Page:Review of A Political History of Slavery.djvu/3

 Rh Western men rather than the New Englanders—that receive our author's interest and attention.

Eighty pages of this work are given to the subject down to the presidential election of 1848. The omissions that we have cited on this period are, however, not without compensations. On the controversy touching the genesis of Abolitionism Mr. Smith goes back beyond Garrison or Lundy or Charles Osborne, and brings into view the work of John Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker who, it is stated (by an anachronistic misprint), was born in 1720 and who, "in 1732, at the age of twenty-six," published his essay on Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. The cases involving the maritime law and national security for slavery on the seas; the influence of the Quaker migration from Virginia and the Carolinas to the Northwest, and its subsequent influence on the antislavery cause; the legal struggles for the slave, especially in Ohio; and valuable references to Ohio politics and leaders—the treatment of these topics gives decided value to this part of the work.

The more valuable parts of Mr. Smith's work begin with the discussions on the Wilmot Proviso (whose origin he attributes to Judge Jacob R. Brinkerhoff, of Ohio), the compromises of 1850, and the exciting political history which follows. These are events within his recollection and experience. He approves the Whig conservatism of Clay, Webster, and Corwin as necessary to the saving of the Union, and he claims that much was gained for freedom by the compromises of 1850. Corwin is given large prominence, and considerable attention is given to his speeches, especially the one against the Mexican War in 1847 and that on the political issues of 1859. Corwin's policy of committing the Whig party in 1847 t0 opposition to territorial acquisition as a means of avoiding the necessity of taking a party stand on the Wilmot Proviso is brought out in interesting correspondence. The antislavery men of Massachusetts, it is stated, "hoped to follow Corwin, but they wanted him to be as radical as themselves"; and Giddings is reproved for demands on Corwin that would lead to the organization of a new party, and for demanding of Winthrop "security for the future" before voting for him for speaker in 1849.

A full, complete, and satisfactory presentation of the large subjects coming up in the decade before the war is not attempted. But the principal topics are brought into review, and much valuable and important material is suggested, though but few phases of the struggle are fully considered. The volume is strong on the organization of the Republican party, in showing that it was by no means a party of abolition; that in its fundamental principles it was opposed both to the extension of slavery and to interference with that institution in the states; that resistance to slavery extension was the single paramount issue by which it was sought to unite under one banner Free Democrats, radical and conservative antislavery Whigs, German-Americans, and the antislavery Know-nothings. When Douglas interpreted the Republican issues in 1856, calling for "no evasion and no cheating, no skulking or lowering of colors"—instead of