But the Whigs kept up the fight. The issues were joined, and it was too late to change front. The real question in dispute was that of annexation, and the election of Polk was certain to secure it, and to involve the nation in war. Clay was unquestionably right in saying that annexation and war were identical; and, although on the slavery question he might be feared as a compromiser, there was no reason to doubt that, if elected, he would vigorously resist the annexation scheme, except upon conditions already stated, which could not fail to defeat it as a present measure and avoid the calamities of war. I was inexpressibly disappointed and grieved by his letter; but I agreed with Cassius M. Clay, that opposition to annexation except "with the common consent of the Union" was practically absolute opposition, and I therefore kept up the fight in which I had enlisted in the beginning and made my first venture as a stump speaker. I cared little about the old party issues. I had outgrown the teachings of the Whigs on the subject of protection, and especially their pet dogma of "the higher the duty the lower the price of the protected article." As to a national bank, I followed Webster, who had pronounced it "an obsolete idea"; and I totally repudiated the land policy of the Whigs, having at that early day espoused the principle that the public lands should cease to be a source of revenue, and be granted in small homesteads to the landless poor for actual settlement and tillage. But on the subject of slavery, though it had escaped my attention in the hurrah of 1840, I was thoroughly aroused. This came of my Quaker training, the speeches of Adams and Giddings, the anti-slavery newspapers, and the writings of Dr. Channing, all of which I had been reading with profound interest since the Harrison Campaign. Being perfectly sure that annexation would lead to slavery-extension and war, I thought it my clear and unhesitating duty to resist the election of Polk with all my might. This I did to the end, and in doing it I employed substantially the same arguments on which I justified my separation from the Whigs four years later.