This light dawned on Judge Black suddenly and irresistibly.

He was personally intimate with General Cass, and when that venerable statesman retired from the Cabinet to preserve his record of loyalty to the Union, Judge Black realized that he was himself confronted by an issue which threatened his political destruction.

Could he afford, as Secretary of State, to follow a policy which General Cass believed would destroy his own fame?
General Cass was nearly fourscore years of age, with his public career ended, his work done.

Judge Black was but fifty, and he had before him possibly the most valuable and most ambitious period of his life.

He saw at a glance that if General Cass could not be sustained in the North-West, he could not be sustained in Pennsylvania.