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From the period of 1840 to 1870 the slavery issue, involving as it did a conflict of stupendous forces, absorbed all the moral and mental as well as physical energies of the nation. "'During the thirty or forty years from the serious beginning of the antislavery movement till the war was ended and its issues disposed of, the nation had no thought to spare for any other interests.
"Lucy Neal," "Old Kentucky Home," and "Uncle Ned," can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish. In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home, the moral sense of the civilized world is with us.
Brought up on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of The Revolution to Train and to Melliss in return for financial backing.
He is a great historical character, the peer of Webster and Clay in congressional history, and more unsullied than either of them in the virtues of private life. In South Carolina he was regarded as little less than a demigod, and until the antislavery agitation began he was viewed as among the foremost statesmen of the land.
The antislavery people of New England were violently opposed to the war, and this poem by the Yankee Hosea Biglow immediately became popular, because it put in a humorous, common-sense way what everybody else had been saying with deadly earnest. Charles Sumner saw the common sense of the poem, but didn't see the fun in the bad spelling. Said he, "This Yankee poet has the true spirit.
Popular indignation at the North knew no bounds at this new retrograde movement. The Whigs uttered protests, while the Free-Soil party, just coming into notice, composed mainly of moderate antislavery men from both the old parties, were loud in their denunciations of the encroachments of the South. Even some leading Democrats opened their eyes, and joined the rising party.
Seward, the ablest and most experienced statesman of the day, accepted the office of Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, who had been governor of Ohio, and United States Senator, was made Secretary of the Treasury; Gideon Welles, of great executive ability and untiring energy, became Secretary of the Navy; Simon Cameron, an influential politician of Pennsylvania, held the post of Secretary of War for a time, when he was succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton, a man of immense capacity for work; Montgomery Blair, a noted antislavery leader, was made Postmaster-General; Caleb B. Smith became Secretary of the Interior; and Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney-General.
1846 Elected to Congress, the single Whig Illinois member; voted antislavery; sought abolition in the D. C.; voted Wilmot Proviso. Declined reelection. 1848 Electioneered for General Taylor. 1849 Defeated by Shields for United States senator. 1852 Electioneered for General Scott. 1854 Won the State over to the Republicans, but by arrangement transferred his claim to the senatorship to Trumbull.
It has been the habit of the antislavery Whigs who have written upon the subject to ascribe the disaster to an indiscretion of the candidate himself. At the outset of the campaign Mr. Clay's avowed opinion as to the annexation of Texas was that of the vast majority of his party, especially in the North.
In the hope of drawing them from their parties, and inducing them to act together, the antislavery conventions about 1838 began to urge the formation of an antislavery party, which was finally accomplished at Albany, N.Y., in April, 1840, where James G. Birney was nominated for President, and Thomas Earle for Vice President.
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