While yielding these principles in theory, the democratic party did not always adhere to them in practice. The instinct of patriotism was often stronger than the obligations of party necessity and party policy. Moreover, the text of these doctrines in the democratic creed was frequently a subject of grave dispute in the party, and unanimity never prevailed in regard to it. Yet the subtle poison infused into the body of the organization, extended its baleful influence to all questions, and too often paralyzed the arm of the Government in every field of its appropriate action.
Never was presented in history a better illustration of the effect of false and mischievous ideas. It would be unjust, because it would be untrue, to suspect the democratic party of any clear knowledge of the ends to which these principles were intended to lead, or of any participation in the treasonable purpose. Many members of that party saw the danger in time, and abandoned the organization before it was caught in the meshes of the great conspiracy. Some, however, even in the loyal States, clung to Breckinridge and the fatal abstractions of the party creed, until these reached their final and legitimate culmination, in the ghastly paralysis of the most indispensable functions of the Governmentthe ruinous abnegation of all power of self-defencethe treacherous attempt at national suicide only failing for want of courage to perpetrate the supreme act, which was exhibited by the administration of James Buchanan, in its last hours, when it proclaimed the doctrine of secession to be unfounded in constitutional right, and yet denied the power of the Government to prevent its own destruction. The threats of an imperious band of traitors, operating upon the fears of a weak old man, who was already implicated in the treason, drove him to the verge of the abyss into which he was willing to plunge his country, but from which, at the last moment, he drew back, dismayed at the thought of sacrificing himself.
The doctrine of secession, long and laboriously taught, and the cognate principles calculated to diminish the power of the Federal Government and magnify that of the States, thus served to smooth the way, to lay the track, upon which the engine of rebellion was to be started. But there was still wanting the motive power which should impel the machine and give it energy and momentum. Something tangible was requiredsomething palpable to the masseson the basis of which violent antagonisms and hatreds could be engendered, and fearful dangers could be pictured to the popular imagination.
The protective system, loudly denounced as unequal and oppressive, as well as unconstitutional, had proved wholly insufficient to arouse rebellion in 1832. It would have proved equally so in 1861: but then the ultra free trade tariff of 1856 was still in existence; and it continued in force, until, to increase dissatisfaction, and invite the very system which they pretended to oppose and deplore, the conspirators in Congress, having power to defeat the 'Morrill Tariff,' deliberately stepped aside, and suffered it to become a law. But this was merely a piece of preliminary strategy intended to give them some advantage in the great battle which was eventually to be fought on other fields. It might throw some additional weight into their scale; it might give them some plausible ground for hypocritical complaint; and might even, to some extent, serve to hide the real ground of their movement; yet, of itself, it could never be decisive of anything. It could neither justify revolution in point of morals, nor could it blind the people of the South to the terrible calamities which the experiment of secession was destined to bring upon them.
Slavery alone, with the vast material prosperity apparently created by it, with the debatable and exciting questions, moral, political, and social, which arise out of it, and with the palpable dangers, which, in spite of every effort to deny it, plainly brood over the systemslavery alone had the power to produce the civil war, and to shake the continent to its foundations. In the present crisis of the struggle, it would be a waste of time and of thought to attempt to trace back to its origin the long current of excitement on the slavery question, beginning in 1834, and swelling in magnitude until the present day; or to seek to fix the responsibility for the various events which marked its progress, from the earliest agitation down to the great rebellion, which is evidently the consummation and the end of it all. The only lesson important to be learned, and that which is the sum of all these great events, plainly taught by the history of this generation, and destined to characterize it in all future time, is, that slavery had in itself the germs of this profound agitation, and that, for thirty years, it stirred the moral and political elements of this nation as no other cause had power to do. It is of little consequence, for the purpose in view, to inquire what antagonisms struggled with slavery in this immense contest, covering so great an area in space, and so long a period of time. All ideas and all interests were involved. Moral, social, political, and economical considerations clashed and antagonized in the gigantic conflict.
Is slavery right or wrong? Has it the sanction of enlightened conscience, or of the divine law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments? The last words of this moral contest have scarcely yet ceased to reverberate in our ears, even while the sound of cannon tells of other arguments and another arbitrament, which must soon cut short all the jargon of the logicians. But one of the most remarkable features of the whole case, has been the indignation with which the slave interest, from beginning to end, has resisted the discussion of these moral questions. As if such inquiries could, by any possibility, be prevented! As if a system, good and right in itself, defensible in the light of sound reason, could suffer by the fullest examination which could be made in private or in public, or by the profoundest agitation which could arise from the use of mere moral means! The discussions, the agitations, and all the fierce passions which attended them, were unavoidable. Human nature must be changed and wholly revolutionized before such agitations can be suppressed. They are the means appointed by the Creator for the progress of humanity. The seeds of them are planted in the heart of man, and, in the sunshine and air of freedom, they must germinate and grow, and eventually produce such fruit as the eternal laws of God have made necessary from the beginning.
The social question shaped itself amidst the turbulent elements, and came out clear and well defined, in the perfect contrast and antagonism of the two sectional systems. Free labor, educated, skilful, prosperous, self-poised, and independent, grew into great strength, and accumulated untold wealth, in all the States in which slavery had been supplanted. Unexampled and prodigious inventive energy had multiplied the physical power of men by millions, and these wonderful creations of wealth and power seemed destined to have no bounds in the favored region in which this system of free labor prevailed. Immigration, attracted by this boundless prosperity, flowed in with a steady stream, and an overflowing population was fast spreading the freedom and prosperity of the Northern States to all the uncultivated regions of the Union.
On the other hand, by a sort of social repulsiona sort of polarity which intensifies opposition and repugnancethe theory of slavery was carried to an extreme never before known in the history of mankind. Capital claimed to own labor, as the best relation in which the two could be placed toward each other. The masses of men, compelled to spend their lives in physical toil, were held to be properly kept in ignorance, under the guidance of intelligent masters. The skilful control of the master, when applied to slaves, was hold to be superior in its results to the self-regulating energies of educated men, laboring for their own benefit, and impelled by the powerful motives of self-interest and independent enterprise. The safety of society demanded the subordination of the laboring class; and especially in free governments, where the representative system prevails, was it necessary that working men should be held in subjection. Slavery, therefore, was not only justifiable; it was the only possible condition on which free society could be organized, and liberal institutions maintained. This was 'the corner stone' of the new confederacy. The opposite system in the free States, at the first touch of internal trouble and civil war, would prove the truth of the new theory by bread riots and agrarian overthrow of property and of all other institutions held sacred in the true conditions of social order.