Together with Sumner, Henry Wilson, and many others at the East, Whittier was working toward the growth of a political party, eventually to become one with the great party at the West where Abraham Lincoln’s “Lincoln-Stone protest” against the encroachment of the Slave Power had developed into his famous debates with Douglas upon slavery, under the guise of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and other measures. There had arisen in the country many forces which in different ways and places, but with the same object, had come to stand for opposition to the spread of slavery, and were assimilating. Forces moral, spiritual, political were uniting--unconsciously at first--for the great conflict under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln. * * * * * To Whittier’s insight political measures were to be the salvation of the country he loved and eventual destruction to the slavery he hated. To him therefore each man’s vote counted. While he was in the grocery store, or the post-office, or in some shop, that especial place became by power of the poet’s character and purpose the rendezvous of a political force that had for its object the turning of politics from chicanery and bribery into the might that dwells in an honest man’s vote wisely given. If the poet accepted men as he found them, it was because in them he found good. He never accepted evil in men or passed it by with indifference, but strove in some way to speak the word, or do the act which should turn the man to good. Politics led by Whittier in Amesbury was under that same leadership which by personal counsel as well as by published poem and word was so helpful in organizing the Republican party. None recognized more quickly than did Whittier that men all over the country were like men in Amesbury, no more intelligent, no more honest, no more progressive. And his poems to “Rouse the sleeping citizen; Summon out the might of men!” his written pleas for the right and appeals against oppression were made to just such men as those he daily met and talked with. None knew better than he did that suggestions and inspirations are in the air and hit one in the way of them. Whittier had a quality also accredited to Roosevelt--he went where things were. How he always managed to get there in his life of a recluse it is difficult to explain, except upon the principle that electricity travels a thousand miles as readily as one, and the poet’s perceptions were charged with spiritual electricity. Therefore these men whom he was daily meeting had something to say to him also, although often unconsciously; and his knowledge of their powers and possibilities, of how they looked at things, and how to reach their hearts gave to his “Songs of Freedom” a note of power that sent them ringing over the land.