FROM JACKSON TO FILLMORE- 1832-1851 53 



him. Certain it is that no party ever found itself in a 

 worse position than did the Whigs, when their Vice-Presi- 

 dent came into the Chief Magistracy ; and equally certain 

 is it that this position was the richly earned punishment 

 of their own folly. 



I have several times since had occasion to note the care- 

 lessness of National and State conventions in nominating 

 a candidate for the second place upon the ticket whether 

 Vice-President or Lieutenant-Governor. It would seem 

 that the question of questions the nomination to the 

 first office having been settled, there comes a sort of 

 collapse in these great popular assemblies, and that then, 

 for the second office, it is very often anybody's race and 

 mainly a matter of chance. In this way alone can be ex- 

 plained several nominations which have been made to 

 second offices, and above all, that of John Tyler. As a 

 matter of fact, he was not commended to the Whig party 

 on any solid grounds. His whole political life had shown 

 him an opponent of their main ideas ; he was, in fact, a 

 Southern doctrinaire, and frequently suffered from acute 

 attacks of that very troublesome political disease, Vir- 

 ginia metaphysics. As President he attempted to enforce 

 his doctrines, and when Whig leaders, and above all 

 Henry Clay attempted, not only to resist, but to crush him, 

 he asserted his dignity at the cost of his party, and finally 

 tried that which other accidental Presidents have since 

 tried with no better success, namely, to build up a party 

 of his own by a new distribution of offices. Never was a 

 greater failure. Mr. Tyler was dropped by both parties 

 and disappeared from American political life forever. 

 I can now see that he was a man obedient to his convic- 

 tions of duty, such as they were, and in revolt against 

 attempts of Whig leaders to humiliate him; but then, to 

 my youthful mind, he appeared the very incarnation of 

 evil. 



My next recollections are of the campaign of 1844. 

 Again the Whig party took courage, and having, as a boy 

 of twelve years, acquired more earnest ideas regarding 



