it, is as absurd as to call Prohibitionists successful if, after
countless efforts totally to prohibit the liquor traffic, and
after savage denunciations of those who try to regulate it, they
should then turn round and form a comparatively insignificant
portion of a victorious high-license party. The men who took a
great and effective part in the fight against slavery were the men
who remained with their respective parties."

No word of praise or approval has Mr. Roosevelt for the men and
women--for representatives of both sexes were active sharers in the
work performed--who inaugurated, and for a long period carried
forward, the movement that led up to the overthrow of African slavery
in this country. He has no encomiums to bestow on those same men and
women for the protracted and exhausting labors they performed, the
dangers they encountered, the insults they endured, the sacrifices
they submitted to, the discouragements they confronted in many ways
and forms in prosecuting their arduous undertaking. On the contrary,
he has only bitter words of condemnation. In his estimation, and
according to his dogmatic utterance, they were criminals--political
criminals. His words make it very manifest that, if Mr. Roosevelt had
been a voter in 1840, he would not have been an Abolitionist. He would
not have been one of that devoted little band of political
philanthropists who went out, like David of old, to do battle with one
of the giant abuses of the time, and who found in the voter's ballot a
missile that they used with deadly effect. On the contrary, he would
have enrolled himself among their adversaries and assailants, becoming
a member--because it is impossible to think of Theodore Roosevelt as a
non-partisan--of one of the leading political parties of the day.
There were but two of them--the Whigs and the Democrats. In failing to
support one or the other of these parties, and giving their votes and