From that time, with occasional backsets,
Mr. Roosevelt's "political criminals" went steadily forward until they
mastered the situation. From the first, they were a power in the land,
causing the older parties to quake, Belshazzar-like, at sight of their
writing on the wall.
But according to Mr. Roosevelt, the men of the Liberty-Free-Soil party
had no share in fathering and nurturing the Republican party, to which
he assigns all the credit for crushing slavery. Says he, "The Liberty
party was not in any sense the precursor of the Republican party,
which was based as much on expediency as on abstract right." It is
very true that many Republicans, especially in the earlier days, were
neither Abolitionists nor Anti-Slavery people. A good many of them,
like Abraham Lincoln, were sentimentally adverse to slavery, but under
existing conditions did not want it disturbed. Many of them, having
broken loose from the old parties, had no other place of shelter and
cared nothing for slavery one way or the other, some being of the
opinion of one of the new party leaders whom the writer hereof heard
declare that "the niggers are just where they ought to be.
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