The Life of John A Andrew Author:Henry Greenleaf Pearson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER in POLITICS : 1858-1860 The beginning of Andrew's larger service to the anti-slavery cause was in the fall of 1857, when he accepted the nominatio... more »n on the Banks ticket as representative in the lower house of the General Court for Ward Six in Boston. He had taken no part in the state campaign ; he was nominated only four or five days before the election; he and George P. Clapp, the other candidate on the ticket from that ward, were elected by satisfactory majorities. Banks carried the State by a vote of 60,978 to Gardner's N. 37,716; the Legislature was for the first time in both branches strongly " Republican," though that term was not then used as a distinctive party name. In order to follow the part which Andrew was now to play, it is necessary to get some notion of the condition of state politics when he came upon the stage. The triumph of the Know-Nothings in the year 1854 resulted in making Massachusetts predominatingly anti-slavery. The prestige of the Whigs was gone forever; the Democratic party was rendered insignificant. The real contests in the State in the next few years therefore arose from the division made in the anti-slavery ranks between Know-Nothingsand Republicans by theKiiow-Nothing cry of " America for the Americans." The history of the Know- Nothing party is one not of growth but of decay. It reached its maturity in its first campaign ; from that time on its story is one of decline. By 1857, this fact, together with the conservative and Whig- gish tendency of its administration of state affairs under Governor Gardner, had come out so strongly that the more decided anti-slavery men in the party were ready to return to their old allegiance, provided the nominee for governor should be acceptable to them. Nathaniel. J. Bajiks, who had just finished ...« less