64

216 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

to make it a thunderbolt. It is true the Liberty party, a political organization,
had been in existence since 1840, when it cast seven thousand votes for
James G. Birney, a former slaveholder, but who in obedience to an enlightened
conscience, had nobly emancipated his slaves, and was now devoting
his time and talents to the overthrow of slavery. It is true that this little party
of brave men had increased their numbers at one time to sixty thousand voters.
It, however, had now apparently reached its culminating point, and was
no longer able to attract to itself and combine all the available elements at
the North, capable of being marshaled against the growing and aggressive
measures and aims of the slave power. There were many in the old Whig
party known as Conscience-Whigs, and in the Democratic party known as
Bamburners and Free Democrats, who were anti-slavery in sentiment and
utterly opposed to the extension of the slave system to territory hitherto
uncursed by its presence, but who nevertheless were not willing to join the
Liberty party. It was held to be deficient in numbers and wanting in prestige.
Its fate was the fate of all pioneers. The work it had been required to perfom
had exposed it to assaults from all sides, and it wore on its front the ugly
marks of conflict. It was unpopular for its very fidelity to the cause of liberty
and justice. No wonder that some of its members. such as Gerrit Smith,
William Goodell, Beriah Green, and Julius LeMoyne refused to quit the old
for the new. They felt that the Free-Soil party was a step backward, a lowering
of the standard, that the people should come to them, not they to the
people. The party which had been good enough for them ought to be good
enough for all others . Events, however, over-ruled this reasoning. The conviction
became general that the time had come for a new organization, which
should embrace all who were in any manner opposed to slavery and the slave
power, and this Buffalo Free-Soil convention was the result of that conviction.
It is easy to say that this or that measure would have been wiser and
better than the one adopted. But any measure is vindicated by its necessity
and its results. It was impossible for the mountain to go to Mahomet, or for
the Free-Soil element to go to the old Liberty party, so the latter went to the
former. "All is well that ends well." This Buffalo convention of free-soilers.
however low was their standard, did lay the foundation of a grand superstructure.
It was a powerful link in the chain of events by which the slave
system has been abolished, the slave emancipated, and the country saved
from dismemberment.

It is nothing against the actors in this new movement that they did not
see the end from the beginning; that they did not at first take the high ground
that further on in the conflict their successors felt themselves called upon to