To a considerable extent it disappeared, but its disappearance was
that of one stream flowing into or uniting with another. The union of
the two currents extended, but did not intensify, the Anti-Slavery
sentiment of the country. It diluted it and really weakened
it. It brought about a crisis of great peril to the cause of
Anti-Slaveryism--in some respects the most critical through which it
was called upon to pass. Many of those attaching themselves to the
Republican party, as the new political organization was called, were
not in sympathy with Abolitionism. They were utterly opposed to
immediate emancipation; or, for that matter, to emancipation of any
kind. They wanted slavery to remain where it was, and were perfectly
willing that it should be undisturbed. They disliked the blacks, and
did not want to have them freed, fearing that if set at liberty they
would overrun what was then free soil.
The writer recollects hearing a prominent man in the new party, who
about that time was making a public speech, declare with great
emphasis that, "as for the niggers, they are where they ought to be."
The speaker on that occasion was one of many who belonged to the
_debris_ of the broken-up Whig party, and who drifted into
Republicanism because there was no other more attractive harbor to go
to.
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