Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1852-11-20
THE LATE NATIONAL ELECTION.

the fortnight which has INTERVIEWED our readers will
expect to learn from our impressions of the re-
suit. Some of them have, in fact, told much
and, out Of Difference to their Wishes set about
task that has in it nothing particularly attractive
1t would be mere affectaton in us to say that
we were not sorely disappointed in the result From
the information which had reached us from nearly
every State of the Union and from persons entitled
to our confidence we harbored scarcely doubt that
our worthy candidates for President and Vice Pre-
sident would receive the sufrages OF majority OF
the People That they would have done SO had
they received the entire Wing vote of the Union,
we can, even now, hardly doubt
That the Wings at least equally share with their
opponents-( excluding from count the Abolition
lists, Secessonists, and political q Freesoilers D.
the confidence Of the body Of the People, we have
ever believed; and, indeed in the great elections Of
1910 and 184S, which called into the field all the
strength of the party, the fact demonstrated.
At the late election our candidate for the
Office of President was one whose personal cha
racter, political rectitude, and services for his
country greater than those Of any other man now
living, ought to have ensured his election This
might have been done, had the Wings kept strictly
the faith with each other which we considered to
scented in the Convention assembled at Baltimore
for the purpose of nominating candidates for the
Presidency. This construction of the moral obi
cation of those who went into the Convention
to abide by its determination and to assist in carry
ing it into effect is own conclusion, which, as
our readers aware, does not command universal
assent. We speak merely of the light in which,
in an experience of more than forty years. have,
general rule, ever regarded such Conventions !;
and according which general rule this journal has
invariably sustained the nominations by Conven-
tons of the Republican (Whig) Party. If it was
not for the purpose of determining whom among
that party it expedient to select as their
candidates, and, that point ascertained by fair
and open voting, to concentrate the Wing vote
upon those individuals, we never could and cannot
now, conceive of any rational purpose for which
such a Convention should have assembled at
all. No preceding Convention of any party had
ever included larger proportion of gentlemen of
the highest standard of character, or to whom as
whole, we would more willingly have confded the
destinies of their party, and even of the country
And, when thus advert to the fact of our expecta
ton that they would have unanimously supported the
final conclusions Of the Convention, we by no means
intend to call their motives into question: but to
account to readers as plainly as we can, how it
came to pass that we made sure in our own minds,
from the moment of the nomination of Gen. SooTT,
that he was to be the chosen President of the
United States
all f,llx 10 -
own satisfaction, how it has happened otherwise
That visible apathy not to say indifference, to the
result of this particular election manifested in
some of the States, is proved by the reduced num-
Der of votes cast by them, in comparison with the
number given at other lately contested elections
The general fact may, we presume, be referred to
the more than usual absence of exciting public
topics, foreign or domestic Our country is happily
at peace with all the world and, unless msgovern-
ed, may long remain SO; our commerce is flourish
ing and active and even the manufacturers of the
interior, under the encouragement of the late casual
rise in the price of iron, are comparatively quiet
A plethora Of prosperity seems to have made men
in general less sensible than they have hitherto
been to what lies in the future
In some districts of the country however, it can
not be doubted that directly opposite to those
of placid content and freedom from care have had
their influence. The State of Massachusetts, for
example, though she gave, few days ago, plu-
rahty of twenty-one thousand votes for the Wing
candidate for Governor gave thousand only of
apluraity of votes for the Wing candidate for the
Presidency. Disaffection, from similar cause in
other parts Of the Union-had its influence pervaded
the whole country-would of itself alone have been
sufficient to account for the loss to the Wing cand
date of twice as many votes the entire majority
of the votes for the Democratic ticket To this class
of causes of defeat, regrets for which are now un-
ayailing, it is sufficient that we have thus alluded
Among the causes, however whichswelled the De-
mccratic maortes, some transitory in their cha
racter but sufficiently influential in individual States
to turn the scale in favor of the Democracy Thus in
4 the city of New York, the want of concord among
the Wing journals enough of itself to have
neutrazed their efforts in the general cause. But,
when the composition of the population of that city
Is considered, and the great proportion of foreign
material OF which it is formed, with those peculiar
ideas OF the newlyarrived among them Of the mean
ing OF the term Democracy" and the natural ten
dency OF those ideas to dsorganizaton, to combina-
tons against law and order under all the ,syos of
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