least it safeguarded the Union and secured the political achievements
of the past. Moreover, the two great party organizations had done much
to assimilate the foreign elements injected into our population. No
doubt the politician who cultivated "the Irish vote" or "the German
vote," was obeying no higher law than his own interests; but his
activities did much to promote that fusion of heterogeneous elements
which has been one of the most extraordinary phenomena of American
society. With the disappearance of the Whig party, one of the two
great agencies in the disciplining and educating of the immigrant was
lost.

For a time the Native American party seemed likely to take the place
of the moribund Whig party. Many Whigs whose loyalty had grown cold
but who would not go over to the enemy, took refuge in the new party.
But Native Americanism had no enduring strength. Its tenets and its
methods were in flat contradiction to true American precedents.
Greeley was right when he said of the new party, "It would seem as
devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or an
anti-potato-rot party would be." By its avowed hostility to Catholics
and foreigners, by its insistence upon America for Americans, and by
its secrecy, it forfeited all real claims to succeed the Whig party as
a national organization.

After the downfall of the Whig party, then, the Democratic party stood
alone as a truly national party, preserving the integrity of its
national organization and the bulk of its legitimate members. But the
events of President Pierce's administration threatened to be its
undoing. If the Kansas-Nebraska bill served to unite outwardly the
Northern and Southern wings of the party, it served also to
crystallize those anti-slavery elements which had hitherto been held