The Free Soil Party of Massachusetts cast in the presidential
election of 1848 only about 37,000 votes, but it included
among its supporters almost every man in the Commonwealth
old enough to take part in politics who has since acquired
any considerable national reputation. Charles Sumner who
had become known to the public as an orator and scholar by
three or four great orations, was just at the threshold of
his brilliant career. Charles Francis Adams, who had served
respectably but without great distinction, in each branch
of the Legislature, brought to the cause his inflexible courage,
his calm judgment, and the inspiration of his historic name.
John A. Andrew, then a young lawyer in Boston, afterward to
become illustrious as the greatest war Governor in the Union,
devoted to the cause an eloquence stimulant and inspiring
as a sermon of Paul. John G. Palfrey, then a Whig member
of Congress from the Middlesex District, discussed the great
issue in speeches singularly adapted to reach the understanding
and gratify the taste of the people of Massachusetts, and
in a series of essays whose vigor and compactness Junius might
have envied, and with a moral power which Junius could never
have reached.
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