The new lands of the West brought fresh troubles to Douglas and desperate struggles to the South.  The emigration of revolutionaries from Europe added to the enemies of the slave system.  It was hard for them to understand that the Declaration of Independence did not include the negro.

This was the state of affairs in the campaign of 1848.  The Democrats had nominated Mr. Cass, of Michigan, for President, and presented him to the people on a platform which placed the responsibility for the Mexican War upon the aggressions of Mexico; it congratulated the American soldiers of that war for having crowned themselves with imperishable glory; it tendered to the Republic of France fraternal salutations upon the success of republican principles, upon the recognition by the French of the inherent right of the people in their sovereign capacity to make and amend their forms of government.  It spoke for American Democracy, a sense of the sacred duty, by reason of these popular triumphs abroad, to advance constitutional liberty, to resist monopolies.  It advocated a constant adherence to the principles and compromises of the Constitution.  It praised the administration of Mr. Polk for repealing the tariff of 1842, and making a start toward free trade.

And not a word about slavery.  The convention voted down a resolution which favored “non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the people of this confederation, be it in the states or the territories, by any other than the parties interested in them.”

What of the Whigs?  They made no declaration of principles whatever.  Complete silence.  They nominated General Taylor, as Douglas had predicted, upon his record in the Mexican War, the war successfully prosecuted by President Polk, and through which California, with her gold, had come to the United States.  Taylor, the slave owner of Louisiana!  But this was not the end of Whig cunning.  Millard Fillmore was nominated for Vice President.  He was from New York, had been in Congress, had opposed the annexation of Texas, was a tariff man, had fought side by side with J. Q. Adams for the abolition of slavery.  But also he had been the Congressman who had carried the appropriation of $30,000 for Morse’s telegraph.  A mixed man!  His good was Taylor’s evil.  Taylor’s evil was his good.

Well, the native Americans had a ticket in the field; the Barn-burners had a ticket in the field; and the Abolitionists.  Mr. Van Buren was running for President as a Barn-burner on a platform which declared that there should be no more slave states, and no more slave territory.  Where was I to stand amid all this confusion and contradiction?  Naturally with Douglas.  But I wanted to see what he had to say.