I do not like slavery. There are very few you can find to resist it more strongly. If that makes me anAbolitionist, I cannot help it. But let me say to my northern Democratic friends, who areJeffersonianDemocrats, who make that their boast on every stump fromMaine toChicago, that no boast could be more glorious, for no one, in my judgment, be more glorious has ever breathed the breath of life, even among that great galaxy of worthies of revolutionary memory. I have always admired him. I have endeavored to imitate him; and now, if I have Abolitionism about me more than is due, I have come very honestly by it, for he taught me. He told me all about it, as he has told those Jefferson Democrats and Abolition men so often.
Speech about Thomas Jefferson as quoted inThe Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1998) byMerrill D. Peterson, p.171; Congressional Record, 1854, pp. 312-313[1]
It was believed by many at the time that some of the [moderate] Republican Senators that voted for acquittal [of Andrew Johnson] did so chiefly on account of their antipathy to the man who would succeed to the presidency in the event of the conviction of the [sitting] president. This man was Senator Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, President pro tempore of the Senate who as the law then stood, would have succeeded to the presidency in the event of a vacancy in the office from any cause. Senator Wade was an able man … He was a strong party man. He had no patience with those who claimed to be [Radical] Republicans and yet refused to abide by the decision of the majority of the party organization [as did Grimes, Johnson, Lincoln, Pratt, and Trumbull] … the sort of active and aggressive man that would be likely to make for himself enemies of men in his own organization who were afraid of his great power and influence, and jealous of him as a political rival. That some of his senatorial Republican associates should feel that the best service they could render their country would be to do all in their power to prevent such a man from being elevated to the Presidency … for while they knew he was an able man, they also knew that, according to his convictions of party duty and party obligations, he firmly believed he who served his party best served his country best…that he would have given the country an able administration is concurrent opinion of those who knew him best.
During theCivil War, one of the nation's leadingabolitionists wasRepublican SenatorHenry Wilson, ofMassachusetts, who would later serve as vice president duringPresident Grant's second term. In December 1861, Mr. Wilson introduced a bill to abolishslavery in the District. The measure met with parliamentary obstacles from the adamantly pro-slaveryDemocratic Party, whom Republicans in those days referred to as the 'Slave-ocrats'. Most Democrats in Congress having resigned in order to join theConfederate rebellion, Wilson's measure sailed through the Senate. The abolitionist senator responsible for outmaneuvering Democrat opposition was Ben Wade, theOhio Republican who six years later would have assumed the presidency had the bitterlyracist Democratic President,Andrew Johnson, been convicted during hisimpeachment trial. In the House of Representatives, Democrats delayed passage with a series of stalling tactics. Finally, the majority leader,Thaddeus Stevens, bulldozed over Democrat opposition by calling the House into a committee of the whole. He stopped all other business in the House until Democrats relented and allowed a vote on the bill. Stevens, ofPennsylvania, is best known for his 'forty acres and a mule' proposal. Overall, 99 percent of Republicans in Congress voted to free the slaves in theDistrict of Columbia, and 83 percent of Democrats voted to keep them in chains.
