convention for revising the state constitution of New York, he had been in favor of allowing the blacks to vote. The planter, or supposed planter, adopted, in the course of the conversation, a non-committal course, which, according to the criticisms made on Mr Van Buren's character, might almost have rivalled the adroitness of that gentleman himself. The nomination of Mr Richard M. Johnson for the vice-presidency seemed to give still less satisfaction; indeed, it was mentioned that a portion of the members of the convention by which it was made had been greatly dissatisfied at it, and had refused to give it their support. Some hints that were dropped excited my curiosity as to the grounds of their opposition, and I followed up the matter by a good many questions. The opposition to Mr Johnson was made, I was told, by the delegation from Virginia. They did not object to the political orthodoxy of Mr Johnson, who, indeed, was a democrat of the first water, — to say the truth, so the New York editor told me, considerably too much of a democrat to suit the tastes of the Virginians. He was not respectable enough for them; quite too vulgar in his tastes and habits; and they had insisted upon nominating a certain Mr Rives in his place.
Upon my inquiring more specifically in what the vulgarity of Mr Johnson consisted, it came out that he entertained in his house a number of black and brown wives, and was the father of a family of colored children.
Very much to the surprise of my two northern fellow-passengers, who exhausted all their rhetoric in condemnation of Mr Johnson's coarseness and vulgarity, — a practical amalgamator for vice-president! — the supposed planter avowed himself a supporter of the Van Buren-Johnson nomination; and he undertook to offer some apologies for the latter gentleman.
"The horror of you northern people," he said, nodding his head to the Boston cotton broker, "and the hue and cry you have lately raised on the subject of amalgamation and the intermixture of the races, may
