that “the niggers are just where they ought to be.”  All this, however, does not prove that the third-party people were not the real forerunners and founders of the Republican party.  They certainly helped to break up the old organizations, crushing them in whole or part.  They supplied a contingent of trained and desperately earnest workers, their hearts being enlisted as well as their hands.  And what was of still greater consequence, they furnished an issue, and one that was very much alive, around which the detached fragments of the old parties could collect and unite.  Their share in the composition and development of the new party can be illustrated.  Out in our great midland valley two rivers—­the Missouri and the Mississippi—­meet and mingle their waters.  The Missouri, although the larger stream, after the junction is heard of no more; but being charged with a greater supply of sedimentary matter, gives its color to the combined flood of the assimilated waters.  Abolitionism was merged in Republicanism.  It was no longer spoken of as a separate element, but from the beginning it gave color and character to the combination.  The whole compound was Abolitionized.

It was not, indeed, the voting strength, although this was considerable, that the Abolitionists brought to the Republican organization, that made them the real progenitors of that party.  It is possible that the other constituents entering into it, which were drawn from the Anti-Slavery Whigs, the “Anti-Nebraska” Democrats, the “Barnburner” Democrats of New York, the “Know-Nothings,” etc., numbered more in the aggregate than the Abolitionists it included; but it was not so much the number of votes the Abolitionists contributed that made them the chief creators of the Republican party, as it was their working and fighting ability.  They had undergone a thorough training.  For nearly twenty years they had been in the field in active service.  For the whole of that time they had been exposed to pro-slavery mobbing and almost every kind of persecution.  They had to conquer every foot of ground they occupied.  They had done an immense amount of invaluable preparatory work.  To deny to such people a liberal share of the credit for results accomplished, would be as reasonable as to say that men who clear the land, plough the ground, and sow the seed, because others may help to gather the harvest, have nothing to do with raising the crop.  But for the pioneer work of the Abolitionists there would have been no Republican party.

There had been Anti-Slavery people in this country before the Abolitionists—­conscientious, zealous, intelligent—­but somehow they lacked the ability, in the language of the pugilists, to “put up a winning fight.”  They had been brushed aside or trampled under foot.  Not so with the Abolitionists.  They had learned all the tricks of the enemy.  They were not afraid of opposition.  They knew how to give blows as well as to take them.  The result was that from the time they organized for separate political action in 1840, they had made steady progress, although this seemed for a period to be discouragingly slow.  It was only a question of time when, if there had been no Republican party, they would have succeeded in abolishing slavery without its assistance.