They were committed by the logic of their party platform to protect the integrity of American national life and to consolidate its organization.

But the Whigs, almost as much as the Democrats, refused to take seriously the legal existence of slavery.
They shirked the problem whenever they could and for as long as they could; and they looked upon the men who persisted in raising it aloft as perverse fomenters of discord and trouble.

The truth is, of course, that both of the dominant parties were merely representing the prevailing attitude towards slavery of American public opinion.

That attitude was characterized chiefly by moral and intellectual cowardice.

Throughout the whole of the Middle Period the increasing importance of negro servitude was the ghost in the house of the American democracy.