Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/439

 REVIEWS 425

with little ceremony and he proceeds at once to the heart of the matter. It would be difficult to name an American better qualified to tell the story of our politics to average Americans. There are men who could bring to bear profounder legal learning and more micro- scopic historical information. There are few, if any, who could bring the significant facts home to the intelligent but non-special reader more genially than Professor Macy.

This little book will be wholesome reading for the generations of us to whom the events of the middle quarters of the century are ancient history. I predict that it will win its way to. a wide welcome. Its quality could hardly be better indicated than by quotation of the last paragraphs of the chapter "Abraham Lincoln as a Democrat" (pp.

2 5S-7):

That which constituted the irrepressible conflict in 1858 was the fact that, by a large body of American citizens, a fundamental principle of democracy had been sys- tematically violated for a whole generation. The people had professed to believe in democracy, yet in respect to one conspicuous institution they had pursued a policy of repression of public opinion. This was not true in the South alone : in the North as well immense pressure was brought to bear in the churches, in colleges and universi- ties, and in commercial circles, against the frank and open discussion of the slavery question. By this restraint upon discussion, where discussion was much needed, a generation had been permitted to grow up victims of a fatal delusion. The North was allowed to fall into false beliefs about the South and about slavery; the South was likewise deluded into false beliefs about the North. Having violated the fundamental principles of free government, the political parties, as national organs for discussion and action, went to pieces, and nothing was left for the deluded people but to fight and to suffer until the state was destroyed or a mutual understanding was restored. The Civil War was a consequence of a neglect of political duty. The quiet, the orderly, the industrious, the thoughtful had permitted the growth of a despotic policy which for a generation had shackled free speech. When the slavery debate would not down at the bidding of the undemocratic South, they left the discussion to injudi- cious agitators in the North and " fire-eaters " in the South. Thus democracy failed in the New World, as every former attempt had failed, because power was allowed to drift into the hands of those who did not believe in democracy. Then, as was inevi- table, freedom of discussion had been suppressed, and the people, deprived of the privilege of arguing out their differences, fell back into the old, despotic way of fighting them out.

When Mr. Lincoln asserted, in course of his great debate with Douglas in 1858, that the Democratic party, as led by the southern slavocracy, would be satisfied with nothing less than that the people of the country should " quit " saying that they believed slavery to be wrong, that they should " quit " thinking about it, that they should " quit " caring for it, he but called attention to a general condition of public sentiment in the North as well as in the South. The people had accepted the undemocratic dictum of certain aristocratic teachers, that there were certain subjects of public import upon which it was wrong to think and to talk freely. This is