Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/406

396 vantageously count, if it were not for those which exist in their own party. It is, perhaps, safest to conclude that the divisions existing in the two parties will counterbalance each other. Party ties have no doubt been greatly weakened generally, and in particular localities have been almost entirely destroyed.”

What he said about party disintegration was undoubtedly true. But that disintegration was far more advanced among the Whigs than among the Democrats. The Whigs had substantially lost their old programme, without uniting upon a substitute. The question of the day was to them only an element of division. The Northern anti-slavery Whigs, under the leadership of such men as Seward, remained in the party hoping to win the mastery of it. But that would have driven away the Southern Whigs, and thus rendered the existence of the party as a “national organization” in the geographical sense of the term impossible. Under the circumstances then existing, an anti-slavery party could only be a sectional party. To retain the Southern Whigs in the organization required concessions to slavery of which the compromise of 1850 might be regarded as the minimum. As to the vitality of the Whig party in its national character, the question was whether the Northern Whigs would accept and support the compromise in good faith. No doubt, Clay's prestige at the North as well as at the South, Webster's authority with his followers, and still more