A considerable number of Democrats joined the Free Soil movement in 1848. Conspicuous among them was Marcus Morton, who had been Governor and one of our ablest Supreme Court judges, and his son, afterward Chief Justice, then just rising into distinction as a lawyer. The members of the Liberty Party also, who had cast votes for Birney in 1844, were ready for the new movement. But the Free Soil Party derived its chief strength, both of numbers and influence, from the Whigs. The Anti-Slavery Whigs clung to Webster almost to the last. He had disappointed them by opposing the resolution they offered at the Whig State Convention, pledging the party to support no candidate not known by his acts or declared opinions to be opposed to the extension of slavery. But he had coupled his opposition with a declaration of his own unalterable opposition to that extension, and had said, speaking of those who were in favor of the declaration: "It is not their thunder." He declared in the Senate, as late as 1848: "My opposition to the increase of slavery in the country, or to the increase of slave representation in Congress, is general and universal. It has no reference to lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose all such extension, and all such increase, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all combinations, against all compromises." So the Anti-Slavery Whigs eagerly supported him as their candidate for the Whig nomination in 1848. If Mr. Webster had been nominated for the Presidency in 1848, the Free Soil Party would not have come into existence that year. There would have been probably some increase in the numbers of the Liberty Party; yet the Anti-Slavery Whigs of Massachusetts would have trusted him. But the nomination of General Taylor, a Southerner, one of the largest slaveholders in the country, whose laurels had been gained in the odious Mexican War, upon a platform silent upon the engrossing subject of the extension of slavery, could not be borne. The temper of the Whig National Convention was exhibited in a way to irritate the lovers of freedom in Massachusetts. When some allusion was made to her expressed opinions, it was received with groans and cries of "Curse Massachusetts." But, on the whole, the Massachusetts Whigs shared the exultant anticipation of triumph, and of regaining the power from which they had been excluded since the time of John Quincy Adams, except for the month of Harrison's short official life. But as the convention was about to adjourn, intoxicated with hope and triumph, Charles Allen, a delegate from Massachusetts, a man of slender figure, rose, and with a quiet voice declared the Whig Party dissolved. Never was a prediction received with more derision; never was prediction more surely fulfilled. He was reinforced by Henry Wilson, afterward Vice-President of the United States.