ican 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
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