Today's American Minute — How a Runaway Slave led to the formation of an Anti-Slavery Party

LISTEN (text to speech)   Download as PDF ...   By the time of the Civil War, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.   The two major political parties in America were the Democrats and the Whigs.   Democrats were pro-choice regarding slavery, wanting to protect the slave owner’s choice as to whether or not to own a slave, similar to sharia Islamic countries.   The Whigs were the opposition party, taking their name from the British political party of the same name that opposed the king. Though many Whigs were against slavery, they...