Even at that early moment, a rather
slow boy felt dimly conscious that he might meet some personal
difficulties in trying to reconcile sixteenth-century principles
and eighteenth-century statesmanship with late nineteenth-century
party organization. The first vague sense of feeling an unknown
living obstacle in the dark came in 185l.
The Free Soil conclave in Mount Vernon Street belonged, as
already said, to the statesman class, and, like Daniel Webster,
had nothing to do with machinery. Websters or Sewards depended on
others for machine work and money -- on Peter Harveys and Thurlow
Weeds, who spent their lives in it, took most of the abuse, and
asked no reward. Almost without knowing it, the subordinates
ousted their employers and created a machine which no one but
themselves could run. In 1850 things had not quite reached that
point. The men who ran the small Free Soil machine were still
modest, though they became famous enough in their own right.
Henry Wilson, John B. Alley, Anson Burlingame, and the other
managers, negotiated a bargain with the Massachusetts Democrats
giving the State to the Democrats and a seat in the Senate to the
Free Soilers. With this bargain Mr. Adams and his statesman
friends would have nothing to do, for such a coalition was in
their eyes much like jockeys selling a race. They did not care to
take office as pay for votes sold to pro-slavery Democrats.
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