Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

1845-1853.] THE INSIDIOUS SECESSION CONTSPIRACY.

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hostile to Southern aims and policy, and destined to develop
into the Republican party.
3d. The Northern Democrats, including the Free-soil section, who had revolted in 1848, and the Hunker section, who
had acted with the pro-slavery Democrats of the South in
the same year.
4th. The "Liberty party," the Conscience-Whigs, and the
advanced Abolitionists.
The Whig victory in 1848 was a victory over a combination of the united South and a portion of the Democratic
party of the North. To defeat the Whigs in 1852 the Democrats must be one again. The Free-soilers, therefore, held the
balance of power, and it depended on them whether the next
President should be a Democrat or a Whig.
Two classes of men were hostile to reunion with the Freesoilers: the extreme Southern Democrats, and those at the
North who relied for success on a close alliance with them.
The Southern leaders of the radical type detested all who
had taken part in the Free-soil movement, reproached them
for the past, and mistrusted them as to the future. Moreover,
the programme of forcible secession had been by that time
arranged, and plotters of that conspiracy knew that the old
Free-soil Democrats, whatever concessions they might make
on other points, would be sure to resist them in that nefarious
design. On these and other accounts the embryo Secessionists desired no reconciliation with their Free-soil brethren.
A similar unwillingness to forget the past and come together
was exhibited by the Hunker Democrats, but on different
grounds. They wished no rivals, expecting, with the help
of the South, to recover and retain the supremacy in their
own part of the country. The Free-soil Democrats would,
no doubt, have been kept out in the cold had it been deemed
safe to throw them off. But this course was abandoned in
dread of another defeat. Meanwhile the old leaders of the
Free-soil movement engaged in strenuous efforts to bring
about a thorough and cordial reunion. Accused of selfish