Far and away the most potential member and leader of the political Abolitionists was Salmon P. Chase. Instead of denouncing the Constitution as "a league with death and hell," he claimed that it was an Anti-Slavery document and should be so construed. As for the Union, by his services in successfully managing the finances of the country in its great crisis, he did as much to sustain the Union as any other man of that time. To accuse him of hostility and infidelity to the Union, is something that no one can do with impunity. In fact, so clear and so clean, as well as so bold and striking, is the record of Chase and his associates, beginning in 1840 and continuing down until the last shackle was stricken from the last bondsman's limbs, that even the shadow of the White House cannot obscure it. Nor is Mr. Roosevelt happy in his illustration, when, in his concluding arraignment of the Abolitionists, he seeks to discredit them as an organization of impracticables by comparing them to the political Prohibitionists of to-day. When the latter, if that time is ever to be, shall become strong enough to rout one or both of the existing main political parties, and, taking the control of the Government in their hands, shall not only legally consign the liquor traffic to its coffin, but nail it down with a constitutional amendment, then Mr. Roosevelt's comparison will apply. CHAPTER II THE ABOLITIONISTS--WHO AND WHAT THEY WERE In selecting those who are to receive its remembrance and its honors, the world has always given its preference to such as have battled for freedom. It may have been with the sword; it may have been with the pen; or it may have been with a tongue that was inflamed with holy rage against tyranny and wrong; but whatever the instrumentality employed; in whatever field the battle has been fought; and by whatsoever race, or class, or kind of men; the champions of human liberty have been hailed as the bravest of the brave and the most worthy to receive the acclaims of their fellows.