influence to a new one that was founded and constructed on
Anti-Slavery lines, the Abolitionists, in Mr. Roosevelt's opinion,
"committed a political crime."

Now, for what did those parties stand in 1840? Who were their
presidential candidates in that year? Martin Van Buren was the
candidate of the Democrats. He had been for eight years in the offices
of Vice-President and President, and in that time, in the opinion of
the Anti-Slavery people of the country, had shown himself to be a
facile instrument in the hands of the slaveholders. He was what the
Abolitionists described as a "doughface"--a Northern man with Southern
principles. As presiding officer he gave the casting vote in the
Senate for the bill that excluded Anti-Slavery matter from the United
States mails, a bill justly regarded as one of the greatest outrages
ever perpetrated in a free country, and as holding a place by the
side of the Fugitive Slave Law. True, he afterwards--this was in
1848,--like Saul of Tarsus, saw a new light and announced himself as a
Free Soiler. Then the Abolitionists, with what must always be regarded
as an extraordinary concession to partisan policy, cast aside their
prejudices and gave him their support. Yet Mr. Roosevelt charges them
with being indifferent to the demands of political expediency.

General William Henry Harrison, candidate of the Whigs, was a
Virginian by birth and training, and an inveterate pro-slavery man.
When Governor of the Territory of Indiana, he presided over a
convention that met for the purpose of favoring, notwithstanding the
prohibition in the Ordinance of '87, the introduction of slavery in
that Territory.

These were the men between whom the old parties gave the Abolitionists