He had gained great popularity in the South by his course in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but he had been visited with signal condemnation in the North.

His own State, always Democratic, which had stood firmly for the party even in the overthrow of 1840, had now failed to sustain him,--had, indeed, pointedly rebuked him by choosing an opposition Legislature and sending Lyman Trumbull, then an anti- slavery Republican, as his colleague in the Senate.

General Cass was seventy-four years old, and he was under the same condemnation with Pierce and Marcy and Douglas.

He had voted to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and Michigan, which had never before faltered in his support, now turned against him and embittered his declining years by an expression of popular disapproval, which could not have been more emphatic.
The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North.
By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the prominent statesmen from that section.

Southern men designed to put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South.