A large plurality of the people of the community were still devoted to that party.

He doubted very much the wisdom of widening the breach between them by a conflict on other questions than that of slavery.

So he refused his consent.
Stephen C.Phillips, an eminent Salem merchant, and a former Member of Congress, was nominated.

The result was there was no choice of State officers by the people, and the election of the Whig candidates was made by the Legislature.
The next year it occurred to the leaders of the Free Soil and Democratic Parties that they had only to unite their forces to overthrow the Whigs.

The Free Soil leaders thought the effect of this would be the eventual destruction of the Whig Party at the North,--as afterward proved to be the case,-- and the building up in its place of a party founded on the principle of opposition to the extension of slavery.