The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-09-06

ordered the postmaster to return all letters addressed to him and not pre- paid. to the dead letter office. Gov ernor Morehead's letter shared this fate. Thus 1t happened that General Taylor did not know he had been nom- mated until the committee sent to. formally notify him of his selection had reached his Louisiana home. He was surprised to hear the news from the committee and the committee was surprised to learn he didn't know 1t before. It is the only instance on re- cord that a formal notification to a candidate for President was genuine news. Such a thing ossuld not possibly happen today. yet 1t did happen SO re- gently that men like A; K. Mcclufe and Daniel E. Sickles. who were prom inent in the national conventions of that year. are still among the living.
 General Taylor died after having served but a little more than a year of his term, and was succeeded by Mill lard Fillmore It Is interesting to re- call that General Taylor's daughter. who presided over his home as the mistress of the White House. is still living She is Mrs. Elizabeth Dand- ridge now. and lives quietly in a beau tifuI home at Winchester, Va. It is a long tme since she was the charming Betty Bliss, presiding over Washing ton society, entertaining Dolly Madison at tea. and having her fling at poii ties. It has been said that Mrs. Dan- dridge's experience is the most re- that her life has been intimately and prominently connected with the great men of every epoch of our national history. A friend of Dolly Madison. a mistress of the White House herself, a sister-in-law of Jefferson Davis. the wife of nephew of Martha Washing ton, she links the heroic age of Amer ica to the modern epoch of wireless telephony and aeroplane airships.
 Going back to the campaign which placed "old Rough and Ready in the White House. it was political con- test in which the winning candidate did nothing to contribute to his own success. He merely looked on while the Democrats went to pieces on the rock of the "wilmot Proviso." The "proviso" as it was familariy referred to in those days when 1t was burn ing issue. had brought the slavery question into national politics with a vengeance.
 The famous provfso was written by Representative Brinkerhoff. an Ohio Democrat. The bill to appropriate money to close negotiations with Mex leo concerning the war and to acquire terrlIOry was DefOre the ttouSe. A half dozen anti-slavery Democrats had copies of the proviso. and the first one to get the Speakers official eye was to offer 1t. Fate gave the opportunity to David Wilmot of Pennsylvania He offered the amendment providing that slavery should not be permitted in any States or Territories to be erected out of territory to be acquired from Mex leo. At the first General Cass was fa- vorable to the proviso. but he soon found that it was better politics to trim. and he did so.
 Upon the wiimot Proviso the Demo- crats split wide open and gave the whigs their last chance to elect a President. If the Northern Whigs had had the courage of their convictions that year they would have taken the Northern views of the slavery question and could .have elected an anti-s1avery President long before Lincoln was elected, and their party would have lived. But in those days the Whig Party was Northern party led by Southern men, and the Democratic Party was a Southern party led by Northern men. There was still hope for compromise and permanent peace between all sections. Men could not sec the inevitable conflict ahead of them.
 (Copyright, 1908. by Frederic J. Has,
 kin.)