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dollars and cents; that the Almighty has drawn a line across the continent, on one side of which labor — the cultivation of the soil-must always be performed by slaves.
It would be claimed that we, like him, do not care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.
Had we made him our candidate and given him a great majority, we should never have heard an end of declarations by him that we had indorsed all these dogmas.
To a Kansas friend he wrote on May 14, 1859:
You will probably adopt resolutions in the nature of a platform.
I think the only temptation will be to lower the Republican standard in order to gather recruits.
In my judgment, such a step would be a serious mistake, and open a gap through which more would pass out than pass in. And this would be the same whether the letting down should be in deference to Douglasism, or to the Southern opposition element; either would surrender the object of the Republican organization — the preventing of the spread and nationalization of slavery.. Let a union be attempted on the basis of ignoring the slavery question, and magnifying other questions which the people are just now not caring about, and it will result in gaining no single electoral vote in the South, and losing every one in the North.
To
Schuyler Colfax (afterward
Vice-President) he said in a letter dated July 6, 1859:
My main object in such conversation would be to hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and particularly for the contest of 1860.
The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to ‘platform’ for something which will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere, and especially in a national convention.
As instances: the movement against foreigners in Massahlusetts;
