The qualifications which procured for this gentleman the honor of a nomination, were doubtless his devotion to the cause of slavery, his vituperation of the abolitionists and a recent printed letter in which he advocated the imme- diate ANNEXATION OF TeXAS.
The Convention liaving thus been compelled to nomi- nate Mr. Polk, the triumph of the democratic pai'ty, and its possession of power and office, of course depended on his election. To secure that election, the party were ne- cessarily compelled to adopt as their own the policy avowed by their candidate. Hence it became expedient for the Convention, as the representatives of the whole democratic party, to insist upon the immediate annexation of Texas, and to enter the contest with these ominous words inscribed on their banners. Many of the party presses at the North had been loud in their denunciations of the Texan plot; and in the northern legislatures, demo- crats had vied with the whigs in passing resolutions condemning annexation. But the council of Baltimore was deemed infallible in matters of faith ; and forthwith the democracy of the North united with the slaveholders of the South in their eftbrts to extend the curse of human bondage, Mr. Polk received a majority of the electoral votes, but not of the popular suffrage by which the Elec- tors had been chosen.