is to secede from the South as well as from the Union." On the basis
of this belief they defeated Rhett and put off secession for ten years.

There is no analogous single event in the history of the North,
previous to the war, which reveals with similar clearness a sectional
consciousness. On the surface the life of the people seemed, indeed, to
belie the existence of any such feeling. The Northern capitalist class
aimed steadily at being non-sectional, and it made free use of the word
national. We must not forget, however, that all sorts of people talked
of national institutions, and that the term, until we look closely
into the mind of, the person using it, signifies nothing. Because the
Northern capitalist repudiated the idea of sectionalism, it does not
follow that he set up any other in its place. Instead of accomplishing
anything so positive, he remained for the most part a negative quantity.

Living usually somewhere between Maine and Ohio, he made it his chief
purpose to regulate the outflow of manufactures from that industrial
region and the inflow of agricultural produce. The movement of the
latter eastward and northward, and the former westward and southward,
represents roughly but graphically the movement of the business of that
time. The Easterner lived in fear of losing the money which was owed him
in the South. As the political and economic conditions of the day made
unlikely any serious clash of interest between the East and the West, he
had little solicitude about his accounts beyond the Alleghanies. But a
gradually developing hostility between North and South was accompanied
by a parallel anxiety on the part of Northern capital for its Southern
investments and debts. When the war eventually became inevitable,
$200,000,000 were owed by Southerners to Northerners. For those days
this was an indebtedness of no inconsiderable magnitude. The Northern
capitalists, preoccupied with their desire to secure this account, were
naturally eager to repudiate sectionalism, and talked about national
interests with a zeal that has sometimes been misinterpreted. Throughout
the entire period from 1850 to 1865, capital in American politics played
for the most part a negative role, and not until after the war did it
become independent of its Southern interests.

For the real North of that day we must turn to those Northerners who
felt sufficient unto themselves and whose political convictions were
unbiased by personal in