" Can this
resolution command an endorsement at the beginning of the twentieth
century?
The States of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont adopted resolutions of
sympathy with Hungary and of arraignment of Austria and Russia.
[* This chapter was published substantially as it appears here in the
_New England Magazine._ Copyright, 1903, by Warren F. Kellogg.]
XIX
THE COALITION AND THE STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1853
The controversy over slavery, which wrought a division in the Whig and
Democratic parties as early as the year 1848, led to a reorganization
of parties in 1849, under the names of Whig, Democratic, and Free-soil
parties, respectively. Of these the Whig Party was the largest, but
from 1849 to 1853 it was not able to command a majority vote in the
State, and at that time a majority vote was required in all elections.
There was a substantial agreement between the Democratic and Free-soil
parties upon the leading questions of State politics. Of these
questions a secret ballot law and the division of counties for the
election of senators, and the division of cities for the election of
representatives, were the chief. Under the law then existing the
county of Middlesex, for example, elected six senators, and each year
all were of the same party. Boston was a Whig city, and each year it
chose forty-six members of the House on one ballot, and always of the
Whig Party.
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