d ambitions. Instead of subordinating these
conflicting rights and liberties to the national idea, and erecting the
national organization into an effective instrument thereof, the national
idea and organization was subordinated to individual local and factional
ideas and interests. No one could or would recognize the constructive
relation between the democratic purpose and the process of national
organization and development. The men who would rend the national body
in order to protect their property in negro slaves could pretend to be
as good democrats as the men who would rend in order to give the negro
his liberty. And if either of these hostile factions had obtained its
way, the same disastrous result would have been accomplished. American
national integrity would have been destroyed, and slavery on American
soil, in a form necessarily hostile to democracy, would have been
perpetuated.

II

SLAVERY AS A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION

I have already suggested that it was the irresponsibility and the
evasions of the party politicians, which threw upon the Abolitionists
the duty of fighting slavery as an undemocratic institution. They took
up the cause of the negro in a spirit of religious self-consecration.
The prevalence of irresolution and timidity in relation to slavery among
the leaders of public opinion incited the Abolitionists to a high degree
of courage and exclusive devotion; and unfortunately, also, the
conciliating attitude of the official leaders encouraged on the part of
the Abolitionists an outburst of fanaticism. In their devotion to their
adopted cause they lost all sense of proportion, all balance of
judgment, and all justice of perception; and their narrowness and want
of balance is in itself a sufficient indication that they were possessed
of a half, instead of a whole, truth.

The fact that the Abolitionists were disinterested and for a while
persecuted men should not prevent the present generation from putting a
just estimate on their work. While they redeemed the honor of their
country by assuming a grave and hard national responsibility, they
sought to meet that responsibility in a way that would have destroyed
their country. The Abolitionists, no less than the Southerners, were
tearing at the fabric of American nationality. They did it, no doubt, in
the name of democracy; but of all perverted conceptions of democracy,
one of the most perverted and dangerous is that which identifies it
exclusive