The 1848 campaign was conducted in the newspapers and with addresses made by surrogates at rallies. The Democrats nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan for president, with General William O. Butler as his running mate, but it became a three-way fight since the Free Soil Party, which opposed the spread of slavery, chose ex-President Van Buren.[71] There was a crisis among the Whigs when Taylor also accepted the presidential nomination of a group of dissident South Carolina Democrats. Fearing that Taylor would be a party apostate like Tyler, Weed in late August scheduled a rally in Albany aimed at electing an uncommitted slate of presidential electors. Fillmore interceded with the editor and assured him that Taylor was loyal to the party.[72][73]
Northerners assumed that Fillmore, hailing from a free state, was an opponent of the spread of slavery. Southerners accused him of being an abolitionist, which he hotly denied.[74] Fillmore responded to one Alabamian in a widely published letter that slavery was an evil, but the federal government had no authority over it.[72] Taylor and Fillmore corresponded twice in September, with Taylor happy that the crisis over the South Carolinians was resolved. 