exercise their constitutional powers over these evils. In order to exclude these dangerous influences, the slave power in Congress procured the adoption of a series of measures, known as the "gag-laws," which continued binding from May, 1836, to December, 1845. The efforts of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS to restore the right of petition deserve special mention. They constitute the crowning glory of his public life, as their success signalized the final triumph of the principle of freedom, in the North, over the ignoble coalition formed to overthrow it.

X.

NEW POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

DECISIVE issue having been thus taken with the Southern despotism, and the right to discuss the evils of slavery being thus triumphantly sustained, the organization of new political parties -in order to give expression at the polls to the new convictions springing up at the North

became an inevitable consequence. The Liberty party, the Free-Soil party, and the Republican party, represent the successive stages of political action that were developed in the progress of the great reform inaugurated by the Abolitionists.

Meantime the original anti-slavery organizations became divided, and extensively modified, under the action of an irresistible individualism in some of the leaders, and as new exigencies appeared to call for new measures. Those iron bodies which had so gallantly sustained the hostility of a degenerate nation became prolific in issues, in controversies, and in dissent; and were in some danger of surrendering to faction part of the honors they had extorted from tyranny.

In 1844, the American Anti-Slavery Society, under the intrepid guidance of MR. GARRISON and the caustic eloquence of WENDELL PHILLIPS, proclaimed the new watchword, "No UNION WITH SLAVE-HOLDERS," and denounced the Federal Constitution as 66 a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." This new position cost the Society many of its members; and it is believed that a large majority of the Abolitionists still hold that the Constitution is essentially a cove nant with freedom, and that it is perverted when so construed as to sanction any interest of despotism.

The sentiment which animated the first reformers, in their vigorous assault upon the slave power, became deteriorated as it spread among the multitudes of the North, till the feeling which had originally demanded the immediate abolition of slavery became content with prohibiting its extension. The anti-slavery sentiment, thus deteriorated, obtained a rapid ascendency over the free States. The entire vote of the Liberty party at the Presidential election of 1840 amounted to something less than 7,000. Four years later, the candidates of that party received upwards of 60,000 votes; although it was well understood, that on neither occasion did the nominees of the party receive the votes of more than a fraction of the nominal Abolitionists in the United States, some hundreds of them avoiding the polls from conscientious scruples, and the ma

jority, influenced by old political ties, giving their support to the Whig and Democratic candidates.

When, in 1848, the Buffalo Platform appeared, minus the Abolition plank, it became at once evident that it would conciliate an augmented anti-slavery vote. The vote of the Free-Soil party that year, and of the Republican party in 1856, revealed an auspicious growth of the diluted anti-slavery sentiment which the North was prepared to express; and in 1860 two millions of Electors, in the face of the frantic threat of Disunion, solemnly decided that slavery should never again be extended under the flag of the nation.

XI.

CONSIDERATIONS.

WHETHER the Republican Party, in securing this decisive ascendency over the Northern mind, was obliged to take a lower moral position than the radical Abolitionists, refusing to regard slavery as a crime per se, like murder or theft, but treating it as a social and political error, a source of practical evils deplorable and self-destructive, and a clear violation of those enlightened principles embodied in our form of government, we do not propose to inquire. Whether, instead of advocating immediate and unconditional emancipation, it was wise in conceding to the South the common interpretation of the Constitution, under which slavery in the States is believed to be protected, we shall not here discuss. And whether, in going no further than to insist that the Federal Government should be divorced from the slave-holding propaganda, that slavery should be restricted to its present limits, and that its actual extinction should be left to the process of time, under the subduing force of moral and economical agencies, the party made the strongest possible appeal to the judgment and