During this controversy the State of Alabama was ardently in favor of the annexation of Texas; but it is certain that a majority of her people would not have favored disunion in the event of a refusal of Congress to admit that State. She was emphatic in her reply to the resolutions and conduct of Massachusetts. Her General Assembly decided unanimously that the abrogation of the twenty-first rule, by which Congress had refused to consider abolition petitions, was a hostile act on the part of the North, and that South Carolina had a right to protect the peace and happiness of her people, by sending back the agent of Massachusetts, who had been delegated as an attorney to look after the interest of negro sailors who might be citizens of Massachusetts. Still the Whig party of Alabama, and very many of the Democratic party, denied the right of a State to disunite itself from the Union except in the last resort, and they believed that the acceptance or rejection of Texas by Congress was not adequate cause for secession. The Democratic party, embracing the States-Rights party, and receiving a large coloring of its principles from that wing of its army, were charged by its opponents with being disunionists. The banner of "Texas or Disunion," which was being flaunted throughout the South, was almost invariably in Democratic hands, and hence the Whig party took advantage of the acts and words of the States-Rights men to stamp the Democratic as the Disunion party, and to claim for themselves the distinction of being the Union party. Nor was it possible for the Democrats to retaliate upon the Whigs by saying that if the disunion element at the South were the allies of the former, the disunion element at the North were the allies of

the latter, since it was a matter of record that the disunion sentiments of Massachusetts were expressed by both Whig and Democratic Legislatures, and that the Abolition press were intent upon breaking up the Whig party at the North as the great barrier in their way to disunion. If the Whig Governor of Massachusetts, in 1844, had embraced the Abolitionists, he only followed in the footsteps of the Democratic Governor of 1843. If the Northern Whigs voted to repeal the 21st rule, so did forty-seven Northern Democrats. And in the Presidential election which followed, the WHIGS could point triumphantly to the fact that Mr. POLK had been elected President by the Disunion element of the North. The candidacy of Mr. BIRNEY by the Anti-slavery party drew away enough votes in New York to have elected Mr. CLAY, just as the candidacy of Mr. VANBUREN in 1848 drew away enough votes to have elected General CASS. They could also point to the fact that Mr. BIRNEY, while Abolition candidate for the Presidency, was at the same time the regular Democratic nominee for the Michigan Legislature. The truth is, the Abolition party acted with either or neither of the regular parties, as its interests suggested, struggling to consolidate the anti-slavery sentiments of both Whigs and Democrats into a new geographical party which, while pretending the amelioration of the human race upon high humanitarian principles, was actually intending to revert the Government to the views, hopes and wishes of General HAMILTON and the Federalists.

When at last the Whig party of the North passed away, it is difficult to say whether the major portion, or what portion, of that party, went to form the new Republican party. If leading Whigs like SEWARD, GREE

LEY and LINCOLN were to be found within its ranks, so also among its leaders were to be found Democrats like BIRNEY, CHASE, HAMLIN and CAMERON. The Republican party professed to be built upon the ruins of both the Whig and Democratic parties of the North, and it would not be far from the mark to say that as many Whigs went into the Democratic ranks after the defeat of General SCOTT as into the Republican ranks; and that the latter party drew its followers as largely from the one old party as the other. However this may be, the Whigs of the South were not to be deterred from their zealous advocacy of the Union by the charge, on the one hand, that their brother Whigs of the North were allied with the Abolition party; nor by the charge, on the other hand, that the cry of "Union" was now become synonymous with that of "submission."

The Whigs of Alabama in their protest against the cry of "Texas or disunion,', which had thundered forth from the States-Rights men in response to the New England threat of "rejection of Texas or dis"union," were joined in sentiment and sympathy by hosts of Southern Democrats. The movement in New England took no positive form beyond words. The movement in South Carolina assumed an active form. A convention of the Southern States was called for, to meet at Nashville, to lay down the ultimatum. The resolutions of the South Carolina meeting met a response in several of the Southern States. A meeting held in Alabama suggested that the convention meet at Richmond. In reply to this suggestion, Mr. RITCHIE, editor of the Enquirer, said: "There is not a Dem"ocrat in Virginia who will encourage any plot to dis"solve the Union." The Richmond Whig, on the part

of the Whigs, repudiated the suggestion with indignation. Nashville was not behind Richmond in declining the honor of being the seat of the disunion convention. A meeting of her citizens protested against "the dese "cration of the soil of Tennessee, by having any con"vention held there to hatch treason against the "Union." The resolutions adopted by the Nashville meeting were those which marked the councils of the Whigs throughout the South. They condemned every attempt to bring into issue the preservation of the Union, or to bring its value into calculation. While entertaining for the people of South Carolina and for the States-Rights party everywhere, the most fraternal regard and the highest respect for the sincerity of their opinions, they lamented the exhibition by any portion of them of disloyalty to the Uniou, or a disposition to urge its dissolution with a view to annexation with Texas, and the construction of a Southwestern republic such as was contemplated by Aaron Burr.

The proposition for the Nashville convention met such powerful opposition that the hopes and prospects of the Whigs brightened throughout the South. The plan was discarded; Mr. Polk was elected; the tact and promptness of President TYLER hastened and secured the admission of Texas, to the confusion of New England and the satisfaction of the entire South.

The vote in the State of Alabama was for Mr. POLK, 36,740; for Mr. Clay, 26,084. The States-Rights party had grown in strength since 1840, and had taken two thousand voters from the Whigs and added them to their allies. Apart from this defection which was more than made good at the next Presidential election, the Whigs were as earnest and enthusiastic for

CLAY as they had been for HARRISON. The same old leaders who guided the party in 1840, were at its head in 1844.

The action of President Tyler in securing the admission of Texas in the last days of his Presidency, was followed by the war with Mexico and the ultimate capture of the capital of that nation. The first troops within the fortifications of Mexico were a South Carolina regiment, and the first flag that floated over the city was that of "the Palmettoes." General Quitman, the gallant son of Mississippi, was designated as the officer to receive the surrender of the city and to hoist the flag of the United States over a conquered nation.

The war with Mexico exerted a great influence in many respects upon the mind of the whole country. By extending the southwestern frontier it opened the slavery agitation anew, and more painfully than ever at the North; and at the South it aroused closer attention from those leading spirits who had participated in the war, to a more thorough consideration of what would be the condition of the Gulf States if the Free Soil party should succeed in accomplishing emancipation, and in bringing about that political equality which has invariably followed emancipation.

She

Mexico, in less than a quarter of a century, had followed all the routes that lead a republic to anarchy. Her weakness was not in her situation, her material resources, nor in her climate. All of these were admirable. possessed as magnificent a land as the God of nature ever smiled upon-a land which claimed the flora of both continents, and which reveled in every plant that could be grown on the habitable globe; grand forests of every description of timber, numberless droves of wild