LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE
184
eagerly watched the proceedings from the outside, wrote VicePresident Dallas to the same effect, and Dallas pressed this view upon the President. 25 To them as well as to all others
who raised the point Polk always move must come first from the
returned the same answer; other side, but he invariably
the
softened this statement by his old formula that, in confidence, he would say that he intended to submit any reasonable offer to the Senate for previous advice.
A more difficult situation faced the President on account of an article in the official organ, the Union. Ritchie, the editor, had not been taken into the confidence of the man whose general
views he was supposed to spread broadcast, so, when the was finally passed by Congress, he thundered out against
notice
the Democrats
who had combined
A
President.
the
much
ported that there was crats to
of
with the
Whigs
storm immediately arose.
somebody, they
said,
dissatisfaction
to oppose
Buchanan
among
the
re-
Demo-
ought to be associated with Ritchie
make the Union a strong paper and to prevent alienation members of the party. Allen, whose views the condemned
article like
might have been expected
to represent, thought a
man
(who with Rives had formerly conducted
Francis P. Blair
the Union) ought to be associated with Ritchie who could not get five votes as Public Printer from the Calhoun faction.
Polk himself agreed that although he disapproved the course of Calhoun and his followers, the article had been too denunciaHe talked it over with Ritchie, who was tory and severe.
much perturbed and excused late at night
and
himself by saying that he had
in a hurry.
prepared dent gave him the sketch of an it
him
to
"make out
I
Thereupon the Presion the matter, telling
what he pleased." "This is the second have been President," wrote the PresiDiary, "that I have sketched an article for the paper. of
or third time since
dent in his
article
it
I
did so in this instance to allay, if possible, the excitement I learned the article in yesterday's Union had produced
which
among
the Democratic members." 26
35 Polk, Diary, 26 I, 351 seq.
I,
348-9;
37-
