%373.  The Free-soil Party.%—­As a President to succeed Polk was to be elected in 1848, the two great parties did their best to keep the troublesome question of slavery out of politics.  When the Whig convention met, it positively refused to make a platform, and nominated General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, and Millard Fillmore of New York, without a statement of party principles.

When the Democratic convention met, it made a long platform, but said nothing about slavery in the territories, and nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan and William O. Butler.

This refusal of the two parties to take a stand on the question of the hour so displeased many Whigs and Wilmot-Proviso Democrats that they held a convention at Buffalo, where the old Liberty party joined them, and together they formed the “Free-soil party.”  They nominated Martin Van Buren and Charles F. Adams, and in their platform made four important declarations: 

1.  That Congress has no more power to make a slave, than to make a king.

2.  That there must be “free soil for a free people.”

3.  “No more slave states, no more slave territories.”

4.  That we will inscribe on our banners “Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”

They also asked for cheaper postage, and for free grants of land to actual settlers.

The Whigs won the election.

%374.  Zachary Taylor, Twelfth President.%—­Taylor and Fillmore were inaugurated on March 5,1849, because the 4th came on Sunday.  Their election and the triumph of the Whigs now brought on a crisis in the question of slavery extension.

[Illustration:  %Zachary Taylor%]

%375.  State of Feeling in the South.%—­Southern men, both Whigs and Democrats, were convinced that an attempt would be made by Northern and Western men opposed to the extension of slavery to keep the new territory free soil.  Efforts were at once made to prevent this.  At a meeting of Southern members of Congress, an address written by Calhoun was adopted and signed, and published all over the country.  It

1.  Complained of the difficulty of capturing slaves when they escaped to the free states.

2.  Complained of the constant agitation of the slavery question by the abolitionists.

3.  And demanded that the territories should be open to slavery.

A little later, in 1849, the legislature of Virginia adopted resolutions setting forth: 

1.  That “the attempt to enforce the Wilmot Proviso” would rouse the people of Virginia to “determined resistance at all hazards and to the last extremity.”

2.  That the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia would be a direct attack on the institutions of the Southern States.

The Missouri legislature protested against the principle of the Wilmot Proviso, and instructed her senators and representatives to vote with the slaveholding states.  The Tennessee Democratic State Central Committee, in an address, declared that the encroachments of their Northern brethren had reached a point where forbearance ceased to be a virtue.  At a dinner to Senator Butler, in South Carolina, one of the toasts was “A Southern Confederacy.”