THE NOMINATION OF JAMES K. POLK.

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the delegates had received instructions to vote for Martin Van Buren for President; but as he was also opposed to the annexation of Texas, which was a favorite measure with many portions of the South, and desired by large classes in the North, Mr. Van Buren was compelled, for the harmony of the party, during the progress of the convention, to authorize the withdrawal of his name if it should be necessary.

On the first ballot by the convention, for the nomination of a candidate for President, Mr, Van Buren received 146 votes, General Cass, 83; Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky, 24; James Calhoun, 6; James Buchanan, 4; Levy Woodbury, 2; Stewart, 1; thus showing a decided majority in favor of Mr. Van Buren. But the convention, after a long and spirited debate, adopted the "two-thirds rule," which had governed on similar occasion, thereby requiring one hundred and seventy-eight votes necessary for a choice. On the second ballot, the vote was as follows: Van Buren, 127; Cass, 94; Johnson, 33; Buchanan, 9; Calhoun, 1; Woodburn, 1; Stewart, 1. Third ballot, Van Buren, 121; Cass, 92; Johnson, 38; Buchanan, 11; Calhoun, 2; Woodbury, 2. Fourth: Van Buren, 111; Cass, 105; Buchanan, 32; Johnson, 17. Fifth Cass, 107; Van Buren, 103; Johnson, 29; Buchanan, 20. Sixth: Cass, 116; Van Buren, 101; Buchanan, 25; Johnson, 23. Seventh: Cass, 123; Van Buren, 99; Buchanan, 22; Johnson, 21. Eighth: Cass, 114; Van Buren, 104; Polk, 44. The delegation from Virginia and New York then retired for consultation. On their return, Mr. Roane, of Virginia, stated that "the affection his State had for Mr. Van Buren, the deep grief with which she witnessed the proceedings of the convention, her desire to arrest the progress of Mr. Clay to the great chair of the Union, induced his delegates to cast their votes for Mr. Polk. Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, then of New York, made the same announcement in behalf of the delegates from his State with the exception of one who would vote blank, and at the same time stated that he had in his possession a letter from Mr. Van Buren, authorizing him to withdraw his name from the convention at any moment such a step might be necessary to its harmonious action, and coming to the hall that morning he had taken the advice of Pennsylvania and other States on the subject, and with their consent and advice he would now withdraw Mr. Van Buren's name and thus relieve his friends from further difficulty and embarrassment. He then eulogized James K. Polk, and cast the vote of New York for him with the exception before stated. On the ninth ballot, the vote was unanimous for Mr. Polk. Silas Wright, of New York, United States Senator, was unanimously nominated for vice-president. Mr. Wright, then at Washington, having declined the nomination, the convention then proceeded to ballot for a candidate for the vice-presidency. On the first ballot, Governor Fairfield, of Maine, received 107; Mr. Woodbury, of New Hampshire, 44; Governor Cass, of Michigan, 39; Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, 26; Commodore Stewart, of Pennsylvania, 23; G. M. Dallas, of Philadelphia, 13; Governor Marcy, of New York, 5; no choice. On the second ballot, Gov

ernor Fairfield received 30, Mr. Woodbury 6, and G. M. Dallas, 220, and the nomination.

Mr. Benton says: "The nomination was a surprise and a marvel to the country. No voice in favor of it had been heard; no visible sign in the political horizon had announced it." To the friends of Mr. Van Buren, it was a painful disappointment. They acquiesced, however, in the nomination. The Tyler National Convention, composed of delegates from various parts of the Union, without restriction as to number from any State or district, principally office-holders and political adventurers, assembled at Baltimore on the same day of the Democratic Convention. Judge White, of Connecticut, was chosen president of the convention with a large number of vice-presidents and secretaries. Mr. John Tyler was unanimously nominated as a candidate for election to the presidency. He accepted the nomination, but his chances of election being hopeless, he yielded in August in favor of Polk and Dallas, and withdrew his name from the presidential canvass.

The political campaign was conducted with much bitterness and angry feeling. In Maryland the contest began with the election of governor and members of the Legislature, and was very animated. Both parties appeared to look upon the result at the governor's election as determining the vote of the State at the ensuing presidential election-and such was the case. And besides, the great contest which was then raging throughout the country was supposed to be the last that would ever be waged under the leadership of the two great political parties. There were also other and special circumstances which gave this contest more than usual heat.

The constitutional term for which the clerks of the courts and registers of wills were appointed (or rather continued, for they were life offices before the amendments to the Constitution), expired with the currrent year, and these lucrative offices were to be filled by the new governor.

The result of the election in Baltimore for governor, excited general surprise. In 1843 the whigs carried the city for James O. Law, for mayor, by three hundred and two majority, and for several days preceding the governor's election the impression was general that the whigs would again carry the city; and this also appeared to be the opinion of the democrats. But the aggregate vote confounded all anticipation, as the democrats carried the city by twelve hundred and twenty-two majority for James Carroll, for governor, against Thomas G. Pratt, the whig candidate. Mr. Pratt, however, carried the State by a majority of five hundred and fortyeight. In the presidential election, William M. Gaither, William Price, James B. Ricaud, C. K. Stewart, Thomas S. Alexander, A. W. Bradford, H. E. Wright and Samuel Hambleton, the whig electors, carried the State for Mr. Clay by a majority of three thousand two hundred and eighty-two, being a gain of two thousand seven hundred and thirty-four since the governor's election. Of the electoral votes Messrs. Polk and Dallas received one hundred and seventy; Messrs. Clay and Frelinghuysen one hundred and five.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

WE have already remarked that upon none of the American States has nature been more lavish of her bounties than upon Maryland. Pre-eminent among her advantages, is her commanding geographical position, lying on both sides of the magnificent Chesapeake Bay, for nearly its whole length, her coasts indented with countless creeks, inlets and rivers; while she incloses the head-waters of that noble estuary, and the mouth of the mighty Susquehannah, to whose volume of waters five great streams contribute, draining a country extending on either hand for about two hundred miles, during their course of four hundred and fifty miles from the mountain regions of central New York and Pennsylvania, and bearing to the Chesapeake the wealth of three States. The western regions yield to none in the value and abundance of their mineral products, which indeed are distributed with profuse variety throughout all the upper part of the State.

Near Baltimore, are found the finest brick and excellent pottery clays, quarries of gneiss, of fine limestone, and of iron ore. Going westward, still in Baltimore County, we meet deposits of metamorphic limestone, serpentine, and occasional out-croppings of granite. Carroll and Frederick Counties yield soapstone and roofing slate; while in Washington and part of Frederick Counties are the famous limestone soils so admirably adapted to the growth of wheat. Alleghany County, west of Cumberland, is rich in inexhaustible mines of bituminous coal and iron.

The deep indentation of the Chesapeake Bay has furnished a site for a great and opulent port, nearer to the great rivers and valleys of the West, than any other Atlantic city, and leading to them by easy and direct routes of transportation, which touch or traverse the most productive regions of the State. To these advantages are added a mild, and for the most part, healthful climate, exempt from the torrid and exhausting summers of the South, and the long and rigorous winters of the North. It has been to avail themselves to the full of these great natural advantages that the people of Maryland have undertaken and carried on a system of internal improvements more gigantic, in proportion to population, than those of any other State in the Union.

At an early period in the history of this country, the dangerous policy of unlimited internal improvement by the federal government-" to set apart and pledge certain funds for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water-courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give

security to internal commerce among the several States; and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions of the common defence," had attracted public attention, and it had received its death-blow at the hands of President Jackson, in 1832, by his veto of the Maysville Road Bill. Unfortunately for Maryland, this opinion, which had been confirmed by the general approval of the country, was not shared by our State government. It refused to abandon altogether an extravagant system of roads and canals that could not be perfected in a country where the distances are so great and the population relatively so sparse as the United States.

Measures were taken to place Maryland in the van of those States ambitious of rivalling Great Britain, Holland and other countries where the population was crowded and dense, and where their vast numbers justified large expenditures to facilitate intercourse. In the short space of seven years succeeding the veto of President Jackson, our State debt was augmented more than twelve millions of dollars. Within the same period, other roads and canals were projected, until the little State of Maryland, having ten thousand square miles of territory, and three hundred and eighteen thousand one hundred and ninety-four white inhabitants was staggering under a load of undertakings that would have taxed the financial resources of the whole kingdom of Great Britain.

We were, at one and the same time, projecting or constructing a railroad from Baltimore to Washington, a railroad from Baltimore to New York, a railroad on the Eastern Shore, a railroad from Baltimore to the Ohio, and a magnificent canal from tide-water on the Potomac to the Ohio River. If the people of the State had then foreseen the distresses which these works would. bring upon them, they would have risen in wrath and swept from power all their promoters; or, if the purchasers of Maryland bonds had then understood, as they did afterwards, the financial measures devised to ensure the punctual payment of interest promised upon the face of them, speculators and their speculations must have been arrested; for no one would have been hardy enough to invest his capital in securities for the payment of the interest on which no suitable means had been provided. Our citizens had not the remotest idea that taxes were ever to be the result of these debts, nor was any allusion to that contingency permitted. On the contrary, the vast revenues to be derived from these works to enrich the State were the sole theme of newspaper discussion, stump-oratory, and the estimate of contractors and jobbers-a vast army, eager to obtain the money that the people were urged to vote.

Such was the indignation of many, when first awakened to a true concep tion of the whole subject, that a strong disposition prevailed to deny all obligations to pay the debt, on account of the alleged absence of constitutional power in the Legislature to contract it. In support of this opinion, the thirteenth article of the Bill of Rights was mainly relied upon, which declared that "every person in the State ought to contribute his proportion of the public taxes for the support of the government, according to its actual

THE UNITED STATES BANK.

205 worth in real and personal property." And it was contended that in accordance with this article taxes could only be levied "for the support of government," engaged in legitimate objects; and it was denied that the construction of roads and canals was one of the purposes for which the government had been organized. This objection, however, was contrary to the practice of our early legislators; for our statute books were filled with laws authorizing the opening and establishing of roads; building bridges. and conferring authority on the corporate authorities of cities to open, pave and otherwise improve streets, and to levy on the assessable property within their respective jurisdictions, taxes to defray the expense attendent upon the exercise of the powers thus granted.'

Nothing, too, it seems, contributed to the embarrassments of the people, than the absorbing character of the presidential elections. During the first term of General Jackson's administration, when the two great parties of the country were organized on great conflicting measures of public policy, Maryland was free from debt, and there was no just reason to apprehend that any contingency could arise which would endanger the fair fame and honor of the State. From that time to 1847, the people were engaged in an animated and unceasing contest in regard to the tariff, the currency and the disposition of the public lands; and so permitted the management of their more. important and more immediate concerns to glide imperceptibly into the direction of a few experimenting and speculating individuals, whose zeal and enthusiasm, directed, it is true, to a commendable object, led to all the public evils of which the people of Maryland, at the time of which we are writing, justly complained.

President Jackson, who was conversant with all the questions of currency which had effected the security of property in this country from the days of the Revolution, felt it to be his duty, when the bill from Congress re-chartering the United States Bank came before him in 1832, to interpose his constitutional veto. This institution which seems to have been the fruit of all evil in relation to the financial affairs of the country, exercised a power over the actual currency of this country, nearly analogous to that of the Bank of England over the currency of the British Empire. It was chartered by Congress in April, 1816, and went into operation January, 1817. Its charter was to continue until March 4th, 1836, its capital to be $35,000,000, of which the United States subscribed $7,000,000 in a five per cent stock, and the remaining $28,000,000 was to be subscribed for by individuals-onefourth in gold and silver, and three-fourths in the funded debt of the United States. The debts of the bank, in excess of its deposits were not to exceed $35,000,000. The bank was to pay a bonus of $1,500,000 and transact the financial business of the government free of charge. In return it received the public funds on deposit, and nothing was to be taken for public dues

1 Governor Thomas' Message, 1843.