undertake the same task again, and many of them therefore joined in the quiet protest against his renomination. This feeling had grown to especial strength where Clay had least expected it, and where it was most painful to him, — in Kentucky. Many of the Whigs of that state had reached the conclusion that Kentucky, after the experiences of the past, ought not to impose upon the Whig party Clay's candidacy for the presidency as a permanent burden. They were, therefore, among the first to look for a new man around whom to rally. They found that man in the person of a military chieftain.
Immediately after the news of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma had arrived in the United States, in May, 1846, some Whig politicians, Thurlow Weed among others, cast their eyes upon the victorious captain as a presidential possibility. Thurlow Weed learned from General Taylor's brother that the General had always been an admirer of Henry Clay, and preferred home-made goods to foreign importations. This was sufficient in his eyes to qualify the General as a good enough Whig for a presidential candidate. The General had never voted. He had spent the best part of his life in camps and at frontier posts, and never expressed, nor even entertained, a very decided preference for either of the two political parties. When the proposition of making him a candidate for the highest civil office was first broached to him, he promptly pronounced it as too
