No political party can or ought to exist when one of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the right to worship God "according to the dictate of one's own conscience," or according to the creed of any religious denomination whatever.
Nevertheless, if a sect sets up its laws as binding above the State laws, wherever the two come in conflict this claim must be resisted and suppressed at whatever cost.
Up to the Mexican war there were a few out and out abolitionists, men who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections, from those for a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of the United States.
They were noisy but not numerous.

But the great majority of people at the North, where slavery did not exist, were opposed to the institution, and looked upon its existence in any part of the country as unfortunate.
They did not hold the States where slavery existed responsible for it; and believed that protection should be given to the right of property in slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the institution.

Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political party.

In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the Democratic party, and in others to the Whigs.

But with the inauguration of the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of Texas, "the inevitable conflict" commenced.
As the time for the Presidential election of 1856--the first at which I had the opportunity of voting--approached, party feeling began to run high.