WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1860
547
its exponents. The caucus system was introduced. After its practice for a brief period, its tendencies were discovered to lead to the absorption of political power in the hands of a few, to the prejudice of the public weal. It was repudiated and the spon- tanous will of the people, after being fairly called into action, placed Gen. Jackson in the Presidential chair. He had denounced every thing like caucus dictation, as degrading to American feel- ing. He was elevated the second time, when the first attempt at the convention system was made, and Mr. Van Buren nominated as Vice-President on Gen. Jackson's ticket. Gen. Jackson refused to allow his name to be submitted to the convention, preferring his election to come from the people. This was the first indoctrination of national politics with the system of conventions and platforms. It has obtained from that time until the present and has been subject to a continual de- generating process. At that period, I was not a resident of the United States. After the annexation of Texas to the Union, while a member of the United States Senate, I was, in common with my colleagues in Congress, instructed, in 1848, by the Legislature of the State, to attend at Baltimore, as a delegate to the Convention, which there assembled, and vote the sentiments of the State. We acted in accordance with our instructions. From that time to the present, my name has been used before Conventions, both in this State and Baltimore, by the direction of the State Legislature, without any contrivance of mine, or without my having been consulted on the subject. My reason for acting in the Baltimore Convention, was, that it represented the democratic party, the party to which I had ever been attached and with which I had consistently acted. As my views were National arid my politics embraced the Union, when sectionalism began to absorb all national issues, I set my face against it, and when in violation of the pledges the democratic party had made the country, the Nebraska and Kansas bill was introduced as a democratic measure, I refused to vote for it. For this I was proscribed and my name held up to censure. The name of democracy was invoked, with the patronage of the Adminis- tration, and the denunciation of every demagogue North and South arrayed against me as a traitor to the South, and an abolitionist. Upon that I have no reflections to make. The past and present unhappy agitation on the slavery question, .and the disruption of fraternal feeling between the North and the South,
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