ut I
must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty
in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being
now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained
and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the
present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great
parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally
pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the
long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The
underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is
desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the