He
looked to the Whig Party for large accessions to the Free
Soil ranks. 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. So in
1849 there was a coalition between the Free Soil and the Democratic
Parties in some counties and towns, each supporting the candidates
of the other not specially obnoxious to them, neither party
committing itself to the principles of the other party or
waiving its own.
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