ocrats that the Union must be preserved;
and it was their attempt to de-nationalize slavery as undemocratic and
at the same time to affirm the indestructibility of the Union, which
proved in the end to be salutary.

Surely never was there a more distressing example of confusion of
thought in relation to a "noble national theory." The traditional
democratic system of ideas provoked fanatical activity on the part of
the Abolitionists, as the defenders of "natural rights," a kindred
fanaticism in the Southerners as the defenders of legal rights, and
moral indifference and lethargy on the part of the Northern Democrat for
the benefit of his own local interests. The behavior of all three
factions was dictated by the worship of what was called liberty; and the
word was as confidently and glibly used by Calhoun and Davis as it was
by Garrison, Webster, and Douglas. The Western Democrat, and indeed the
average American, thought of democratic liberty chiefly as individual
freedom from legal discrimination and state interference in doing some
kind of a business. The Abolitionist was even more exclusively
preoccupied with the liberty which the Constitution denied to the negro.
The Southerners thought only of the Constitutional rights, which the
Abolitionists wished to abolish, and the Republicans to restrict. Each
of the contending parties had some justification in dwelling exclusively
upon the legal or natural rights, in which they were most interested,
because the system of traditional American ideas provided no positive
principle, in relation to which these conflicting liberties could be
classified and valued. It is in the nature of liberties and rights,
abstractly considered, to be insubordinate and to conflict both one with
another and, perhaps, with the common weal. If the chief purpose of a
democratic political system is merely the preservation of such rights,
democracy becomes an invitation to local, factional, and individual
ambitions and purposes. On the other hand, if these Constitutional and
natural rights are considered a temporary philosophical or legal
machinery, whereby a democratic society is to reach a higher moral and
social consummation, and if the national organization is considered
merely as an effective method of keeping the legal and moral machinery
adjusted to the higher democratic purpose, then no individual or faction
or section could claim the benefit of a democratic halo for its
distracting purposes an