The cause might seem inadequate, but the effect was undeniable.

The Democratic party at the outbreak of the civil war, sixteen years afterwards, had not wholly recovered from the divisions and strifes which sprung from the disregard of Mr.Van Buren's wishes at that crisis.

No appointment to Mr.Polk's cabinet could have been more distasteful than that of Mr.Marcy.

He had lost the State during Mr.Van Buren's Presidency in the contest for the governorship against Mr.Seward in 1838, and thus laid the foundation, as Mr.Van Buren believed, for his own disastrous defeat in 1840.
The disputes which arose from Marcy's appointment in the cabinet led to Wright's defeat for re-election in 1846, when John Young, the Whig candidate, was chosen governor of New York.

To three men in the cabinet the friends of Mr.Wright ascribed the Democratic overthrow,--Mr.Buchanan, Mr.Robert J.Walker, and Mr.Marcy,-- each anxious for the Presidency, and each feeling that Mr.Wright was in his way.