Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/48

42 either for the master or for the slave. The faith of that Christian community was faith in force, its charity Slavery, its hope despair.

The conflict between Slavery, thus erected into a powerful interest, and Freedom was irrepressible; the phrase has become hackneyed, because it is so true. The struggle began in the political field, and was there waged through a series of party encounters, of which this civil war was in fact only the culmination. In the political field Slavery found an organisation ready made for it, and a weapon prepared to its hands in the Democratic party. Washington and his friends had fought as Englishmen for the great charter. But there was another party, of which Jefferson was the leader, an offset not of English patriotism but of French Jacobinism, and like its parent stock in irreligion, in canting philanthropy, in lust of violence and blood. This party made the war of 1810, and carried into power General Jackson, the American counterpart of the Dantons and Santerres. The party of Washington and Hamilton were for a strong federal government. In opposition to them the Democrats held the doctrine of state-right—a doctrine in itself respectable, and, as I believe, sound; but held in an evil spirit, and perverted to evil ends. From this semblance of attachment to local and popular rights, it arrogated to itself the name Democratic. Under the organisation of this party the slave oligarchy extended itself. There it had as its allies and tools the lowest democratic element of the North, the Irish of New York and the other great cities, so that the worst spirit of oligarchy and the worst spirit of democracy were blended into a combination of evil as fell as ever menaced the the [sic] political life of a nation. The days of this party were