As Republicans, the Free-Soilers proved the correctness and good sense of their position by bringing the great majority of the Northern people to their support.

But at the same time their position was a difficult one, for while they were an anti-slavery party and had set on foot constitutional opposition to the extension of slavery, their fidelity to the Constitution compelled them to admit the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law and of slavery in the States.

They aimed, of course, first to check the extension of slavery and then to efface it by gradual restriction and full compensation to slave-holders.

When they had carried the country in 1860, they found themselves face to face with a breaking Union and an impending war.

That many of them were seriously frightened, and, to avoid war and dissolution, would have made great concessions, cannot be questioned; but their controlling motive was to hold things together by any means, no matter how desperate, until they could get possession of the government.