Of the cities and large towns scarce any have contributed. Of the 90 and 9 in Boston all have gone astray but 2--I have not heard of our circular being read in one of them; still it may have been. Those societies who have contributed, I judge were least able to do so. FRANCIS JACKSON.[298] [298] Theodore Parker's _Scrap-book_, Boston Public Library. The political affiliations of underground helpers before 1840 were, necessarily, with one or the other of the old parties--the Whig or the Democratic. As the Whig party was predominantly Northern, and as its sentiments were more distinctly anti-slavery than those of its rival, it is fair to suppose that the small band of early abolitionists were, most of them, allied with that party.[299] The Missouri Compromise in 1820, one may surmise, enabled those that were wavering in their position to ally themselves with the party that was less likely to make demands in the interests of the slave power. In 1840 opportunity was given abolitionists to take independent political action by the nomination of a national Liberty ticket. At that time, and again in 1844, many underground operators voted for the candidates of the Liberty party, and subsequently for the Free Soil nominees.[300] [299] This view agrees with the testimony gathered by correspondence from surviving abolitionists. [300] This statement is based on a mass of correspondence. But it is not to be supposed that all friends of the fugitive joined the political movement against slavery. Many there were that regarded party action with disfavor, preferring the method of moral suasion. These persons belonged to the Quakers, or to the Garrisonian abolitionists. The Friends or Quakers refused as far as possible to countenance slavery, and when the political development of the abolition cause came they regretted it, and their yearly meetings withheld their official sanction, so far as known, from every political organization. Nevertheless, there were some members of the Society of Friends that were swept into the current, and became active supporters of the Liberty party.[301] The most noted and influential of these was the anti-slavery poet, Whittier.[302] When, in 1860, the Republican party nominated Lincoln, "a large majority of the Friends, at least in the North and West, voted for him."[303] [301] Professor A. C. Thomas on "The Society of Friends," in _American Church History_, Vol. XII, 1894, pp. 284, 285. [302] Oliver Johnson, _William Lloyd Garrison and His Times_, 1879, p. 322. [303] Professor A. C. Thomas, in _American Church History_, Vol. XII, p. 285.