Whigs, as it baffled the hope of keeping the annexation question out of the presidential campaign. But Polk, although he had been Speaker of the National House of Representatives, was comparatively so obscure a man, that a contest for the highest honors of the Republic between him and the great Henry Clay appeared almost grotesque. The Democrats themselves were at first somewhat embarrassed by the contrast. The question, “Who is Polk?” was asked on all sides, to be answered by the Whigs with a jeering laugh. Indeed, had nothing happened to overshadow the old issues, the personal question would have appeared as the most important. For about the tariff and the bank the Democratic and the Whig platforms differed very little.
Of a United States Bank the Whig platform said nothing. It spoke only of a “well-regulated currency.” Clay himself, returning to the position he had taken during the campaign of 1840, remarked at Raleigh that, while his views about the bank question remained the same, he did “not seek to enforce them upon any others;” he did not desire a bank unless it was imperatively demanded by the people. Among the Whigs generally, the United States Bank had been given up as an “obsolete idea.” That point, therefore, was substantially yielded by them. As to the tariff, the Democrats had made a fresh record. In the session of 1843-1844, when they controlled the House by a very large majority, they laid a bill
