The Whig National Convention of 7th June, 1848, was about to assemble. General Scott was for the third time about to be a candidate before it for nomination as President. This was an important—a critical moment. Native Americanism had not performed its early promise. It was not esteemed “an American excellence,” even by the Whig party. General Scott was in a dilemma, and how to extricate himself from it was the question. The ready friendship of Mr. Robinson hit upon the lucky expedient. On the 8th May, 1848, he addressed a letter to General Scott, assuming that the General entertained “kind and liberal views towards our naturalized citizens.” The General answered this letter on the 29th May, 1848, just ten days before the meeting of the Whig Philadelphia Convention; and what an answer! After declaring in the strongest terms that Mr. Robinson had done him no more than justice in attributing to him “kind and liberal views toward our naturalized citizens,” he proceeds: “It is true that in a case of unusual excitement some years ago, when both parties complained of fraudulent practices in the naturalization of foreigners, and when there seemed to be danger that native and adopted citizens would be permanently arrayed against each other in hostile faction, _I was inclined to concur in the opinion then avowed by leading statesmen, that some modification of the naturalization laws might be necessary_, in order to prevent abuses, allay strife and restore harmony between the different classes of our people. But later experience and reflection have entirely removed this impression, and dissipated my apprehensions.” The man who had warmly embraced Native Americanism so early as 1836, and had given it his enthusiastic support for twelve years thereafter—who next to Washington had claimed to be the founder of this “American excellence;” who, “fired with indignation,” had in conjunction with two friends in 1840, prepared an address in his parlor at the Astor House in New York, designed to rally an American party; who had, in 1844, hesitated between extending the period of residence before naturalization to fourteen years, and a total and absolute exclusion of all foreigners from the rights of citizenship forever, his mind inclining to the latter; who had in the same year elevated Hector Orr, the Native American printer, to the same level with our great revolutionary statesman and patriot, Benjamin Franklin—this same individual, in 1848, declares to Mr. Robinson, that he had formerly been merely “_inclined to concur in the opinion then avowed by leading statesmen_, that some modification of the naturalization laws might be necessary.” “Oh! what a fall was there, my countrymen!”