Very naturally this universal reading of such a romance greatly inflamed the sentiment of antagonism to slavery and incidentally aroused something like hatred of the slaveholder though Mrs. Stowe had probably not intended that to be the effect of her written words. There were a dozen or a score of more or less inane novels put forward in answer to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" but their only effect was to intensify the interest in that work. Coming as it did upon the heels of the new and peculiarly offensive Fugitive Slave Law Mrs. Stowe's romance converted pretty nearly all the people of the North to the anti-slavery cause and hastened the growth of the anti-slavery party into formidable proportions. It awakened sentiment, and sentiment is always an immeasurably more potent factor in human affairs than mere intellectual conviction is. It enlisted in the anti-slavery cause every gentle and every rampant impulse of the people of the North. It rubbed out of multitudes of men's minds every consideration of constitutional restriction, every thought of states' rights, every dogma of the law and every decree of the courts. It quickly bred a new crusade against slavery. It everywhere stimulated the thought that slavery was a wrong for which the whole Nation was responsible and the extermination of which, at all costs, the Union was bound to accomplish as its first and highest duty. In brief, this novel bred a spirit of abolitionism such as the country had never before known. The time had not yet come when any political party could plant itself, with the smallest hope of success, upon a platform of openly avowed abolitionism. Those who were ready to advocate an aggressive political warfare upon the system of slavery where it legally existed and to insist upon its abolition by force of Federal enactment in contravention of the Constitution were still in a hopeless minority. They were opportunists in politics, however, and they saw and seized their opportunity. If they could not gain all that they desired they were ready to accept whatever might be accomplished in the direction of the end they sought. The Free-soil party presented itself to their minds as an easily available instrumentality. It is true that that party had expressly and with extreme circumspection disclaimed all purpose and all constitutional right to interfere with slavery in the states in which it legally existed. But the avowed antagonism of the party to the system of slavery rendered it a conveniently available agency for the execution of the will of those who desired that slavery should cease to be at all costs. All the abolitionists joined the party at once, in spite of its voluntary and to them offensive limitation of its activity to the purpose of preventing the extension of the slave system into new territories. On the other hand men by scores and hundreds of thousands throughout the North who would have bitterly resented the still opprobrious epithet of "abolitionists" eagerly