urgent among whom was Governor Bebb, finally decided him to proclaim what he had probably long before determined in his heart. Early in April he published a letter assenting to the “use of his name” in the Whig National Convention. And then he had to learn a piece of startling news from General Taylor himself. Clay had expected that, if he were nominated by the Whig Convention, General Taylor, as a matter of course, would quietly leave the field. He had carried on some secret hope, perhaps, of dissuading him from being a candidate at all. But now the General, in a public letter of April 20, 1848, declared, and in a letter addressed to Clay himself on April 30, affirmed, that, having been nominated by “the people called together in primary assemblies in several of the states,” he considered himself “in the hands of the people,” and was determined to remain a candidate, whoever else might be in the field. Such a declaration would, under ordinary circumstances, have provoked the resentment of a party conscious of its strength, and thus defeated the pretensions of the man making it. It produced a different effect upon the Whigs of 1848. Those who desired a party victory at any price calculated that, if Taylor remained a candidate under any circumstances, the Whigs could win only by accepting, but would surely lose by opposing him. There was also another class who actually preferred him because he was not a party man. This
