" He felt it to be fair and right that he should
receive the votes of all anti-slavery men; and ultimately he did, with
the exception only of the thorough-going Abolitionists.
It was not so very long since he had spoken of the Abolitionist leaders
as "friends;" but they did not reciprocate the feeling, nor indeed could
reasonably be expected to do so, or to vote the Republican ticket. They
were even less willing to vote it with Lincoln at the head of it than if
Seward had been there.[109] But Republicanism itself under any leader
was distinctly at odds with their views; for when they said
"_abolition_" they meant accurately what they said, and abolition
certainly was impossible under the Constitution. The Republicans, and
Lincoln personally, with equal directness acknowledged the supremacy of
the Constitution. Lincoln, therefore, plainly asserted a policy which
the Abolitionists equally plainly condemned. In their eyes, to be a
party to a contract maintaining slavery throughout a third of a
continent was only a trifle less criminal than aiding to extend it over
another third. Yet it should be said that the Abolitionists were not all
of one mind, and some voted the Republican ticket as being at least a
step in the right direction. Joshua R. Giddings was a member of the
Republican Convention which nominated Lincoln. But Wendell Phillips,
always an extremist among extremists, published an article entitled
"Abraham Lincoln, the Slave-hound of Illinois," whereof the keynote was
struck in this introductory sentence: "We gibbet a Northern hound
to-day, side by side with the infamous Mason of Virginia.
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