our country, were
segregated on questions of policy affecting the whole nation and each
individual composing it alike; they pervaded every section of the Union,
and the acerbity of political strife was softened by the ties of blood,
friendship, and neighborhood association. Moreover, these parties were
constantly changing, on account of the influence mutually exerted by the
members of each; the Federalist of yesterday becomes the Republican of
to-day, and Whigs and Democrats change their party allegiance with every
change of leaders. If the republicans mismanaged the government, they
suffered the consequences alike with the federalists; if the democrats
plunged our country into difficulties, they had to abide the penalty as
well as the whigs. All parties alike had to suffer the evils, or enjoy
the advantages of bad or good government. But it has been reserved to
our own times to witness the rise, growth, and prevalence of a party
confined exclusively to one section of the Union, whose fundamental
principle is opposition to the rights and interests of the other
section; and this, too, when those rights are most sacredly guaranteed,
and those interests protected, by that compact under which we became a
united nation. In a free government like ours, the eclecticism of
parties--by which we mean the affinity by which the members of a party
unite on questions of national policy, by which all sections of the
country are alike affected--has always been considered as highly
conducive to the purity and integrity of the government, and one of the
causes most promotive of its perpetuity. Such has been the case, not
only in our own country, but also in England, from whom we have mainly
derived our ideas of civil and religious liberty, and even, to some
extent, our form of government. But there, the case of oppressed and
down-trodden Ireland, bears witness to the baneful effects of
geographical partizan government and legislation.

In our own country this same spirit, which had its origin in the
Missouri contest, is now beginning to produce its legitimate fruits:
witness the growing distrust with which the people of the North and the
South begin to regard each other; the diminution of Southern travel,
either for business or pleasure, in the Northern States; the efforts of
each section to develop its own resources, so as virtually to render it
independent of the other; the enactment of "unfriendly legislation," in
several of the Stat