ult than the choice
of General Taylor or General Cass. I know that the enthusiasm of a
new-formed party, that the popularity of a new-formed name, without
communicating any new-formed idea, may lead men to think that the sky is
to fall, and that larks are suddenly to be taken. I entertain no such
expectations. I speak without disrespect of the Free Soil party. I have
read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in
it, I can stand on it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and
valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not
valuable." If the term Free Soil party, or Free Soil men, designate
those who are fixed, and unalterably fixed, in favor of the restriction
of slavery, are so to-day and were so yesterday, and have been so for
some time, then I hold myself to be as good a Free Soil man as any of
the Buffalo Convention. I pray to know who is to put beneath my feet a
freer soil than that upon which I have stood ever since I have been in
public life? I pray to know who is to make my lips freer than they
always have been, or to inspire into my breast a more resolute and fixed
determination to resist the advances and encroachments of the slave
power, than has inhabited it since I for the first time opened my mouth
in the councils of the country? The gentlemen at Buffalo have placed at
the head of their party Mr. Van Buren, a gentleman for whom I have all
the respect that I ought to entertain for one with whom I have been
associated, in some degree, in public life for many years, and who has
held the highest offices in the country. But really, speaking for
myself, if I were to express confidence in Mr. Van Buren and his
politics on any question, and most especially this very question of
slavery, I think the scene would border upon the ludicrous, if not upon
the contemptible. I never proposed any thing in my life of a general and
public nature, that Mr. Van Buren did not oppose. Nor has it happened to
me to support any important measure proposed by him. If he and I now
were to find ourselves together under the Free Soil flag, I am sure
that, with his accustomed good nature, he would laugh. If nobody were
present, we should both laugh at the strange occurrences and stranger
jumbles of political life that should have brought us to sit down cosily
and snugly, side by side, on the same platform. That the leader of the
Free Spoil party should so suddenly have become the leader of the