Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/122

110 from executive influence, and ready to prove it when enacted by that body." General Cass had written the celebrated "Nicholson Letter," in which he declared that Congress had no constitutional power to enact the Proviso. But so anxious were the Democrats of the North to assume an anti-slavery aspect,—continues Mr Chase,—that "Notwithstanding this letter, many of his friends in the free States persisted in asserting that he would not, if elected, veto the Proviso; many also insisted that he regarded slavery as excluded from the territories by the Mexican laws still in force; while others maintained that he regarded slavery as an institution of positive law, and Congress as constitutionally incompetent to enact such law, and that therefore it was impossible for slavery to get into the territories, whether Mexican law was in force or not."

This, says Mr Chase, was the Whig argument:— "Prohibition is essential to the certain exclusion of slavery from the territories. If the Democratic candidate shall be elected, prohibition is impossible, for the veto will be used: if the Whig candidate shall be elected, prohibition is certain, provided you elect a Congress who will carry out your will. Vote, therefore, for the Whigs."

Such was the general argument of the Whig party. Let us see what it was in Massachusetts in special. Here I have documentary evidence. This is the statement of the Whig Convention at Worcester in 1848, published shortly before the election;—

"We understand the Whig party to be committed in favour of the principles contained in the ordinance of 1787, the prohibition of slavery in territory now free, and of its abolition wherever it can be constitutionally effected."

They professed to aim at the same thing which the free soil party aimed at, only the work must be done by the old Whig organization. Free soil cloth must be manufactured, but it must be woven in the old Whig mill, with the old Whig machinery, and by the Whig weavers. See what the Convention says of the Democratic party:—