[Slavery:] Address to the Democratic Electors of Massachusetts, from the State Committee appointed by the Democratic State Convention at Fitchburg, opposed to a Coalition with Free Soilers. [caption title]

—

---

In the U.S. Presidential election of 1852, committeemen of the Massachusetts Democratic State Convention opposed the abolition of slavery. They decried their party’s alignment with the Free Soil Party which fought the expansion of slavery in the western territories of the United States.

The writers remind Democrats of their party’s platform adopted in in June in Baltimore. That platform declared that “efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences.”¹

The Democratic committeemen argue:

“If we connect these declarations with the most recently revised edition of the Free Soil Platform, from which has been excluded the Buffalo concession, of not interfering with Slavery in the States where it exists, and the sweeping Abolition declaration substituted, that ‘the Slave power in this country must be destroyed, and the Fugitive Slave Law repealed;—that the new party is organized, not to aid, but to defeat the Democratic party, which is repudiated and renounced, as hopelessly corrupt, and utterly unworthy of confidence’; the reflection is forced upon us—what must have been ‘the tone and proceedings of the Convention of 1852,’ which could ‘strengthen the conviction’ of these Free Soilers, that the managers of such a body were not unworthy of confidence, but on the contrary were fit to be bailed as ‘THEIR BRETHREN AND ALLIES?’”

“In spite of the adoption of the Baltimore Platform, the Commonwealth was satisfied that the ‘tone and proceedings of the Democratic Convention of 1852, greatly strengthened the conviction that a very large portion of the Democrats of Massachusetts, are sound on the subject of slavery, and regard the Fugitive Slave Law with the absolute aversion which is felt for it by their brethren and allies of the Free Democracy.’ The adoption of the Baltimore Platform, therefore, does not weaken the confidence of Free Soilers in Coalition Democrats, one jot or tittle, provided they know their men, and hold the Coalition reins. ... FELLOW CITIZENS:—We earnestly seek the enlargement of the Democratic party in Massachusetts… It must not be demoralized to be enlarged. It must not be sectionalized, for the sake of sectional power. It must not be Abolitionized, for the sake of Abolition support.” (pp5–6 and 11)

Sold