CW, 2:2–4
Seeking to buttress the declining fortunes of the Whig Party in face of the rising Free Soil Party, Lincoln attended the Massachusetts Whig convention that met on September 13 in Worcester, a hotbed of antislavery sentiment. Many former Whigs with strong abolitionist sentiments abandoned the party of Henry Clay for an unlikely coalition of former Democrats, abolitionists, and even some African Americans, including, briefly, Frederick Douglass. The party nominated the former one-term Democratic president Martin Van Buren for president and Charles Francis Adams for vice president. A report of Lincoln’s remarks, which appeared in a Boston newspaper, highlighted his drive to maintain the Whig Party as a bulwark against slavery and its expansion into the territories acquired as a result of the Mexican War. Lincoln exaggerated the level of antislavery sentiment in Illinois for his Massachusetts audience. He rightly warned that if the Free Soilers gained sufficient strength, it would be at the expense of Zachary Taylor and would put the much-hated Lewis Cass of Michigan into the White House, where he would do the bidding of the slave states. Back in Illinois at the beginning of November, he delivered a similar address at Lacon but offered a harsher assessment of abolitionists for their failure to recognize the political necessity of voting for Taylor as a way to avoid electing Cass.
. . . Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to make a platform or creed for a national party, to all parts of which all must consent and agree, when it was clearly the intention and the true philosophy of our government, that in Congress all opinions and principles should be represented, and that when the wisdom of all had been compared and united, the will of the majority should be carried out. On this ground he conceived (and the audience seemed to go with him) that General Taylor held correct, sound republican principles.
Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the States, saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the people of Massachusetts on this subject, except perhaps that they did not keep so constantly thinking about it. All agreed that slavery was an evil, but that we were not responsible for it and cannot affect it in States of this Union where we do not live. But, the question of the extension of slavery to new territories of this country, is a part of our responsibility and care, and is under our control. In opposition to this Mr. L. believed that the self named “Free Soil” party, was far behind the Whigs. Both parties opposed the extension. As he understood it the new party had no principle except this opposition. If their platform held any other, it was in such a general way that it was like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee peddler offered for sale, “large enough for any man, small enough for any boy.” They therefore had taken a position calculated to break down their single important declared object. They were working for the election of either Gen. Cass or Gen. Taylor.
The Speaker then went on to show, clearly and eloquently, the danger of extension of slavery, likely to result from the election of General Cass. To unite with those who annexed the new territory to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory seemed to him to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous. Suppose these gentlemen succeed in electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the extension of slavery to New Mexico and California, and Gen. Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and would not prohibit its restriction. But if Gen. Cass was elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of slavery would meet no check.
The “Free Soil” men in claiming that name indirectly attempted a deception, by implying the Whigs were not Free Soil men. In declaring that they would “do their duty and leave the consequences to God,” merely gave an excuse for taking a course that they were not able to maintain by a fair and full argument. To make this declaration did not show what their duty was. If it did we should have no use for judgment, we might as well be made without intellect, and when divine or human law does not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of finding out what it is by using our most intelligent judgment of the consequences. If there were divine law, or human law for voting for Martin Van Buren, or if a fair examination of the consequences and first reasoning would show that voting for him would bring about the ends they pretended to wish—then he would give up the argument. But since there was no fixed law on the subject, and since the whole probable result of their action would be an assistance in electing Gen. [Lewis] Cass, he must say that they were behind the Whigs in their advocacy of the freedom of the soil. . . .