Opposition to slavery was, at last, respectable in politics.

For the first time, none of his party deprecated Seward's advanced utterances upon this question, and from August to November he freely voiced his opinions.

He believed that the conscience of the people was a better guide than individual ambitions, and he inspired them with lofty desires and filled them with sound principles of action.

Freedom is in harmony with our system of government and with the spirit of the age, and is, therefore, passive and quiescent.

Slavery is in conflict with that system, with justice, and with humanity, and is, therefore, organised, defensive, active, and perpetually aggressive.

Freedom insists on the emancipation and elevation of labour.

Slavery demands a soil moistened with tears and blood.

One of these parties, the party of slavery, regards disunion as among the means of defence and not always the last to be employed.

The other maintains the Union of the States, one and inseparable, now and forever, as the highest duty of the American people to themselves, to posterity, to mankind.

If the Free-soilers did not get office, they had demonstrated their strength, and exulted in having routed their adversaries.

I look upon my life, busy as it is, as a waste," he wrote, in 1847.

The question of limiting slavery excited the whole country, and one holding his views belonged in the centre of the struggle.

We are asked to compromise our principles," said John Van Buren.

The election of Taylor and Fillmore had fired the Southern heart with zeal to defend slavery.

In the midst of this intense southern feeling Henry Clay, from his place in the United States Senate, introduced the historic resolutions which bear his name, proposing an amicable adjustment of all questions growing out of the subject of…

That vision revealed border warfare, kindred converted into enemies, onerous taxes, death on the field and in the hospital, and conscription to maintain opposing forces.

A less fearless and determined nature must have been overwhelmed by the criticism, the censure, and the insulting sneers which this speech provoked.

Clay's compromises passed amidst the wildest outbursts of popular enthusiasm.

They appealed to a majority of both the great parties as a final settlement of the slavery question.

Some of them continued to avow their anti-slavery principles, but no one had the temerity to mention them in convention.

Men deemed it politic and prudent to affect to believe that the slavery question, which had threatened to disturb the national peace, was finally laid at rest.

But it was his misfortune to be an orator with jaundiced vision, who seemed not always to see that principles controlled oftener than rhetoric.

He was ready in debate, temperate in language, quick in the apprehension of parliamentary rules, and of phenomenal tact.

The unexcelled courtesy and grace of manner with which he dropped the measured and beautiful sentences that made him an orator, undoubtedly aided in obtaining the position to which his genius entitled him.

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.