But was this great material gain of the people to be accompanied by a corresponding spiritual advancement? Was man to become the chief object of reverence in this wonderfully expanding industrial empire? If not, all this progress was deceptive, and nobody could predict how soon our very superiority should be turned to the advantage of that aristocracy which had perverted so many things in the republic.
It could not be denied that the Free States were making wonderful strides, during these forty years, in mental cultivation and power. The free industry of the North was an education to the people, and nowhere has so much popular intelligence been carried into the business of life as here. This period also witnessed the organization of the free school everywhere outside of New England, its home; the daily press, the public lecture, the creation of an American literature, all Northern; the growth of all institutions of learning and means of intellectual and artistic cultivation unparalleled in any other age or land. No well-informed person could also deny the astonishing progress in furnishing the means of religious instruction, the multiplication of churches, great ecclesiastical organizations, and philanthropic leagues. Notwithstanding the apparent absorption of the North in its material prosperity, no people ever was so busy in furnishing itself with the means of spiritual improvement; and though a population of several millions of ignorant and superstitious foreigners was thrown in upon it during these eventful years, it came out at the end the most intelligent people, the best provided with the apparatus of religion, that was ever known.
But there was one element yet wanting to assure the right usage of all this wealth of material, intellectual, and ecclesiastical power. This was what the slaveholding aristocracy saw at once to be the fatal omen for their cause, and nicknamed 'Abolitionism.' Abolitionism, as recognized by the Slave Power, is nothing more nor less than the religious reverence for man and his natural rights. This moral respect for the nature and rights of all men has always encountered the peculiar scorn of aristocracies, and no men have been so bitterly persecuted in history as those who represented the religious opposition to despotism. The Hebrew aristocracy in old Palestine called this sentiment 'atheism' in Jesus Christ, and crucified Him. The pagan aristocracy called it a 'devilish superstition' in the early Christians, and slaughtered them like cattle. The priestly and civil absolutism of the sixteenth century called it 'fanaticism' in the Dutch and German reformers, and fought it eighty years with fire and rack and sword. The church and crown nicknamed it 'Puritanism,' and persecuted it till it turned and cut off the head of Charles the First, and secured religious liberty. The slave aristocracy stigmatized it 'Abolitionism,' and let loose upon it every infernal agency in its power.
One great man, yet alive, but not yet recognized as he will be, was the representative of this religious reverence for the rights of man. Lloyd Garrison has been, for the last twenty-five years, the best-hated man in these Northern States, not because he failed to see just how a Union of Free and Slave States could endure; not because of any visionary theory of political action or the structure of society he cherished; but, strangely enough, because he stood-up for man and his divine right to freedom. This was what the aristocracy hated in him, and this is what, with inexpressible rage, it saw gaining in the North. It truly said that our education, our arts, our literature, our press, our churches, our benevolent organizations, our families, all that was best in Northern society, even our politics, were being consolidated by this 'fanaticism,' Puritanism,' 'Abolitionism'otherwise, by reverence for man and his right to freedom.
It grew, however, almost as fast as the material power of the Norththis moral conviction of the divine right of man to liberty; grew so fast, that in 1860, South Carolina glanced over the November election returns, saw the name of Abraham Lincoln at the head, shrieked, 'The North is abolitionized!' and rushed out of the Union, with ten other Slave States at her heels, while four more were held back by the strong arm of the national power. The North is not yet 'abolitionized,' but every volley fired at liberty by the Slave Power these last three years, has killed a lover of slavery, and made an Abolitionist; as the juggler fires his pistol at your old black hat, and, when the smoke clears up, a white dove flutters in its place. If the Slave Power shoots at us long enough, we shall all become Abolitionists, and all learn to love our fellow man and protect him in the enjoyment of every right given him by God!
Thus had the Free States, the people's part of the Union, gone up steadily to overshadowing material, intellectual, moral power. But up to 1850 this mighty growth had got no fit expression in State or national politics. All the great parties had mildly tried to remonstrate with the slave aristocracy, but quickly recoiled as from the mouth of a furnace. A few attempts had been made to organize a party for freedom, but nothing could gain foothold at Washington. A few noble men had lifted their voices against the rampant tyranny of the slaveholders: chief among these was John Quincy Adams, the John the Baptist crying in the desert of American partisan politics the coming of the kingdom of Heaven! But when the people had come up to a consciousness of their consolidated power, and the reverence for human right was changing and polarizing every Northern institutionin the fierce struggle that ushered in and succeeded the admission of California, between 1848 and 1856this Northern superiority culminated in a great political movement against slavery. This movement assumed a double form-positive, in the assertion that the Slave Power should be arrested; negative, in the assertion that the people should have their own way with it. The Republican party said: The slave aristocracy shall go no farther. The 'Popular Sovereignty' party, or Douglas Democracy, said: The people shall do what they choose about this matter. Now the people were already the superior power in the republic, and were rapidly growing to hate the Slave Power; so the slaveholders, saw that the Northern Democracy, with their war cry of popular sovereignty, might in time be just as dangerous to them as their more open enemies. They repudiated both forms of Northern politics, and tied the executive, under James Buchanan, and the Supreme Court, under Judge Taney, to their dogma: The right of the aristocracy is supreme. Slavery, not liberty, is the law of the republic.
The great leaders of these Northern parties were Stephen H. Douglas and William H. Seward. Mr. Douglas was the best practical politician, popular debater, and magnetizer of the masses, the North has yet produced. He was the representative of the blind power of the North, and stood up all his life, in his better hours, for the right of the people to make the republic what they would. But the representative statesman of the era is the Secretary of State. The whole career of Mr. Seward is so interwoven with the history of the political consolidation of the people against the Slave Power, that the two must be studied together to be understood. Nowhere so clearly and eloquently as in the pages of this great philosophical statesman can be read the rapid growth of that political movement that in twelve years captured every Free State, placed a President in the chair, and then, with a splendid generosity, invited the whole loyal people to unite in a party of the Union, knowing that henceforth the Union meant the people and liberty against the aristocracy and slavery. And only in the light of this view can the course of this man and his great seeming opponent, but real associate, be fitly displayed. Douglas had taught the people of the North that their will should be the law of the republic. Seward had told them that will should be in accordance with the 'higher law' of justice and freedom. Like men fighting in the dark, they supposed themselves each other's enemies, while they were only commanders of the front and rear of the army of the people. Both appeared on the national arena in the struggle of 1850, and soon strode to the first place. The Slave Power repudiated Seward and his 'higher law' of justice and liberty at once. They tolerated Douglas and his 'popular sovereignty ' ten years longer, when they found it even a more dangerous heresy, and threw him overboard.