The Free-Soil party, hitherto a small organization, had sought to
make slavery the main issue in politics. Its watchword was "Free
soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." It is needless to
add that it was instantaneous in its opposition to the
Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Whigs at the moment enjoyed the greatest prestige, owing to
the association with them of such distinguished leaders as
Webster and Clay. In 1854, however, as a party they were dying,
and the very condition that had made success possible for the
Democrats made it impossible for the Whigs, because the latter
stood for positive ideas, and aimed to be national in reality and
not in the evasive Democratic sense of the term. For, as a
matter of fact, on analysis all the greater issues of the day
proved to be sectional. The Whigs would not, like the Democrats,
adopt a negative attitude toward these issues, nor would they
consent to become merely sectional. Yet at the moment negation
and sectionalism were the only alternatives, and between these
millstones the Whig organization was destined to be ground to
bits and to disappear after the next Presidential election.
Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had sought a desperate
outlet for their desire to be positive in politics and had
created a new party which during a few years was to seem a
reality and then vanish together with its parent.
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