Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.  Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe strictly these limitations in its aims and issues.  Accordingly when the moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by the National Constitution.  Slavery within the States lay outside of the political boundaries of the general Government.  Slavery within the States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national issues.  But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia, in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas, for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform.  These leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its connection with the National Government.  Their aim was to destroy the evil by cutting this connection through which it drew its blood and nerve supplies.  They planted themselves upon the anti-slavery character of the Constitution, believing that it “does not sanction nor nationalize slavery but condemns and localizes it.”

This last position of the Liberty party leaders struck Garrison as a kind of mental and moral enormity.  At it and its authors, the anti-slavery Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious.  Here is a specimen of his chain lightning:  “We have a very poor opinion of the intelligence of any man, and very great distrust of his candor or honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery compromise was made between the North and the South, at the adoption of the Constitution.  We cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain away the meaning of language, the design of which as a matter of practice, and the adoption of which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and clearly understood by the contracting parties.  The truth is the misnamed ‘Liberty party’ is under the control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and crafty leaders as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and no other proof of this assertion is needed than their unblushing denial of the great object of the national compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of the colored population of the United States.  Their new interpretations of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil war.”  All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.