De Alexander

Fillmore expressed the fear that Whigs would mistake these great meetings for the election, and omit the necessary arrangements to get the vote out.

The Whigs, deeply and personally attached to Henry Clay, made mass-meetings as common and nearly as large as those held four years before.

Bryant's purpose was palpable and undoubted; but it soon afterward became part of his courage not to muffle plain truth from any spurious notions of party loyalty, and part of his glory not to fail to tell what people could not fail to see.

It was a rough road for many who knew they were consigning to one grave all hope of ending the slavery agitation, while they were resurrecting from another, bitter and dangerous controversies that had been laid to rest by the Missouri…

He had avowed opposition to the annexation of Texas, and, although his letter was not based upon hostility to slavery and the slave trade, it was positive, highly patriotic, and in a measure satisfactory to the anti-slavery Whigs.

Their shibboleth was hostility to a slave-holder, or one who would vote for a slave-holder.

It was evident that the Anti-Renters and Native Americans would draw, perhaps, equally from Whigs and Democrats; but the ranks of Abolitionists could be recruited only from the anti-slavery Whigs.

The party needed him, and, whatever the result to himself, he met it without complaint.

Such action places him in a very small group of American statesmen who have deliberately turned their backs upon high office rather than be untrue to friends.

It is doubtful if the latter could have been nominated President at Baltimore had he allowed the use of his name, but it was greatly to his credit, showing the sincerity of his friendship for Van Buren, that he spurned the suggestion and…

He was not without ambitions for himself; but they were always subordinate in him to the love of party and friends.

His inexhaustible patience, his active attention and industry, his genius in overcoming impediments of every kind, made him the peer of the ablest senator.

He could give high and grave counsel in great emergencies.

He was then a young lawyer of much promise, able and clear-headed, and, although never a showy debater, he possessed useful business talent, and an integrity that gave him high place among the men who guided his party.

He was kind and tolerant; the voice of personal anger was never heard from his lips; and Conservative and Radical held him in high respect.

The wiseacres in New York speak of him with compliment, 'this distinguished statesman;' yet they bring all their small artillery to bear upon him, and give notice that he is demolished.

There can be no doubt of his entire sincerity when he assured an enthusiastic Pennsylvania admirer, who had pronounced for him as a candidate in 1848, that whatever aspirations he may have had in the past, he now had no desire to be…

For years his friends, sharing the glory and profits of his continued triumphs, had been filling other ambitious men with envy and jealousy, until his overthrow seemed necessary to their success.

It seemed to Van Buren the result of political treachery; and it opened a chasm between him and his former southern friends that was destined to survive during the remaining eighteen years of his life.

Men become furiously and sincerely indignant; but the defeated ones must accept the results, or, Samson-like, destroy themselves in the destruction of their party.

With inexhaustible tenacity, force, and resource, he laboured to hold up to men's imagination and to burn into their understanding the shame and dishonour of adopting a rule, not only unsound and false in principle, but which, if adhered…

The eloquent New Yorker, his clear, tenor voice trembling with emotion, fought the battle on the highest moral grounds.

The annexation of Texas, however, was an aggressive measure, the first of the great movements for the extension of slavery since the Missouri Compromise; and it was important to the South to know in advance where the ex-President stood.

Forty years later, when he advocated the abolition of tolls, he found all his predictions more than verified.

What seemed to others to threaten disaster to the State, appealed to him as a great highway of commerce that would yield large revenues to the Commonwealth and abundantly bless its people.