Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/226

 202 T. W. Davenport. were continually trying to harmonize freedom and slavery in the government and its own diverse partisan elements, with the result of inclining one way and the other and thus giving offense to both interests. Mr. Greeley wrote in his "Con- flict/' volume I, page 246: "The dissolution of the Whig party, commenced by the imposition of the Southern platform on its national convention of 1852, was consummated by the eager participation of most of its Southern members of Con- gress in the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise by the passage of the Nebraska Bill." In fact, the dissolution com- menced before, for the party had been weighed in the Southern balance and been found wanting. Though its Northern leaders might acquiesce in slavery extension wars, the incipience of which they had opposed, and compromises of territorial parti- tion for the sake of the Union, they were at heart disgusted with such necessities. Mr. Lincoln might say, "We will return to our Southern brethren their fugitive slaves and let them manage their peculiar institution in their own way at home, for so it is written in the bond," but the bitterness of soul produced by such an admission he must ease by the assurance that "we will go no further; we will oppose its extension, and declare our opinion that if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Mr. Webster might oppose the application of the Wilmot Proviso to New Mexico as wholly unnecessary and tending to give needless offense to the Southern people, but he did not neglect to say, ' ' Sir, wherever there is a substantial good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be pre- vented from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery." A party with such elements could not long continue to serve the Southern ultras, and yet they were not strong enough to fix it as an anti-extension party. The house was divided against itself and could not stand. The Democratic party, on the other hand, was more to their liking and continued longer in the service. Its great leaders were Southern men and slave-holders and, though at the beginning bore witness to the sin and shame of slavery, they were so devoted to the doctrine