But in a few weeks this hope was dispelled.

The Whigs of the country had been engaged for a long period in an earnest political warfare against Mr.Van Buren.

In New York the contest had been personal and acrimonious to the last degree, and ordinary human nature could hardly be expected the bury at once the grievances and resentments of a generation.

Nor did the Whigs confide in the sincerity of Mr.Van Buren's anti-slavery conversion.

His repentance was late, and even the most charitable suspected that his desire to punish Cass had entered largely into the motives which suddenly aroused him to the evils of slavery after forty years of quiet acquiescence in all the demands of the South.