Mr. Tyler's administration being now fully committed to the scheme of Texas annexation, the selection of a new secretary of State was a matter of extreme importance. The President had been finally separated from all sympathy with the party that elected him, when Mr. Webster left the cabinet the preceding summer. But he had not secured the confidence or the support of the Democracy. The members of that party were willing to fill his offices throughout the country, and to absorb the honors and emoluments of his administration; but the leaders of positive influence, men of the grade of Van Buren, Buchanan, Cass, Dallas, and Silas Wright, held aloof, and left the government to be guided by Democrats who had less to risk, and by Whigs of the type of Henry A. Wise of Virginia and Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, who had revolted from the rule of Mr. Clay. It was the sagacity of Wise, rather than the judgment of Tyler, which indicated the immense advantage of securing Mr. Calhoun for the head of the cabinet. The great Southern leader was then in retirement, having resigned from the Senate the preceding year. By a coincidence worth nothing, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were all at that moment absent from the Senate, each having voluntarily retired. In later life, chastened by political adversity, they returned to the chamber where, before their advent and since their departure, there have been no rivals to their fame. Naturally, Mr. Calhoun would have been reluctant to take office under Tyler at any time, and especially for the brief remainder of an administration which had been continually under the ban of public opinion, and which had not the slightest prospect of renewal. With quick observation and keen insight, however, he perceived a great opportunity to serve the South, and to serve the South was with him not only a principle, but a passion. He realized, moreover, that the hour was at hand for an historic revenge which the noblest of minds might indulge. He saw intuitively that the Texas question was one of vast importance, with untold possibilities. He saw with equal clearness that it had never been presented in such manner as to appeal to the popular judgment, and become an active, aggressive issue in the struggle for the Presidency. A large section of the Democratic party had looked favorably upon annexation ever since 1836, but the leaders had dared not to include the scheme in the avowed designs of party policy. They had omitted it purposely in making up the issues for the Van Buren campaign of 1840, and, up to the hour when Mr. Calhoun entered the State Department, the intention of the managers was to omit it in the contest of 1844 against Mr. Clay. Mr. Tyler's advocacy of Texas annexation had injured rather than promoted it in the estimation of the Democratic party; but when Mr. Calhoun, with his astute management, and his large influence in the slave-holding States, espoused it, the whole