the great prize as at last surely within his grasp.  Mr. Choate, who was to lead the Webster delegates, went to Washington the day before the convention assembled.  He called on Mr. Webster and found him so filled with the belief that he should be nominated that it seemed cruel to undeceive him.  Mr. Choate, at all events, had not the heart for the task, and went back to Baltimore to lead the forlorn hope with gallant fidelity and with an eloquence as brilliant if not so grand as that of Mr. Webster himself.  A majority[1] of the convention divided their votes very unequally between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, the former receiving 133, the latter 29, on the first ballot, while General Scott had 131.  Forty-five ballots were taken, without any substantial change, and then General Scott began to increase his strength, and was nominated on the fifty-third ballot, receiving 159 votes.  Most of General Scott’s supporters were opposed to resolutions sustaining the compromise measures, while those who voted for Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster favored that policy.  General Scott owed his nomination to a compromise, which consisted in inserting in the platform a clause strongly approving Mr. Clay’s measures.  Mr. Webster expected the Fillmore delegates to come to him, an unlikely event when they were so much more numerous than his friends, and, moreover, they never showed the slightest inclination to do so.  They were chiefly from the South, and as they chose to consider Mr. Fillmore and not his secretary the representative of compromise, they reasonably enough expected the latter to give way.  The desperate stubbornness of Mr. Webster’s adherents resulted in the nomination of Scott.  It seemed hard that the Southern Whigs should have done so little for Mr. Webster after he had done and sacrificed so much to advance and defend their interests.  But the South was practical.  In the 7th of March speech they had got from Mr. Webster all they could expect or desire.  It was quite possible, in fact it was highly probable, that, once in the presidency, he could not be controlled or guided by the slave-power or by any other sectional influence.  Mr. Fillmore, inferior in every way to Mr. Webster in intellect, in force, in reputation, would give them a mild, safe administration and be easily influenced by the South.  Mr. Webster had served his turn, and the men whose cause he had advocated and whose interests he had protected cast him aside.

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Curtis says a “great majority continued to divide their votes between Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster.”  The highest number reached by the combined Webster and Fillmore votes, on any one ballot, was 162, three more than was received on the last ballot by General Scott, who, Mr. Curtis correctly says, obtained only a “few votes more than the necessary majority.”]