negative protest against the
slavery party. Real friends of emancipation must not be content with
protests. They must act wisely and efficiently. "For myself," he
declared, "I shall cast my suffrage for General Taylor and Millard
Fillmore, freely and conscientiously, on precisely the same grounds on
which I have hitherto voted."[382]

[Footnote 382: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 77.]

As in former presidential years, each party had its flags and banners,
its drums and cannon, its bewildering variety of inscriptions and
mottoes, and its multitude of speakers charging and countercharging
inconsistencies and maladministration. The Whigs accused Cass with
having printed two biographies, one for the South, in which he
appeared as a slavery extensionist, and one for the North, in which he
figured as a Wilmot Provisoist. To this accusation, Democrats retorted
that the Whigs opposed annexation in the North and favoured it in the
South; denounced the war and nominated its leading general; voted down
the Wilmot Proviso in June, and upheld it in July.

In New York, New England, and in some parts of the West, the clear,
comprehensive, ringing platform of the anti-slavery party had fixed
the issue. Audiences became restless if asked to listen to arguments
upon other topics. Opposition to slavery was, at last, respectable in
politics. For the first time, none of his party deprecated Seward's
advanced utterances upon this question, and from August to November he
freely voiced his opinions. The series of professional achievements
which began with the Freeman case was still in progress; but he laid
them aside that he might pass through his own State into New England,
and from thence through New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, into Ohio,
where the result, as shown by the October election, was to be very
close.

Seward was now in the fulness of his intellectual power. There was
nothing sensational, nothing unfit in his speeches. He believed that
the conscience of the people was a better guide than individual
ambitions, and he inspired them with lofty desires and filled them
with sound principles of action. "There are two antagonistic elements
of society in America," said he, in his speech at Cleveland, "freedom
and slavery. Freedom is in harmony with our system of government and
with the spirit of the age, and is, therefore, passive and quiescent.
Slavery is in conflict with that system, with justice, and with
human