immediately pressing questions were easily phrased; but the
intangible element of public opinion was uncommonly hard to estimate. So
far as the great parties were concerned, it was impossible to fix upon
either of them any general theory about slavery or any definite policy
with it. Up to this time, both had apparently gone on the understanding
that it was not a proper issue in political contests. A small group of
unpractical men had, in fact, tried to build up a party on the issue of
opposition to it, but they had no prospect of carrying a single
electoral vote. The adherents of the old parties were agreed on one
thing: that there was no lawful way for Congress or the people of the
free States to interfere with slavery in the slave States. They were
divided among themselves, inside of party lines, on the fugitive slave
law, on the interstate slave trade, on slavery and the slave trade in
the District of Columbia, and on slavery in the Territories.

But if party lines did not yet accurately represent the divisions of
opinion on these questions, there was, nevertheless, a grouping of men
according to their opinions on the general question which already had
its effects in politics. Every thoughtful American of that day belonged
to one or another of several groups according to the view he took of two
things: slavery itself, and the body of law and usage that had grown up
about it. There were the abolitionists, who believed slavery to be so
utterly wrong that they were ready to go all lengths to get rid of it,
violating the Constitution, breaking the compromises, endangering the
Union. There were the Southern fire-eaters, who not only believed
slavery right but were similarly willing to go all lengths to defend and
extend it. There were the moderate men who made up the bulk of the two
great parties in the North, who believed slavery wrong but felt
themselves bound by the compromises of the Constitution which protected
it where it already existed and debarred from any method of attacking it
which might bring the Union into danger. There were the moderate men of
the South, Whigs and Democrats alike, who believed either that slavery
was right or at least that there was no better state possible for the
mass of the blacks, but who were yet devoted to the Union and respected
their constitutional obligations. Finally, there were men so constituted
that they could decline to take any thought whether slavery were right
or wrong, and