ght to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the
better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the
Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and
prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent
and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was
that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they
tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a
whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the
slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the
controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under
Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,
Pierce, and Buchanan.

Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but
whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters
permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.
The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and
the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance
with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party
men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay
complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,
slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.
Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the
resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent
to Belial that the record is painful reading.

When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and
thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one
Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon
captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New
Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in
demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to
bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.
Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our
English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his
tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when
Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect
that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave
carried on to the open ocean or