been so accounted and treated by the man who more than any other was
devoted to the abolition of slavery.

But the whole mental and moral frame of the man precluded such
liberality of treatment of opponents. They had rejected his way, which
was the only true way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When a
moral idea which has been the subject of widespread agitation, and has
thereby gained a numerous following, reaches out, as reach out it must,
sooner or later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic like
ours, do so naturally and necessarily through political action--along
the lines of an organized party movement. The Liberty party formation
was the product of this strong tendency in America. Premature it
possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural. Now every political
party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple
fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties
depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest
but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions.
One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and
multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks
to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There
will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that
will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas
or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to
the main idea and interest.

Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political
parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and
that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.
Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe
strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the
moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea
of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by
the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the
political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the
States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders
placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national
issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia,
i