what position he took in his speech against the abolitionists. He was also anxious to strengthen the party by attaching those who had ceased to be administration Democrats without at once becoming Whigs. “It is manifest,” he wrote to Brooke, “that if we repel the advances of all the former members of the Jackson party to unite with us, under whatever name they may adopt, we must remain in a perpetual and helpless minority.” To encourage that element he favored, in a somewhat occult way, the reëlection of Senator Rives, of Virginia, who had, as a zealous Jackson man, voted for the expunging resolution, but then opposed Van Buren's sub-treasury measure, and thus dropped out of the Democratic communion. This involved the defeat of Rives's competitor, John Tyler, who had sacrificed his seat in the Senate because he would not obey the Virginia legislature, which instructed him to vote for the expunging resolution. When Tyler's defeat was brought home to Clay's influence, the wrath of some of Tyler's friends was great; and it is reported that, to appease this wrath, the parties concerned agreed to open to Tyler the way to the vice-presidency.
But all these contrivances did not suffice to smooth his path. Rival ambitions confronted him. Webster had for years been burning to be President. His support outside of Massachusetts was, indeed, so slender that in June, 1839, he formally withdrew his candidacy. But his influence could be a formidable obstacle in Clay's way, and, as
