The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

APPENDIX. 455
opinion concerning the wrongfulness of slavery, as to a practice con-
and that this
formable to the opinion which they already entertained ;
conversion was as much needed at the North as at the South, for the
representatives of both sections were found alike upholding the legal-
ized injustice, and the citizens of both sections were found alike con-
tinuing to sustain such representatives.
A connected political action being, therefore, the chief end of our
exhortations to the people at large, it appeared essential that we
should ourselves practice that which we urged upon others; and
that so long as abolitionists in general voted for slavery by voting for
those who would officially sustain it, so long there was little pros-
pect of the repeal of those unjust and cruel laws.
Hence, though I entertain a high respect for the general character of
President Van Buren, and a strong attachment to the primary politi-
cal principles avowed by the mass of his supporters, yet I came to
the resolution to support no candidate who should not be friendly to
the abrogation, in a just manner, of the constitutional and legal aid
given by the Union at large to the continuance of slavery ; and I
determined to unite with others, whether few or many, in acting as
we advised the whole people to act.
Yet I was not favorable to the organization of an independent
political party, embracing but the single avowed object of the repeal
of slave-making laws. I believed it to be impracticable to prevent
a party so organized from soon taking the complexion of one or the
other of two great political parties, which, perhaps, always exist,
and which seem to rise spontaneously from the infirmities of human
nature ; and I thought that the probable result would be an incorpora-
tion of the new party with the weaker of the pre-existing ones, and a
consequent injury to our cause from its association in the minds of
the majority of the people with principles to which they were adverse.
And though the Albany Convention did not declare a design to
extend a separate organization beyond the period of the pending
presidential election, yet I thought such an extension might be the
consequence of its action. And though its members avowed that
they did not intend to confine their efforts to a single question of
public policy, but they would favor the enjoyment by all of the
greatest degree of liberty which could exist in connection with just
laws ; yet I thought this declaration not sufficiently definite to avert
the apprehended danger. I therefore delayed replying to your com-