Though the President was an abler politician than Adams had been in the former struggle, he was hardly able to parry the blows of Clay and his Eastern allies, especially after the elections of 1838, when both houses of Congress were lost to the Administration. Calhoun, Benton, and Silas Wright made a strong fight on behalf of the Democrats. To the Independent Treasury measure they added the preemption and graduation bills, which commanded almost unanimous support in the West, and at last secured the passage of all three in June, 1840. Though Clay and his party waged a powerful opposition through four full years, they had no definite program to offer. The groups of their organization were as yet poorly knit together. Their popular appeal was "to drive the Goths and Vandals" from the capital. The "new Napoleon and his minions," according to another historical comparison, must give way to the old regime, to gentlemen "who knew how to govern." And consequently the new alignments were much the same as those which had supported Adams and Clay in 1828, the South and West uniting on the "reform" Treasury system and Benton's land bills, while the East and certain conservative elements of the West and South indorsed, tentatively, at least, the "American System," or at least lent willing ears to the eloquence of Clay. Still the people hardly knew whom to believe, and they grouped themselves in the different States in a way which seemed unlike the earlier combinations. Thick-and-thin followers of Van Buren called themselves Democrats and insisted that they were the disciples of Thomas Jefferson; the organizers of the opposition to Jackson in his war on the Bank had claimed to be National Republicans, though they accepted with pride the name of Whigs after 1836. They asserted also that they were the followers of the great Virginia democrat; perhaps the historian would be compelled to deny that either faction was democratic. As the Democrats were almost unanimously in favor of the renomination of Van Buren, it was not difficult to manage their convention of that year. Nor was the platform the occasion of any serious disagreement. It stated for the first time that the party was opposed to internal improvements, a protective tariff, and the assumption of the debts of bankrupt States. In all these the West was much interested. But on the subject of slavery it was definitely declared that the Federal Government had no power of interference. For the last time in the history of the _ante-bellum_ Democracy, the Declaration of Independence was declared to be an item of the party faith. Van Buren took many risks in this un-Western program; though the panic of 1837 was doubtless his heaviest burden, as the Whigs never tired of asserting and repeating.