Let no one pervert our position. We do not say the citizens of the free States have no means, no power, no right to act adversely upon slavery. They have means and powers which existed antecedently to the Constitution, and were not affected by it. The right to speak and write and labor, as men, against any moral wrong, is anterior (might we not say superior) to all government . . . We can excuse the thoroughgoing Abolitionist who, declaring the Constitution an iniquitous compact, refuses to vote or exercise any franchise under it. But he who uses the power granted by the Constitution in violation of its essential conditions, is guilty of a deep and moral wrong. .... To abandon Clay on such [slavery] grounds would be a breach of faith to the Whigs, and treason to the Constitution.
After the nominations were made the Tribune defended Polk in the same way.
Greeley's early objection to the annexation of Texas was based on the view that it would be a glaring assumption of Federal power, rather than that it would furnish new territory to slavery; and after Clay's nomination the Tribune (May 16, 1844) “deprecated, ”
