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208 T. W. Davenport. of that party four years before, while the increase of the Democratic vote rose to 381,312 and that of the Whigs to 25,838, or about one-fifteenth as much. There were good reasons for the change, however, and Mr. Greeley, while not giving them in causative terms, sums up the matter by saying, "whatever else the election might have meant, there was no doubt that the popular verdict was against slavery agitation and in favor of maintaining the com- promise of 1850. ' ' On the face of things, there was no slavery question between the two great parties that year. The terri- torial question had been settled if law or compromise could settle anything. Both parties had solemnly resolved in favor of maintaining the compromise of 1850, and had as em- phatically pledged themselves against any form of agitation, in or out of Congress. And the candidates had also given personal pledges to the same effect. But it was well known that the great Northern Whig leaders, while uniting in the compromise for the sake of peace with the Southern brethren, had not abated a jot or tittle of their anti-slavery sentiments ; besides, Mr. Seward, then the acknowledged leader of the Northern wing of the Whig party, was the promulgator of the irrepressible conflict doctrine and its remedy the abolition of slavery, neither of which many thousands of Whigs took stock m. And for confirmation of their opinion, they pointed back to the time when the two sections of the Union dwelt together in harmony by attending each to its own local affairs, and now that the territorial question was out of the way, they could see no reason why there might not be a repetition of the good old times and a long era of good feeling. Such people could not understand why a freesoiler or abolitionist could not "stop his yawp" and quit helping runaway "nig- gers" as easily as a man could put on or off his coat. To say that such people are dullards and that the class is nu- merous, might be pungent, but it does not bring out the fact that human beings do not see the truth until their eyes are opened and turned towards the light, and that the predomi- nance of generous impulses is effected only after many trials