I admired him for his great intellectual qualities, but I do not wonder that the people of the United States did not choose him for President.

He was, perhaps, the greatest man of intellectual force of his time, but he had faults which the people could not overlook.

I felt that the emotion of such a man as Corwin was the highest possible compliment to the memory of Daniel Webster.

I shouted for Harrison in the campaign of 1840.

Clay was a candidate for President, but I then made my first political speech to a popular audience and cast my first vote.

The hostility to slavery had grown chiefly out of the acquisition of Texas as a slave state.

I was classed as a conservative Whig, and heartily supported the compromise measures of 1850, not upon their merits, but as the best solution of dangerous sectional divisions.

The clear and specific indorsement of the compromise measures, though supported by a great majority, divided the Whig party and led to the election of Franklin Pierce.

The Democratic party more emphatically denounces any renewal in Congress, or out of it, of the agitation of the slavery question under whatever name, shape or color, the attempt may be made.

It would seem that under these platforms both parties were committed to acquiescence in existing laws upon the subject of slavery, and to a resistance of all measures to change or modify them.

Yet, as will appear hereafter, the leaders of the 33rd Congress of both parties, and mainly on sectional lines, openly and flagrantly violated the pledges of their party, and renewed a contest that was only closed by the most destructive…

It was the general expectation of the framers of the constitution that under its provisions slavery would be gradually abolished by the acts of the several states where it was recognized.

The first great controversy that grew out of slavery was whether Missouri should be admitted into the Union as a slave state, and whether slavery should exist in the western territories.

Slavery was thus forever prohibited within the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

The convention providing for the admission of California expressly stipulated by a unanimous vote that slavery should be forever prohibited in that state.

The act organizing the Territory of Utah, lying entirely north of the 37th degree of latitude, contains no provision recognizing the right of the people of that territory to permit slavery within its borders.

It re-opened, in the most dangerous form, the struggle between freedom and slavery in the western territories, and was the congressional beginning of the contest which culminated in the War of the Rebellion.

All who voted for the bill were either refused a nomination or were defeated by the people at the polls.

I had carefully observed the progress of the bill, had read the arguments for and against it, and was strongly convinced that it was the duty of every patriotic citizen to oppose its provisions.

The firm resolve was declared by the state convention of Ohio, composed of men of all parties, that the institution of slavery should gain no advantage by this act of perfidy.

With this feeling there ran current a conviction that the measure adopted was forced by southern domination, and yielded to by ambitious northern dough- faces anxious to obtain southern support.

I believe that a feeling did then prevail with many in the south, that they were superior to men of the north, that one southern man could whip four Yankees, that their institution of slavery naturally produced among the masters, men of…

Whether such a feeling did exist or not, it was apparent that the political leaders in the south were, as a rule, men of greater experience, were longer retained in the service of their constituents, and held higher public positions than…

There had been growing all over the north, especially in the minds of religious people, a conviction that slavery was wrong.

I worked hard that winter, for hard work, I thought, was the way to fortune.