resolved, That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and sanctioned in the Constitution, which make ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith; and every attempt to abridge the privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of the soil among us ought to be resisted with the same spirit that swept the Alien and Sedition laws from our statute-book.

"12. Resolved, That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others made to

induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.

"13. Resolved, That the foregoing proposition covers, and is intended to embrace, the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and therefore the Democratic party of the Union, standing on this national platform, will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the 'Compromise' measures settled by the last Congress-the 'act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor' included; which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the Constitution, cannot, with fidelity thereto, be repealed nor so changed as to destroy or impair its efficiency.

"14. Resolved, That the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.

"15. Resolved, That the proceeds of the public lands ought to be sacredly applied to the national object specified in the Constitution; and that we are opposed to any law for the distribution of such proceeds among the States as alike inexpedient in policy and repugnant to the Constitution.

"16. Resolved, That we are decidedly opposed to taking from the President the qualified veto power, by which he is enabled, under restrictions and responsibilities amply sufficient to guard the public interests, to suspend the passage of a bill whose merits cannot secure the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, until the judgment of the people can be obtained thereon, and which has saved the American people from the corrupt and tyrannical domination of the Bank of the United States, and from a corrupting system of general internal improvements.

"17. Resolved, That the Democratic party will faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, and in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in 1799; that it adopts those principles as con

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

stituting one of the main foundations of its political creed, and is resolved to carry them out in their obvious meaning and import.

"18. Resolved, That the war with Mexico, upon all the principles of patriotism and the law of nations, was a just and necessary war on our part, in which no American citizen should have shown himself opposed to his country, and neither morally nor physically, by word or deed, have given aid and comfort to the enemy.

"19. Resolved, That we rejoice at the restoration of friendly relations with our sister republic of Mexico, and earnestly desire for her all the blessings and the prosperity which we enjoy under republican institutions; and we congratulate the American people on the results of that war, which have so manifestly justified the policy and conduct of the Democratic party and insured to the United States indemnity for the past and security for the future.

"20. Resolved, That in view of the condition of popular institutions in the old world a high and sacred duty is devolved, with increased responsibility, upon the Democracy of this country, as the party of the people, to uphold and maintain the rights of every State, and thereby the Union of States, and to sustain and advance among them constitutional liberty by continuing to resist all monopolies and exclusive legislation for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, and by a vigilant and constant adherence to those principles and compromises of the Constitution which are broad enough and strong enough to embrace and uphold the Union as it was, the Union as it is, and the Union as it shall be in the full expansion of the energies and capacity of this great and progressive people."

The important resolutions were 12, 13, 14, 17, and 20, which, taken together, constituted the matured Democratic doctrine on the slavery issues as developed up to that time and the essential related matters of national powers and State rights. They expressed beyond the possibility of doubt the complete and final determination of the party to abide by the early theories, principles, and decisions of conservatism and

reservations for and on behalf of the States individually-which meant, so far as slavery was concerned, an entire toleration of the institution and resistance to agitations or measures against it as dangerous to the Union because of the irreconcilable differences that would result. As yet the Democratic party did not go to the length of defining its position regarding slavery extension. That subject was not at issue in the campaign, except as it was collateral to the unqualified approbation of the Compromise acts.

Whig Party

National convention held in Baltimore, June 16-19, 1852; chairman, John G. Chapman, of Maryland.

President Fillmore was a candidate for renomination, and was warmly supported by nearly all the southern delegates, and by some from the north who, regarding his administration as satisfactory to the country and the opposition to him by the anti-slavery Whigs as unjust, felt that the party could not consistently refuse him its endorsement. Until toward the end of the protracted balloting his vote fell off but little, and even at the conclusion it showed no such collapse as frequently happens in a national convention when the favorite at the start goes down to defeat. His failure to be nominated was due to the reluctant but strong conviction of the majority of the convention that he would not be able to counteract the prejudice excited by his signature of the Fugitive Slave bill. Vote on the first ballot:-Fillmore, 133; General Winfield Scott, of New Jersey, 131; Daniel Webster,