ceded before any presidential nomination was made.
In June, 1848,' a Barnburner convention met at
Utica to organize resistance to the nomination of
Gen. Lewis Cass. who. in his ." Nicholson letter,"
had disavowed the "Wilmot proviso." To this
convention Van Buren addressed a letter, declin-
ing in advance a nomination for the presidency,
but pledging opposition to the new party shib-
boleth. In spite of his refusal, lie was nominated,
and this nomination was reaffirmed by the Free-
soil national convention of Buffalo, 9 Aug., 1848,
when Charles Francis Adams was associated with
him as candidate for the vice-presidency. In the
ensuing presidential election this ticket received
only 291,263 votes, but, as the result of the tri-
angular duel, Gen. Cass was defeated and Gen.
Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, was elected.
The precipitate annexation of Texas and its natu-
ral sequel, the war with Mexico, had brought their
Nemesis in the utter confusion of national poli-
tics. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but
his popular Democratic vote in Massachusetts,
Vermont, and New York exceeded that of Cass.
Henceforth he was simply a spectator in the politi-
cal arena. On all public questions save that of
slavery he remained an unfaltering Democrat, and
when it was fondly supposed that "the slavery
issue " had been forever exorcised by the com-
promise measures of 1850, he returned in full faith
and communion to his old party allegiance. In
1852 he began to write his " Inquiry into the
Origin and Course of Political Parties in the
United States" (New York, 1867), but it was never
finished and was published as a fragment. He
supported Franklin Pierce for the presidency in
1852, and, after spending two years in Europe, re-
turned in time to vote for James Buchanan in
1856. In 1860 he voted for the combined elec-
toral ticket against Lincoln, but when the civil
war began he gave to the administration his zeal-
ous support.
Van Buren was the target of political accusa- tion during his whole public career, but kept his private character free from reproach. In his do- mestic life he was as happy as he was exemplary. Always prudent in his habits and economical in his tastes, he none the less maintained in his style of living the easy state of a gentleman, whether in Eublic station at Albany and Washington, or at indenwald in his retirement. As a man of the world he was singularly affable and courteous, blending formal deference with natural dignity and genuine cordiality. Intensely partisan in his opinions and easily startled by the red rag of " Hamiltonian Federalism," he never carried the contentions of the political arena into the social sphere. The asperities of personal rivalry estranged him for a time from Calhoun, after the latter de- nounced him in the senate in 1837 as " a practical politician," with whom " justice, right, patriotism, etc., were mere vague phrases," but with his great Whig rival, Henry Clay, he maintained unbroken relations of friendship through all vicissitudes of political fortune. As a lawyer his rank was emi- nent. Though never rising in speech to the heights of oratory, he was equally fluent and facile before bench or jury, and equally felicitous whether ex- pounding the intricacies of fact or of law in a case. His manner was mild and insinuating, never de- clamatory. Without carrying his juridical studies into the realm of jurisprudence, he yet had a knowledge of law that fitted him to cope with the greatest advocates of the New York bar. The evi- dences of his legal learning and acute dialectics are still preserved in the New York reports of Johnson. Cowen, and Wendell. As a debater in the senate, he always went to the pith of questions, disdaining the arts of rhetoric. As a writer of political let- ters or of state papers, he carried diffusiveness to a fault, which sometimes hinted at a weakness in positions requiring so much defence. As a poli- tician he was masterful in leadership— so much so that, alike by friends and foes, he was credited with reducing its practices to a fine art. He was a mem- ber of the famous Albany regency which for so many years controlled the politics of New York, and was long popularly known as its " director." Fertile in the contrivance of means for the attain- ment of the public ends which he deemed desira- ble, he was called " the little magician," from the deftness of his touch in politics. But combining the statesman's foresight with the politician's tact, he showed his sagacity rather by seeking a majority for his views than by following the views of a ma- jority. Accused of " non-committalism." and with some show of reason in the early stages of his ca- reer, it was only as to men and minor measures of policy that he practised a prudent reticence. On questions of deeper principle — an elective judi- ciary, negro suffrage, universal suffrage, etc. — he boldly took the unpopular side. In a day of un- exampled political giddiness he stood firmly for his sub - treasury system against the doubts of friends, the assaults of enemies, and the combined Eressure of wealth and culture in the country, •ispensing patronage according to the received custom of his times, he yet maintained a higli standard of appointment. That he could rise above selfish considerations was shown when he promoted the elevation of Rufus King in 1820, or when he strove in 1838 to bring Washington Irving into his cabinet with small promise of gain to his doubt- ful political fortunes by such an "unpractical" appointment. As a statesman he had his com- pact fagot of opinions, to which he adhered in evil or good report. It might seem that the logic of his principles in 1848, combined with the subse- quent drift of events, should have landed him in the Free-soil party that Abraham Lincoln led to victory in 1860: but it is to be remembered that, while Van Bu re n,'s political opinions were in a fluid state, they had been cast in the doctrinal moulds of Jefferson, and had there taken rigid form and pressure. In the natural history of American party-formations he supposed that an enduring antithesis had always been discernible between the " money power " and the " farming interest " of the land. In his annual message of December, 1838, holding language very modern in its emphasis, he counted "the anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth " as among the strains that had been put upon our government. This is indeed the main thesis of his " Inquiry," a book which is more an apologia than a history. In that chronicle of his life-long antipathy to a splendid consolidated government, with its imperial judiciary, funding systems, high tariffs, and internal improvements—the whole surmounted by a powerful national bank as the "regulator" of finance and politics— he has left an outlined sketch of the only dramatic unity that can be found for his eventful career. Confessing in 1848 that he had gone further in concession to slavery than many of his friends at the north had approved, he satisfied himself with a formal protest against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, carried through congress while he was travelling in Europe, and against the policy of making the Dred Scott decision a rule of Democratic politics, though he thought the decision sound in point of technical law. With these reser-
