Studies in American History 
437 
four states, came into the Union under Democratic sponsor- 
ship. 
The three centers of political interest from the election of 
Polk to that of Taylor were Texas and Oregon, the Mexican 
War, and the extension of slavery. Texas annexation was 
fought by the Whigs to the time it was an accomplished fact. 
Oregon claims were not so flatly opposed, but an honorable 
settlement was advocated. At the beginning of the Mexican 
War the Whigs could do little but accept As Polk’s 
“Little War” progressed Whig opposition became outspoken. 
The Whigs felt that part of the Democratic war plans dealt 
with president-making and some foresaw the slavery struggle 
and its consequences.^'^ But with the possibility of a war 
candidate of their own, the Whigs were careful to distinguish 
between the administration and the soldiers, and bolstered up 
their own war record while finding fault with Democratic 
stay-at-home politicians. Both parties were hard pressed for 
candidates. Polk’s proslavery sentiments, his blundering 
war policies, and his own desires worked against re-election. 
But the Whigs needed more than negative campaign material. 
Their inclination toward Taylor, a slave-owner, placed them 
in an embarrassing position. Taylor was unpopular in 
Indiana due to his criticism of the Indiana volunteers in his 
Buena Vista report. In Ohio the Western Reserve refused the 
slaveholding nominee, and, at the Whig national convention, 
the Ohio delegates voted for Scott on all four ballots. The 
press of the state was divided as was that of Illinois. 
Cass was not popular in the Northwest; his platform was 
attacked as proslavery, and his military record was made to 
look ridiculous.^® He had in addition the handicap of Polk’s 
76 “The first care is to meet the emergency broug'ht about by the government ; to 
prosecute this war with unanimity and vigor, that it may be the sooner ended, yet 
not to suffer it to absorb all our attention, so as to forget the account which we have 
to settle with those who have wantonly brought it upon the country.” 
“Sir, the only ground of safety, the only ground which will secure the peace and 
harmony of the country, the welfare and prosperity of the Union, is to keep the ter- 
ritory, with all the distracting questions connected with it, out of the Union.” Caleb 
B. Smith of Indiana in speech in Congress. Indiana State Journal, February 12, 1847. 
The old story of Cass having run his swoi’d into a stump at Hull’s surrender was 
retold. “General Cass ran his sword into a stump and Colonel Weller ran his nose 
into a brandy bottle.” Ohio State Journal copied in Campaign Statesman (a campaign 
paper issued from the Ohio Statesman office, Columbus, Ohio), September 2, 1848. 
Editor John Defrees of the Indiana State Journal, perhaps the most brilliant Whig 
editor in the Northwest, showered upon Cass his outbursts. “Cass, cockade federalist 
of olden time, a defamer of Thomas Jefferson, a courtier of Louis Philippe, enemy to 
western improvements, advocate of the extension of slavery over free territory acquired 
