Supporting the candidate and spitting on the platform became the expressive if inelegant watchword of many Northern Whigs, but for every Whig vote which this phrase kept to his party allegiance in the free States, it drove two over to the Democracy in the slave States.
Blaine describes the conflicting loyalties of Northern Whigs towards their candidate and platform.
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Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the year.
In all the revolted states, upon the testimony of your ablest generals, there is no safety to the property or lives of loyal men.
Such an opportunity would have been a menace to the public credit, and would have proved a constant source of corruption.
The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds.
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