It is true that this little party of brave men had increased their numbers at one time to sixty thousand voters. It, however, had now apparently reached its culminating point, and was no longer able to attract to itself and combine all the available elements at the North, capable of being marshaled against the growing and aggressive measures and aims of the slave power. There were many in the old Whig party known as Conscience-Whigs, and in the Democratic party known as Barnburners and Free Democrats, who were anti-slavery in sentiment and utterly opposed to the extension of the slave system to territory hitherto uncursed by its presence, but who nevertheless were not willing to join the Liberty party. It was held to be deficient in numbers and wanting in prestige. Its fate was the fate of all pioneers. The work it had been required to perform had exposed it to assaults from all sides, and it wore on its front the ugly marks of conflict. It was unpopular for its very fidelity to the cause of liberty and justice. No wonder that some of its members, such as Gerrit Smith, William Goodell, Beriah Green, and Julius Lemoyne refused to quit the old for the new. They felt that the Free-Soil party was a step backward, a lowering of the standard, that the people should come to them, not they to the people. . . . Events, however, overruled this reasoning. The conviction became general that the time had come for a new organization, which should embrace all who were in any manner opposed to slavery and the slave power, and this Buffalo Free-Soil convention was the result of that conviction. It is easy to say that this or that measure would have been wiser and better than the one adopted. But any measure is vindicated by its necessity and its results. It was impossible for the mountain to go to Mahomet, or for the Free-Soil element to go to the old Liberty party, so the latter went to the former.
96
In coming months and years, rank-and-file black abolitionists would take the lead in making the antiextentionist Republican Party a “Negro party.” They did so by helping to organize rallies for it, cheering on its candidates, and voting for Republicans wherever they could. Douglass, still committed to political abolition yet aware of its limitations, would eventually follow their lead.
