Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

I consider the Annexation of Texas, at this time, without the consent of Mexico. as a measure compromising the National character, involving us certainly in war with Mexico, probably with other foreign Powers, dangerous to the integrity of the Union, inexpedient in the present financial condition of the country, and not called for by any general expression of public opinion.

The Whig National Convention met at Baltimore, May 1--every district in the United States fully represented. Henry Clay was at once nominated for President by acclamation, and Theodore Frelinghuysen for Vice-President on the third ballot. The number in attendance was estimated by tens of thousands, and the enthusiasm was immense. The multitude separated in undoubting confidence that Mr. Clay would be our next President.

The Democratic National Convention met in the same city on the 27th of that month. A majority of its delegates had been elected expressly to nominate Mr. Van Buren, and were under explicit instructions to support him. But it was already settled among the master-spirits of the party that his nomination should be defeated. To this end, before the Convention had been fully organized, Gen. R. M. Saunders, of North Carolina, moved the adoption of the rules and regulations of the Democratic National Conventions of May, 1832, and May, 1835, for the government of this body; his object being the enactment of that rule which required a vote of two-thirds of the delegates to nominate a candidate. After a heated discussion, the two-thirds rule was adopted, on the second day, by 148 Yeas to 118 Nays, and the fate of Van Buren sealed. On the first ballot, he received 146 votes to 116 for all others; but he fell, on the second, to 127, and settled gradually to 104 on the eighth, when he was withdrawn--Gen. Cass, who began with 83, having run up to 114. On the next ballot, James K. Polk, of Tennessee, who had received no vote at all till the eighth ballot, and then but 44, was nominated, receiving 233 out of 266 votes. This was on the third day of the Convention, when Silas Wright, of New York, was immediately nominated for Vice-President. He peremptorily declined, and George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was selected in his stead. Mr. Polk had been an early, and was a zealous, champion of Annexation, as always of every proposition or project calculated to aggrandize the Slave Power. The Convention, in its platform,

Resolved, That our title to the whole¹ territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable; that no portion of the same ought to be ceded to England or any other power; and that the reoccupation of Oregon, and the reannexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period, are great American measures, which the Convention recommends to the cordial support of the Democracy of the Union.

Col. Thomas H. Benton, in a speech in the Senate, May 6, had set forth the objections to Messrs. Tyler and Calhoun's Treaty of Annexation, on the ground of its assuming, on the one hand, to cede, and on the other, to accept and maintain, the entire territory claimed by Texas, including all that portion of New Mexico lying east of the Rio Grande, in these forcible terms:

These former provinces of the Mexican