The “platform” of the Democratic party contained the following resolution: “That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with, or control the domestic institutions of the several States; and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything pertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts, by abolitionists or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.” Excepting in an indirect manner, this resolution did not enunciate any specific policy in regard to the newly acquired territories. While General Taylor, therefore, entered upon the administration of the Government under circumstances which indicated much popular strength, the situation of the country, and his want of the higher qualities of statesmanship and civil experience, were not favorable to his success as a President of the United States. His cabinet, moreover, was not, comparatively speaking, a strong one. The Secretary of State, the Hon. John M. Clayton of Delaware, was scarcely the equal of Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Buchanan, his immediate predecessors; and his negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was one of the most unfortunate occurrences in our diplomatic history. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Meredith, was simply an accomplished lawyer and a most estimable gentleman. The Attorney-General, the Hon. Reverdy Johnson of Baltimore, was a very eminent advocate in the Supreme Court of the United States, but not a wise and far-seeing statesman. The ablest man in the cabinet, intellectually, was the Hon. Thomas Ewing of Ohio. The other Secretaries were not men of much renown or force. When this administration took charge of the executive department of the Government, a session of Congress was not to commence until December, 1849. At that session, California, which had adopted a State constitution and one that prohibited slavery, demanded admission into the Union as a free State. New Mexico and Utah required the organization of territorial governments. The whole South was in a state of sensitiveness in regard to these matters, and also in regard to the escape of slaves into free territory and to the growing unwillingness of many of the people of the Northern States to have executed that provision of the Constitution which required the surrender of fugitives from service. General Taylor’s policy on these dangerous subjects was not a statesman-like or a practicable one. In his annual message (December, 1849), he recommended the admission of California as a State; but he proposed that the other