CHAPTER XXV.
FREE SOIL PARTY.
The Free Soil or Barnburner party was organized in '48, and nominated Martin Van Buren for President.

The _Visiter_ dropped its Birney flag and raised the Van Buren standard.

In supporting him the editor of the _Visiter_ was charged with being false to the cause of the slave, and of playing into the hands of the Whigs.

All the editor had ever said about that pro-slavery ex-President was cast into its teeth by Democratic, Liberty Party and Garrisonian papers, which, one and all, held that Van Buren was a cunning old fox, as pro-slavery as in those days when, as President of the U.S.Senate, he gave his casting vote for the bill which authorized every Southern post-master to open all the mail which came to his office, search for and destroy any matter that he might think dangerous to Southern institutions.

In his present hostility to slavery, he was actuated by personal hatred of Louis Cass, the Democratic candidate, and sought to draw off enough.