A mixed man! His good was Taylor's evil.
Taylor's evil was his good.
Well, the native Americans had a ticket in the field; the Barn-burners
had a ticket in the field; and the Abolitionists. Mr. Van Buren was
running for President as a Barn-burner on a platform which declared
that there should be no more slave states, and no more slave territory.
Where was I to stand amid all this confusion and contradiction?
Naturally with Douglas. But I wanted to see what he had to say.
It was not long before he came to Chicago and our interesting
association was renewed. He had had something of a quarrel with Mr.
Polk, but it had been patched up. Before now he had proposed that the
line of the Missouri Compromise be extended to the Pacific Ocean. Was
he, too, becoming uncertain of mind? Sometimes I thought he was
overworked, that his energies were concerned with too many subjects. He
was making speeches; he was talking railroads; he had his own political
fortunes to watch. The Whigs were gaining ground. He scoffed at them. He
derided their hypocrisy. He laughed at their piebald character. Yet he
saw a cunning plot in this presentation to the electorate of men who
appealed so diversely: Taylor of the South, and of slavery; Fillmore of
the North, and of free soil, backed by the powerful mercantilism of the
North, like the bank and the tariff.
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