Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[97] of the slaveocracy, and the duties and delinquencies of the Whig party. Here indeed was taken the first real political anti-slavery stand; and here, in view of the subserviency of prominent Whigs to Southern rule, was inaugurated the intrepid Free-soil party, whose leading policy was free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, and opposition to the extension of slavery and of the slaveholding power. As the South became more and more intent on domination, the Whig party yielded more and more to its arrogant demands, and, in the national convention held in Philadelphia on the first day of June, united with the advocates of slavery in the nomination of Zachary Taylor — a slaveholder, and known to be adverse to the Wilmot Proviso — for the presidential chair. Henry Wilson and Charles Allen, delegates from this State, denounced the action of the body; and returning home held with their associates, in the city of Worcester, on the 28th of June, a grand mass-meeting, over which Charles Francis Adams presided. Able speeches were made, calling for a union of men of all parties to resist the aggression of the slaveholding power. Mr. Sumner here came forward, and, in a speech of signal force and earnestness, announced in these words his separation from the Whig party:

They [referring to Mr. Giddings and Mr. Adams, who