TAYLOR 



5720 



TAYLOR 



chosen, but he was the strongest. With him as 

 its candidate the Whigs won their second and 

 last victory in a Presidential election. Taylor 

 received 163 electoral votes to 127 votes for 

 Lewis Cass, the Democratic candidate. The 

 popular vote was close: 1,360,101 for Taylor 

 to 1,220,544 for Cass. Van Buren, the Free- 

 Soil candidate, received 291,263 popular votes, 

 but no electoral votes. The campaign was 



fought without much enthusiasm, and practi- 

 cally without an issue. Neither of the two 

 great parties made an effort to rally the people 

 to the defense of any important principle. As 

 one historian remarks, somewhat sarcastically, 

 practically the only thing it decided was that 

 a Whig general should be made President be- 

 cause he had done effective work in carrying 

 on a Democratic war. 



The Administration of Zachary Taylor 



As President, Taylor had no friends to re- 

 ward and no enemies to punish. He chose for 

 his Cabinet men of national reputation, not 

 one of whom was personally known to him. 

 All the members of his Cabinet were lawyers, 

 and all had served either in the Senate or in 

 the House of Representatives. John M. Clay- 

 ton, of Delaware, as Secretary of State, and 

 Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, as Attorney- 

 General, were the best known of the group. 



Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The settlement of 

 the Oregon question and the acquisition of 



ELECTION MAP OF 1848 



States in black gave their electoral votes to 

 Lewis Cass, Democrat ; shaded states voted for 

 Taylor, Whig. White area south of Canada and 

 north of Mexico was unorganized territory. 



California naturally gave a new importance to 

 the old plan of a water route across the Isth- 

 mus of Panama. In 1849 Nicaragua granted 

 to a company of United States capitalists a 

 concession for an isthmian canal, on condition 

 that the United States should guarantee the 

 neutrality of the canal and also the sovereignty 

 of Nicaragua over the territory along its course. 

 Then, in order to forestall British interference, 

 the United States obtained the cession of the 



island of Tigre, in the Gulf of Fonseca, on the 

 Pacific side from Honduras. This gulf was the 

 'probable Pacific outlet of the canal, but Great. 

 Britain already controlled the Atlantic end. 



This complication made necessary a readjust- 

 ment of the Anglo-American relations, and re- 

 sulted in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850. 

 The treaty was signed on April 18, and was 

 ratified on July 5. By this agreement the two 

 nations agreed to promote a canal across Nica- 

 ragua, and that neither would "ever obtain or 

 maintain for itself any exclusive control over 

 the said ship canal" or "assume or exercise any 

 dominion . . . over any part of Central 

 America." The "neutrality and security" of 

 the canal was guaranteed so long as there 

 should be no "unfair discriminations" or "op- 

 pressive exactions" in its management. 



The Compromise of 1850. One of President 

 Taylor's first acts was to send agents to Cali- 

 fornia and New Mexico with instructions to 

 urge the people of those territories to frame 

 constitutions and apply for admission to the 

 Union as states. But before the agents reached 

 their destination, events had already moved in 

 the desired direction. A convention was held 

 in California in September, 1849, and a consti- 

 tution was adopted which prohibited slavery. 

 In Taylor's annual message, sent to Congress 

 in December, there was reference to this move- 

 ment in California to organize a state govern- 

 ment, and to the prospect of similar action in 

 New" Mexico. 



The first session of the Thirty-First Congress, 

 in December, 1849, was remarkable for a fierce 

 struggle over the Speakership, the difficulty 

 lying in the fact that a small group of Free- 

 Soilers held the balance of power and refused 

 to vote either for the Whig or the Democratic 

 candidate. In the course of this contest the 

 fiercest sectional antagonisms were stirred up, 

 and conservative men everywhere were becom- 

 ing alarmed for the safety of the Union. It was 

 then that Robert Toombs of Georgia said: 



