l part in its machinery, but
secret, disowning its own existence, baptized with ostentatious
names of democracy, obsequious to the people for the sake of
governing them; this nameless, lurking aristocracy, that ran in the
blood of society like a rash not yet come to the skin; this
political tapeworm, that produced nothing, but lay coiled in the
body, feeding on its nutriment, and holding the whole structure to
be but a servant set up to nourish it--this aristocracy of the
plantation, with firm and deliberate resolve, brought on the war,
that they might cut the land in two, and, clearing themselves from
an incorrigibly free society, set up a sterner, statelier empire,
where slaves worked that gentlemen might live at ease. Nor can
there be any doubt that though, at first, they meant to erect the
form of republican government, this was but a device, a step
necessary to the securing of that power by which they should be able
to change the whole economy of society. That they never dreamed of
such a war, we may well believe. That they would have accepted it,
though twice as bloody, if only thus they could rule, none can doubt
that knows the temper of these worst men of modern society. But
they miscalculated. They understood the people of the South; but
they were totally incapable of understanding the character of the
great working classes of the loyal States. That industry, which is
the foundation of independence, and so of equity, they stigmatized
as stupid drudgery, or as mean avarice. That general intelligence
and independence of thought which schools for the common people and
newspapers breed, they reviled as the incitement of unsettled zeal,
running easily into fanaticism. They more thoroughly misunderstood
the profound sentiment of loyality, the deep love of country, which
pervaded the common people. If those who knew them best had never
suspected the depth and power of that love of country which threw it
into an agony of grief when the flag was here humbled, how should
they conceive of it who were wholly disjoined from them in sympathy?
The whole land rose up, you remember, when the flag came down, as if
inspired unconsciously by the breath of the Almighty, and the power
of omnipotence. It was as when one pierces the banks of the
Mississippi for a rivulet, and the whole raging stream plunges
through with headlong course. There they calculated, and
miscalculated! And more than all, they miscalculated the bra