and doubly strong in
the South. Then, too, the Democratic party still spoke the language of
the theoretical Democracy inherited from Jefferson. And Americans have
always been the slaves of phrases!

Furthermore, the close alliance of the Northern party machine with
the South made it, generally, an object of care for all those Northern
interests that depended on the Southern market. As to the Southerners,
their relation with this party has two distinct chapters. The first
embraced the twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850, and may
be thought of as merging into the second during three or four years
following the great equivocation. In that period, while the antislavery
crusade was taking form, the aim of Southern politicians was mainly
negative. "Let us alone," was their chief demand. Though aggressive
in their policy, they were too far-sighted to demand of the North any
positive course in favor of slavery. The rise of a new type of Southern
politician, however, created a different situation and began a second
chapter in the relation between the South and the Democratic party
machine in the North. But of that hereafter.

Until 1854, it was the obvious part of wisdom for Southerners to
cooperate as far as possible with that party whose cardinal idea was
that the government should come as near as conceivable to a system
of non-interference; that it should not interfere with business, and
therefore oppose a tariff; that it should not interfere with local
government, and therefore applaud states rights; that it should not
interfere with slavery, and therefore frown upon militant abolition.
Its policy was, to adopt a familiar phrase, one of masterly inactivity.
Indeed it may well be called the party of political evasion. It was a
huge, loose confederacy of differing political groups, embracing paupers
and millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave barons, all of
whom were held together by the unreliable bond of an agreement not to
tread on each other's toes.

Of this party Douglas was the typical representative, both in strength
and weakness. He had all its pliability, its good humor, its broad and
easy way with things, its passion for playing politics. Nevertheless, in
calling upon the believers in political evasion to consent for this
once to reverse their principle and to endorse a positive action, he had
taken a great risk. Would their sporting sense of politics as a gigantic
game carry him through succes