nce, and had been denounced in theory by the earlier American
democrats. So long as a conception of democracy, which placed natural
above legal rights was permitted to obtain, their property in slaves
would be imperiled: and it was necessary, consequently, for the
Southerners to advance a conception of democracy, which would stand as a
fortress around their "peculiar" institution. During the earlier days of
the Republic no such necessity had existed. The Southerners had merely
endeavored to protect their negro property by insisting on an equal
division of the domain out of which future states were to be carved, and
upon the admission into the Union of a slave state to balance every new
free commonwealth. But the attempt of the Abolitionists to identify the
American national idea with a system of natural rights, coupled with the
plain fact that the national domain contained more material for free
than it did for slave states, provoked the Southerners into taking more
aggressive ground. They began to identify the national idea exclusively
with a system of legal rights; and it became from their point of view a
violation of national good faith even to criticise any rights enjoyed
under the Constitution. They advanced a conception of American
democracy, which defied the Constitution in its most rigid
interpretation,--which made Congress incompetent to meddle with any
rights enjoyed under the Constitution, which converted any protest
against such rights into national disloyalty, and which in the end
converted secession into a species of higher Constitutional action.

Calhoun's theory of Constitutional interpretation was ingeniously
wrought and powerfully argued. From an exclusively legal standpoint, it
was plausible, if not convincing; but it was opposed by something deeper
than counter-theories of Constitutional law. It was opposed to the
increasingly national outlook of a large majority of the American
people. They would not submit to a conception of the American political
system, designed exclusively to give legal protection to property in
negroes, and resulting substantially in the nationalization of slavery.
They insisted upon a conception of the Constitution, which made the
national organization the expression of a democratic idea, more
comprehensive and dignified than that of existing legal rights; and in
so doing the Northerners undoubtedly had behind them, not merely the
sound political idea, but also a fair share of