There
will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that
will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas
or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to
the main idea and interest.
Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political
parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and
that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.
Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe
strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the
moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea
of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by
the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the
political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the
States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders
placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national
issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia,
in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas,
for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political
power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform. These
leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its
connection with the National Government.
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