terests which were involved in other parts of the
country. We must listen to the distinct voices that gave utterance to
their views, and we must observe the definite schemes of their political
leaders. Directly we do this, the fact stares us in the face that the
North had become a democracy. The rich man no longer played the role
of grandee, for by this time there had arisen those two groups which,
between them, are the ruin of aristocracy--the class of prosperous
laborers and the group of well-to-do intellectuals. Of these, the latter
gave utterance, first, to their faith in democracy, and then, with all
the intensity of partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as the
agent of democracy. The prosperous laborers applauded this expression
of an opinion in which they thoroughly believed and at the same time gave
their willing support to a land policy that was typically Northern.

American economic history in the middle third of the century is
essentially the record of a struggle to gain possession of public land.
The opposing forces were the South, which strove to perpetuate by this
means a social system that was fundamentally aristocratic, and the
North, which sought by the same means to foster its ideal of democracy.
Though the South, with the aid of its economic vassal, the Northern
capitalist class, was for some time able to check the land-hunger of
the Northern democrats, it was never able entirely to secure the control
which it desired, but was always faced with the steady and continued
opposition of the real North. On one occasion in Congress, the heart
of the whole matter was clearly shown, for at the very moment when the
Northerners of the democratic class were pressing one of their frequent
schemes for free land, Southerners and their sympathetic Northern
henchmen were furthering a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba.
From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the Northerners sought to
give "land to the landless" and the retort that the Southerners seemed
equally anxious to supply "niggers to the niggerless," it can be seen
that American history is sometimes better summed up by angry politicians
than by historians.

We must be on our guard, however, against ascribing to either side
too precise a consciousness of its own motives. The old days when the
American Civil War was conceived as a clear-cut issue are as a watch in
the night that has passed, and we now realize that historical movements
are almo