grew up in the attempt to check the endeavors of the slaveholders to extend slave territory; it eventually supplanted the Whig party, which was never more than a party of opposition. Although it included all those who, for various reasons, were opposed to the Democrats, the Whig party never had strong and uniting principles of its own.
Despite the fact that there were Free Soil Democrats, the Democratic party had become the party of the South and of slavery, even at this time, 1840-1850. True it was that in the Whig party was to be found the only effective opposition to the extension of slavery, but many of its leaders were so anxious to conciliate sentiment among pro-slavery Northerners that a new party with firmer principles was inevitable. In the movement for such a party, Greeley and the Tribune rapidly became leaders.
So excellent a political authority as James G. Blaine gives credit to Greeley for having a national influence as early as 1848. He says that Seward's influence, backed by the organizing skill of Thurlow Weed and the editorial power of Horace Greeley, was responsible for the election of General Taylor, and adds, "Perhaps in no other national election did three men so completely control the result."[1]
"There were many other journals in both the North and the South," says another writer, "but there was only one Tribune in the entire country."[2]
The weekly Tribune had become the great anti-slavery journal of the period, and "went into almost every parsonage, college, and farmer's home in the Northern states." It was "the spokesman of the most numerous
