“ The Kansas-Nebraska legislation, and the subsequent troubles in Kansas, having convinced him of the futility of trying to influence the Democrats, he assumed the leadership in the North-west of the movement to form a new party to oppose the extension of slavery. The “Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States,” written by Chase and Giddings, and published in the New York Times of the 24th of January 1854, may be regarded as the earliest draft of the Republican party creed. ”

“ In brief he contended that slavery was “local, not national,” that it could exist only by virtue of positive State Law, that the Federal government was not empowered by the Constitution to create slavery anywhere, and that “when a slave leaves the jurisdiction of a state he ceases to be a slave, because he continues to be a man and leaves behind him the law which made him a slave.” In 1841 he abandoned the Whig party, with which he had previously been affiliated, and for seven years was the undisputed leader of the Liberty party in Ohio ”

“ He was the first Republican governor of Ohio, serving from 1855 to 1859. Although, with the exception of Seward, he was the most prominent Republican in the country, and had done more against slavery than any other Republican, he failed to secure the nomination for the presidency in 1860, partly because his views on the question of protection were not orthodox from a Republican point of view, and partly because the old line Whig element could not forgive his coalition with the Democrats in the senatorial campaign of 1849 ”