an to appear that the perpetuation of the
Union threatened this right, they were not to be placated with any
glowing proclamation about the inseparability of liberty in general from
an indestructible union. From the standpoint of their own most cherished
rights, they could put up a very strong argument on behalf of disunion;
and they had as much of the spirit of the Constitution on their side as
had their opponents. That instrument was intended not only to give legal
form to the Union of the American commonwealths and the American people,
but also to guarantee certain specified rights and liberties. If, on the
one hand, negro slavery undermined the moral unity and consequently the
political integrity of the American people, and if on the other, the
South stubbornly insisted upon its legal right to property in negroes,
the difficulty ran too deep to be solved by peaceable Constitutional
means. The legal structure of American nationality became a house
divided against itself, and either the national principle had to be
sacrificed to the Constitution or the Constitution to the national
principle.

The significance of the whole controversy does not become clear, until
we modify Webster's formula about the inseparability of liberty and
union, and affirm in its place the inseparability of American
nationality and American democracy. The Union had come to mean something
more to the Americans of the North than loyalty to the Constitution. It
had come to mean devotion to a common national idea,--the idea of
democracy; and while the wiser among them did not want to destroy the
Constitution for the benefit of democracy, they insisted that the
Constitution should be officially stigmatized as in this respect an
inadequate expression of the national idea. American democracy and
American nationality are inseparably related, precisely because
democracy means very much more than liberty or liberties, whether
natural or legal, and nationality very much more than an indestructible
legal association. Webster's formula counseled an evasion of the problem
of slavery. From his point of view it was plainly insoluble. But an
affirmation of an inseparable relationship between American nationality
and American democracy would just as manifestly have demanded its
candid, courageous, and persistent agitation.

The slavery question, when it could no longer be avoided, gradually
separated the American people into five different political parties or