ABSTRACT
Both the Whig and the Democratic parties betrayed the insufficiency of their ideas by their behavior towards the problem of slavery. This chapter focuses on the effect which the institution of slavery was coming to have upon American politics because the increasing importance of slavery, and of the resulting anti-slavery agitation undergoes special consideration. The slavery question, when it could no longer be avoided, gradually separated the American people into five different political parties or factions- the Abolitionists, the Southern Democrats, the Northern Democrats, the Constitutional Unionists, and the Republicans. Each of these factions selected one of the several alternative methods of solution or evasion, to which the problem of negro slavery could be reduced, and each deserves its special consideration. The average Western American of Lincoln's generation was fundamentally a man who subordinated his intelligence to certain dominant practical interests and purposes.
