ly with a system of natural rights. Such a conception of
democracy is in its effect inevitably revolutionary, and merely loosens
the social and national bond. In the present instance they were betrayed
into one of the worst possible sins against the national bond--into the
sin of doing a gross personal injustice to a large group of their
fellow-countrymen. Inasmuch as the Southerners were willfully violating
a Divine law, they became in the eyes of the Abolitionists, not merely
mis-guided, but wicked, men; and the Abolitionists did not scruple to
speak of them as unclean beasts, who were fattening on the fruits of an
iniquitous institution. But such an inference was palpably false. The
Southern slave owners were not unclean beasts; and any theory which
justified such an inference must be erroneous. They were, for the most
part, estimable if somewhat quick-tempered and irascible gentlemen, who
did much to mitigate the evils of negro servitude, and who were on the
whole liked rather than disliked by their bondsmen. They were right,
moreover, in believing that the negroes were a race possessed of moral
and intellectual qualities inferior to those of the white men; and,
however much they overworked their conviction of negro inferiority, they
could clearly see that the Abolitionists were applying a narrow and
perverted political theory to a complicated and delicate set of economic
and social conditions. It is no wonder, consequently, that they did not
submit tamely to the abuse of the Abolitionists; and that they in their
turn lost their heads. Unfortunately, however, the consequence of their
wrong-headedness was more disastrous than it was in the case of the
Abolitionists, because they were powerful and domineering, as well as
angry and unreasonable. They were in a position, if they so willed, to
tear the Union to pieces, whereas the Abolitionists could only talk and
behave as if any legal association with such sinners ought to be
destroyed.

The Southern slaveholders, then, undoubtedly had a grievance. They were
being abused by a faction of their fellow-countrymen, because they
insisted on enjoying a strictly legal right; and it is no wonder that
they began to think of the Abolitionists very much as the Abolitionists
thought of them. Moreover, their anger was probably increased by the
fact that the Abolitionists could make out some kind of a case against
them. Property in slaves was contrary to the Declaration of
Independe