By successful gerrymanders it had secured the lion's share of congressional districts. Above all it had intelligent leadership. The retirement of Senator Breese left Stephen A. Douglas the undisputed leader of the party. The dual party system in Illinois, as well as in the nation, was seriously threatened by the appearance of a third political organization with hostility to slavery as its cohesive force. The Liberty party polled its first vote in Illinois in the campaign of 1840, when its candidate for the presidency received 160 votes.[314] Four years later its total vote in Illinois was 3,469, a notable increase.[315] The distribution of these votes, however, is more noteworthy than their number, for in no county did the vote amount to more than thirty per cent of the total poll of all parties. The heaviest Liberty vote was in the northern counties. The votes cast in the central and southern parts of the State were indicative, for the most part, of a Quaker or New England element in the population.[316] As yet the older parties had no reason to fear for their prestige; but in 1848 the Liberty party gave place to the Free-Soil party, which developed unexpected strength in the presidential vote. It rallied anti-slavery elements by its cry of "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men!" and for the first time broke the serried ranks of the older parties. Van Buren, the candidate of the Free-Soilers, received a vote of 15,774, concentrated in the northeastern counties, but reaching formidable proportions in the counties of the northwest and west.[317] Of the older organizations, the Whig party seemed less affected, Taylor having received 53,047 votes, an increase of 7,519 over the Whig vote of 1844. The Democratic candidate, Cass, received only 56,300, an absolute decrease of 1,620. This was both an absolute and a relative decline, for the total voting population had increased by 24,459. Presumptive evidence points to a wholesale desertion of the party by men of strong anti-slavery convictions. Whither they had gone--whether into the ranks of Whigs or Free-Soilers,--concerned Democratic leaders less than the palpable fact that they had gone somewhere.