Chase. Instead of denouncing the
Constitution as "a league with death and hell," he claimed that it
was an Anti-Slavery document and should be so construed. As for the
Union, by his services in successfully managing the finances of the
country in its great crisis, he did as much to sustain the Union as
any other man of that time. To accuse him of hostility and infidelity
to the Union, is something that no one can do with impunity. In fact,
so clear and so clean, as well as so bold and striking, is the record
of Chase and his associates, beginning in 1840 and continuing down
until the last shackle was stricken from the last bondsman's limbs,
that even the shadow of the White House cannot obscure it.
Nor is Mr. Roosevelt happy in his illustration, when, in his
concluding arraignment of the Abolitionists, he seeks to discredit
them as an organization of impracticables by comparing them to the
political Prohibitionists of to-day. When the latter, if that time is
ever to be, shall become strong enough to rout one or both of the
existing main political parties, and, taking the control of the
Government in their hands, shall not only legally consign the liquor
traffic to its coffin, but nail it down with a constitutional
amendment, then Mr.
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