Party politics was in a chaotic condition. The Whig organization was not in any proper sense a party at all. It was an ill-assorted aggregation of political elements, without common opinions or united purposes, whose only proper function was opposition. It was so utterly incoherent, its convictions so vague and negative, that it was unable even to draft a platform. Without any formal declaration of principles or purposes it had nominated and elected Harrison and Tyler, one a distinguished soldier and respectable Western politician, the other a renegade Virginia Democrat, whose Whiggism consisted solely of a temporary quarrel with his own party. The one unanimous opinion of the party was that it was better for themselves, if not for the country, that the Whigs should hold the offices. The Democrats had been in control of the Government for forty years. Their professed principles were still broadly Jeffersonian. Their platform consisted mainly of a denial of all power in the Federal Government to do anything or prevent anything, the extravagant negations borrowed from the republican philosophers of England and the French Revolutionists. But a half century of power had produced a marked diversion of practice from principles, and, in spite of its open abnegation of power, the Government had become a personal despotism under Jackson, which had vainly struggled to perpetuate itself through the Administration of VanBuren. But notwithstanding the absurd discrepancy of their practical and theoretical politics, the Democrats had one great advantage over the Whigs in having a large and influential body of men united in interest, compelled to defend themselves against aggression, prepared unflinchingly to take the initiative, to whom politics was not a philosophic theory but a serious matter of business. The slave-holding aristocracy of the South was the only united, organized, positive political force in the country. With the personal tastes of aristocrats and the domestic habits of despots, they were staunchly Democratic in their politics and had full control of the party. They had positive purposes and aggressive courage. A crisis had come which they only had the ability and energy to meet. The control of affairs was in the hands of the timid Whigs. Decisive measures were needed. By a peaceful revolution they seized the Government out of the hands of the Whigs in the midst of the Administration and embarked on a career of Democratic conquest.