All these facts combined--his romantic history, his unflinching steadiness of purpose, his unswerving devotion to the Union--would have made him an irresistibly strong candidate had he been presented.

But the very sources of his strength were the sources of his weakness.

His nomination would have been a rebuke to every man who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and, rather than submit to that, the Southern Democrats, and Northern Democrats like Pierce and Douglas and Cass, would accept defeat.

Victory with Houston would be their condemnation.
But in rejecting him they lost in large degree the opportunity to recover the strength and popularity and power of the Democratic party which had all been forfeited by the maladministration of Pierce.
NOMINATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN.
With Houston impracticable, other Southern candidates purposely withheld, and all the Northern candidates in Congress or of the administration disabled, the necessity of the situation pointed to one man.

The Democratic managers in whose hands the power lay were not long in descrying him.