to be
national in reality and not in the evasive Democratic sense of the term.
For, as a matter of fact, on analysis all the greater issues of the day
proved to be sectional. The Whigs would not, like the Democrats, adopt a
negative attitude toward these issues, nor would they consent to become
merely sectional. Yet at the moment negation and sectionalism were the
only alternatives, and between these millstones the Whig organization
was destined to be ground to bits and to disappear after the next
Presidential election.

Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had sought a desperate outlet
for their desire to be positive in politics and had created a new party
which during a few years was to seem a reality and then vanish together
with its parent. The one chance for a party which had positive ideas
and which wished not to be sectional was the definite abandonment of
existing issues and the discovery of some new issue not connected with
sectional feeling. Now, it happened that a variety of causes, social and
religious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, in
some of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this condition
the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which had
been formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became a
recognized political party. As the members of the Society answered all
questions with "I do not know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings,"
though they called themselves "Americans." In those states where
the Whigs had been strongest--Massachusetts, New York, and
Pennsylvania--this last attempt to apply their former temper, though not
their principles, had for a moment some success; but it could not escape
the fierce division which was forced on the country by Douglas. As a
result, it rapidly split into factions, one of which merged with the
enemies of Douglas, while the other was lost among his supporters.

What would the great dying Whig party leave behind it? This was the
really momentous question in 1854. Briefly, this party bequeathed
the temper of political positivism and at the same time the dread of
sectionalism. The inner clue to American politics during the next few
years is, to many minds, to be found largely in the union of this old
Whig temper with a new-born sectional patriotism, and, to other minds,
in the gradual and reluctant passing of the Whig opposition to a
sectional party. But though this transformation of the w