platforms. The declaration of principles drawn up by Garrison in
1833 and adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society was of the
nature of a political platform. The duty of voting in furtherance
of the policy of emancipation was inculcated. No platform was
adopted for the first political campaign, that of 1840; but four
years later there was an elaborate party platform of twenty-one
resolutions. Many things had happened in the eleven years
intervening since the declaration of principles of the American
Anti-Slavery Society. In the earlier platform the freedom of the
slave appears as the primary object. That of the Liberty party
assumes the broad principle of human brotherhood as the
foundation for a democracy or a republic. It denies that the
party is organized merely to free the slave. Slaveholding as the
grossest form of despotism must indeed be attacked first, but the
aim of the party is to carry the principle of equal rights into
all social relations. It is not a sectional party nor a party
organized for a single purpose. "It is not a new party, nor a
third party, but it is the party of 1776, reviving the principles
of that memorable era, and striving to carry them into practical
application." The spirit of '76 rings, indeed, throughout the
document, which declares that it was understood at the time of
the Declaration and the Constitution that the existence of
slavery was in derogation of the principles of American liberty.
The implied faith of the Nation and the States was pledged to
remove this stain upon the national character. Some States had
nobly fulfilled that pledge; others shamelessly had neglected to
do so.

These principles are reasserted in succeeding platforms. The
later opponents of slavery in their principles and policies thus