It is as old as the Revolution,--as old as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin; but it is an idea neglected by both the great parties which have recently swayed the country.

No person is so hardy as to assert that the present Democratic party embodies this idea.

As a party, it has never sustained any measure for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia.

The claim to proprietorship in the principle of opposition to the extension of Slavery is equally vain.

Florida and Arkansas have both been admitted as States with slaveholding Constitutions, and the National Whig party made no opposition.

The question of the extension of Slavery was distinctly presented, on the application of Texas for admission into our Union, with a Constitution which not only established Slavery, but took from the Legislature all power to abolish it.

But, notwithstanding his earnest efforts, the measure was hurried through the House by the vote of every slaveholder present, Whig and Democrat.

The associations of the day on which this deed was done added to its character as a mockery of Human Rights.

I conclude, then, that the principle of opposition to the extension of Slavery, like that of opposition to its longer continuance under the Constitution, wherever the National Government is responsible for it, is not recognized by the…

None will say that this combination will oppose the Slave Power, of which their candidate is a component part.

It is to uphold and advance these principles, thus neglected by others, that we have come together, leaving the parties to which we have been respectively attached.

Now, in the course of human events, it has become our duty to dissolve the political bands which have hitherto bound us to the old organizations, and to assume a separate existence.

Let us, in the spirit of the fathers, pledge ourselves to sustain it with lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Our cause is holier than theirs, inasmuch as it is nobler to struggle for the freedom of others than for our own.

The love of Right, which is the animating principle of our movement, is higher than the love of Freedom.

Taking our place as a new party, we fulfil the desires of many good men, living and dead, who have longed to see the thraldom of the old organizations broken.

If a disciple of Christ has learned to value his political party more highly than he does truth and justice and mercy, it is surely time that his connection with it were broken off.

Let him learn to surrender party for moral principle....

Let all good men do this, and they will form a party by themselves, a party acting in the fear of God, and sustained by the arm of Omnipotence....

Let virtuous men, then, unite on the ground of universal moral principle, and the tyranny of party will be crushed.

The Gospel is never more truly or sublimely preached than when the politician is told that he, too, is bound by its laws, and communities, whether villages, towns, states, or nations, are summoned, like individuals, to obey its sacred…

If this be so, it does what is better, and what other organizations fail to do: it acknowledges those high principles which, like the great central light, vivify all, and without which all is dark and sterile.

The American people are intelligent and humane; they are not bulls, to be turned aside by shaking in their eyes a bit of red cloth, or whales, to be stopped by a tub.

We cannot sustain men who contribute votes to place the power and patronage of the highest offices in hands which may exercise them against Freedom.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.