ggressiveness of Southern opinion on the
slavery question was thus shown by Douglas in a negative or indirect
view. It is a remarkable fact, that, in still another letter,
Douglas argued quite elaborately against the revival of the African
slave-trade, which he believed to be among the designs of the most
advanced class of pro-slavery advocates. So acute a statesman as
Douglas could not fail to see, that, at every step of his controversy
with Southern Democrats, he was justifying the philosophy of Lincoln
when he maintained that the country was to become wholly free, or
wholly under the control of the slave power.

The controversy thus precipitated between Douglas and the South
threatened the disruption of the Democratic party. That was an
event of very serious significance. It would bring the conflict
of sections still nearer by sundering a tie which had for so long
a period bound together vast numbers from the North and the South
in common sympathy and fraternal co-operation. Even those who were
most opposed to the Democratic party beheld its peril with a certain
feeling of regret not unmixed with apprehension. The Whig party
had been destroyed; and its Northern and Southern members, who,
but a few years before, had worked harmoniously for Harrison, for
Clay, for Taylor, were now enrolled in rival and hostile organizations.
A similar dissolution of the Democratic party would sweep away the
only common basis of political action still existing for men of
the free States and men of the slave States. The separation of
the Methodist church into Northern and Southern organizations, a
few years before, had been regarded by Mr. Webster as a portent of
evil for the Union. The division of the Democratic party would be
still more ominous. The possibility of such an event showed how
deeply the slavery question had affected all ranks,--social,
religious, and political. It showed, too, how the spirit of Calhoun
now inspired the party in whose councils the slightest word of
Jackson had once been law. This change, beginning with the defeat
of Van Buren in 1844, was at first slow; but it had afterwards
moved so rapidly and so far, that men in the North, who wished to
remain in the ranks of the Democracy, were compelled to trample on
the principles, and surrender the prejudices, of a lifetime.
Efforts to harmonize proved futile. In Congress the breach was
continually widening.

F