The candidates urged for the nomination were all from the North. By a tacit but general understanding, the South repressed the ambition of its leaders and refused to present any one of the prominent statesmen from that section. Southern men designed to put the North to a test, and they wished to give Northern Democrats every possible advantage in waging a waging a warfare in which the fruits of victory were to be wholly enjoyed by the South. If they had wished it, they could have nominated a Southern candidate who was at that moment far stronger than any other man in the Democratic party. General Sam Houston had a personal history as romantic as that of an ancient crusader. He was a native of Virginia, a representative in Congress from Tennessee, and Governor of that State before he was thirty-five. He was the intimate and trusted friend of Jackson. Having resigned his governorship on account of domestic trouble, he fled from civilized life, joined the Indians of the Western plains, roved with them for years, adopted their habits, and was made chief of a tribe. Returning to association with white men, he emigrated to Texas and led the revolt against Mexico, fought battles and was victorious, organized a new republic and was made its President. Then he turned to his native land, bearing in his hand the gift of a great dominion. Once more under the Union flag, he sat in the Capitol as a senator of the United States from Texas. At threescore years he was still in the full vigor of life. Always a member of the Democratic party he was a devoted adherent of the Union, and his love for it had but increased in exile. He stood by Mr. Clay against the Southern Democrats in the angry contest of 1850, declaring that "if the Union must be dismembered" he "prayed God that its ruins might be the monument of his own grave." He "desired no epitaph to tell that he survived it." Against the madness of repealing the Missouri Compromise he entered a protest and a warning. He notified his Southern friends that the dissolution of the Union might be involved in the dangerous step. He alone, of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, voted against the mischievous measure. When three thousand clergymen of New England sent their remonstrance against the repeal, they were fiercely attacked and denounced by Douglas and by senators from the South. Houston vindicated their right to speak and did battle for them with a warmth and zeal which specially commended him to Northern sympathy. All these facts combined--his romantic history, his unflinching steadiness of purpose, his unswerving devotion to the Union--would have made him an irresistibly strong candidate had he been presented. But the very sources of his strength were the sources of his weakness. His nomination would have been a rebuke to every man who had voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and, rather than submit to that, the Southern Democrats,