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420 Disintegration of parties. [isso- group of public men had accepted the Compromise with quite such earnest heartiness as the Democratic leaders had shown. They had therefore won the confidence of the South ; besides great States like New York and Pennsylvania, which had four years before cast their votes for the Whig candidates, they had drawn North Carolina and Florida, Louisiana and Georgia to their support. Their vote was national. The popular vote of the Whigs had not materially fallen off, but the popular vote of the Democrats had risen by nearly four hundred thousand, and the vote of the avowed and aggressive Free-Soilers had diminished nearly one-half. It looked to sanguine politicians like a clearing of the skies. To those who could see more than the surface of affairs, however, it was even then evident that nothing of the kind had taken place. Parties were in fact rapidly going to pieces. The Democratic party held together for the present only because it allowed itself to be governed by its southern leaders, men of settled purpose and definite opinions, experienced in counsel and in unhesitating and concerted action. Every man who doubted and was troubled as what practical man was not ? by the ominous signs of the times turned instinctively to this party, thus led, because it was at least confident, of good courage and united counsels, knew its own mind and promised to bring peace and order out of confusion. But the presidential election of itself settled nothing. Practical questions turned with a sort of grim fatality upon the critical matter of the extension of slavery, and came thick and fast, and in such pressing form that they could not be put off or avoided ; and the Democrats were presently touched as near the quick by the disintegrating influences of the time as the Whigs had been. The field of politics began to fill more and more with new parties, with new groups within the old parties, with dissentient factions and a confused war of opinions. The fact was, though politicians were very slow to perceive it, that parties had long ago ceased to be amenable to the discipline of the older time, when a few men trained to affairs in Virginia and Massachusetts had been able to dominate and direct them by the authority of a sort of oligarchy. In the old days of " the Virginian dynasty," the days from Washington to Monroe, parties had submitted to a very simple government and discipline, effected by intimate counsel among a few experienced leaders, by quiet conferences of Senators and members of the House of Representatives, by private correspondence and tacit understandings with regard to personal precedence. A change had set in with the entrance into national politics of those influences from the West which made Andrew Jackson President of the United States. Until then Presidents had been nominated by the party leaders who were in Congress or in the executive offices of the government ; and a sort of succession had been observed. The Secretaryship of State, as the