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HENRY CLAY.
was short-lived. It did not carry any state, but received nearly three hundred thousand votes. In New York Van Buren had more votes than Cass. The Democratic faction opposed to him suffered a disastrous overthrow. That accomplished, a large number of the Van Buren Democrats, and among them some of their leading men, renewed their allegiance to their old party, looking upon the revolt of 1848 as a mere political episode. Many of the Whigs, who had voted for Van Buren to avenge Clay, also returned to the fold. But, while the coalition fell to pieces, the vital principle of the Free Soil movement survived, to be obscured by a temporary reaction, and then to rise up again in final triumph.
