At Worcester, in 1848, commenced the first strong movement, which, gaining new force at Buffalo, and sweeping the Free States, enrolled three hundred thousand electors in constitutional opposition to a hateful wrong. The occasion now requires a similar effort. Both the old parties, with apostasy greater than that which aroused our condemnation at that time, have trampled on the Declaration of Independence, and the most cherished sentiments of the Fathers of the Republic. Even liberty of speech is threatened. It is difficult to see how any person, loyal to Freedom, and desirous of guarding it by all constitutional means, can support the national candidates of either of these parties, without surrendering the cause he professes to have at heart. Let no man expect from me any such surrender. The two Conventions at Baltimore, by their recorded resolutions, have vied with each other in servility to Slavery. But I rejoice to believe that in both parties there are large numbers of good men who will scorn these professions. The respectable persistence in opposition to the Black Flag, which distinguished at least one of the Conventions, furnishes an earnest for the future, though Massachusetts can derive small encouragement from her delegates there. All her votes in that Convention were cast in favor of those declarations by which Slavery has received new safeguards and Freedom new restrictions. But these efforts are doomed to disappointment. In spite of the clamors of partisans and the assumptions of the Slave Power, there is one principle which must soon prevail. It cannot be too often declared; for it is an all-sufficient basis for our political position, and an answer also to the cry of "Sectionalism," by which the prejudices of the country are ignorantly and illogically directed against us. According to the true spirit of the Constitution and the sentiments of the Fathers, _Freedom_, and not Slavery, is _national_, while _Slavery_, and not Freedom, is _sectional_. Though this proposition commends itself at once, and is sustained by the history of the Constitution, yet both the great parties, under the influence of the Slave Power, have reversed the true application of its terms. A _National_ Whig is simply a Slavery Whig, and a _National_ Democrat is simply a Slavery Democrat, in contradistinction to all who regard Slavery as a _sectional_ institution, within the exclusive control of the States, and with which the Nation has nothing to do. In upholding Freedom everywhere under the _National_ Government, we oppose a pernicious _sectionalism_, which falsely calls itself _national_. All this will yet be seen and acknowledged.