2o8 C. F. Adams to statehood, and he did so under the name of " the Ouisconsin." That discourse was delivered on the nth of March, 1848 ; and, on the 29th of the following May, Wisconsin became a State. Returning now to the presidential election of 1848, it will be found that Wisconsin, the youngest community in the Union, came at once to the front as the banner state of the West in support of the principles on which the Union was established, and the main- tenance and vindication of those fundamental principles within the Union and through the Constitution. In that canvass the great issues of the future were distinctly brought to the front. The old party organizations then still confronted each other, — the Henry Clay Whigs were over against the Jacksonian Democracy ; but in that election Lewis Cass, the legitimate candidate of the De- mocracy, — a Northern man with Southern principles, — so far as African slavery was concerned a distinct reactionist from the prin- ciples of the great Declaration of 1776, — Lewis Cass, of Michigan, was opposed to General Zacharj' Taylor, of Louisiana, himself a slaveholder, and nominated by a party which in presenting his name carefully abstained from any enunciation of political principles. He was an unknown political quantity ; and no less a public character than Daniel Webster characterized his nomination as one not fit to be made. It yet remained to be seen that, practically, the plain, blunt, honest, well-meaning old soldier made an excellent President, whose premature loss was deeply and with reason deplored. His nomination, however, immediately after that of Cass, proved the signal for revolt. For the disciples of J. O. Adams in both political camps it was as if the cry had again gone forth, " To your tents, O Israel ! " — and a first fierce blast of the coming storm then swept across the land. In August the dissentients met in conference at Buffalo, and there first enunciated the principles of the American political party of the future, — that party which, permeated by the sentiment of Nationality, was destined to do away with slavery through the war power, and to incorporate into the Constitution the principle of the equality of man before the law, irrespective of color or of race. Now, more than half a centur}' after the event, it may fairly be said of those concerned in the Buffalo movement of 1848 that they were destined to earn in the fulness of time the rare dis- tinction of carrying mankind forward one distinct stage in the long process of evolution. In support of that movement Wisconsin was, as I have already said, the banner western state. In its action it simply responded to its early impulse received from New England and western New York. Thus the seed fell in fertile places and produced fruit an hundred fold. The law of natural selection, though not yet formulated, was at work.
