case he
did, to act upon his knowledge. Yet in spite of all this, it does seem
as if some Whig might have worked out the logic of the national idea
with as much power and consistency as Calhoun worked out the logic of
his sectional idea. That no Whig rose to the occasion is an indication
that in sacrificing their ideas they were sacrificing also their
personal integrity. Intellectual insincerity and irresponsibility was in
the case of the Democrats the outcome of their lives and their point of
view; but on the part of the Whigs it was equivalent to sheer
self-prostitution. Jefferson's work had been done only too well. The
country had become so entirely possessed by a system of individual
aggrandizement, national drift, and mental torpor that the men who for
their own moral and intellectual welfare should have opposed it, were
reduced to the position of hangers-on; and the dangers of the situation
were most strikingly revealed by the attitude which contemporary
statesmen assumed towards the critical national problem of the
period,--the problem of the existence of legalized slavery in a
democratic state.

CHAPTER IV

I

SLAVERY AND AMERICAN NATIONALITY

Both the Whig and the Democratic parties betrayed the insufficiency of
their ideas by their behavior towards the problem of slavery. Hitherto I
have refrained from comment on the effect which the institution of
slavery was coming to have upon American politics because the increasing
importance of slavery, and of the resulting anti-slavery agitation,
demand for the purpose of this book special consideration. Such a
consideration must now be undertaken. The bitter personal and partisan
controversies of the Whigs and the Democrats were terminated by the
appearance of a radical and a perilous issue; and in the settlement of
this question the principles of both of these parties, in the manner in
which they had been applied, were of no vital assistance.

The issue was created by the legal existence in the United States of an
essentially undemocratic institution. The United States was a democracy,
and however much or little this phrase means, it certainly excludes any
ownership of one man by another. Yet this was just what the Constitution
sanctioned. Its makers had been confronted by the legal existence of
slavery in nearly all of the constituent states; and a refusal to
recognize the institution would have resulted in the failure of the
whole scheme of Constitut