ticians who have no fixed principles and aims. Then the assaults of the Liberty party began to tell, for they seemed unreasonable no longer. No more Democratic anti-annexation men would come to him, for they did not know whether he could be trusted. While a large majority of the anti-slavery Whigs remained with their party, they felt themselves reduced to an embarrassed defensive. Their enthusiasm was chilled, and their ability to make converts gone. The number of anti-slavery Whigs who left their party, and ranged themselves under Birney's banners, was comparatively small, but large enough to turn the scale.
The effect of the “Alabama letter” became so apparent that Clay, in the course of the campaign, tried to explain again and again, and to return to his first position; but in vain. The spell was broken. As Horace Greeley expressed it, the previous hold of his advocates on the moral convictions of the more considerate and conscientious voters of the Free States was irretrievably gone. The Whigs did, indeed, not give up their efforts. They continued their displays of external enthusiasm, although in a far less hopeful mood. They called Cassius M. Clay, then in the first bloom of his fame as an anti-slavery champion, from meeting to meeting, to explain the true status and bearing of the Texas question from his point of view. All in vain. Washington Hunt wrote to Thurlow Weed: “We had the abolitionists in a good way, but Mr. Clay seems determined that they shall not
