Whig assailants, whose fevered
brains and party intolerance blinded their eyes to the truth.
Doubtless there were honest differences of opinion as to the best
method of serving the anti-slavery cause in this exasperating
campaign, and these differences may still survive as an inheritance;
but abolitionism, as a working force in our politics, had to have
a beginning, and no man who cherishes the memory of the old Free
Soil party, and of the larger one to which it gave birth, will
withhold the meed of his praise from the heroic little band of
sappers and miners who blazed the way for the armies which were to
follow, and whose voices, though but faintly heard in the whirlwind
of 1840, were made significantly audible in 1844. Although they
were everywhere totally misunderstood and grossly misrepresented,
they clearly comprehended their work and courageously entered upon
its performance. Their political creed was substantially identical
with that of the Free Soilers of 1848 and the Republicans of 1856
and 1860. They were anything but political fanatics, and history
will record that their sole offense was the espousal of the truth
in advance of the multitude, which slowly and finally followed in
their footsteps.

But the war against slavery was not at all intermitted by the
victory of the Democrats. Events are schoolmasters, and this
triumph only quickened their march toward the final catastrophe.
Cassius M. Clay, who had espoused the Whig cause in this canvass
with great vigor and zeal, and on anti-slavery grounds, re-enlisted
in the battle against slavery, and resolved to prosecute it by new
methods. He had been sorely tried by Mr. Clay's Alabama letter
and the Whig defeat, but he was now armed with fresh courage, and
resolved to "carry the war into Africa" by the establishment of
his newspaper, the "True American," in Lexington, in his own State.
His arraignment of slavery was so eloquent and masterly that a
large meeting of slave-holders appointed a committee to wait on
him, and request the discontinuance of his paper. His reply was:
"Go, tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that Cassius
M. Clay knows his rights, and how to defend them." These words
thrilled all lovers of liberty, and sounded to them like a trumpet
call to battle. Another fruitful event was the effort of Massachusetts,
in the fall of this year, to protect her colored seamen in the
ports of Charleston and New Orleans, where they were s