Neither the democratic nor the despotic idea is fully made real anywhere in the world. There is no perfect democracy, nor perfect aristocracy. There are democrats in every actual aristocracy; despots in every actual democracy. But in the Northern States the democratic idea prevails extensively and chiefly, and we have made attempts at establishing a democratic government. In the Southern States the despotic idea prevails extensively and chiefly, and they have made attempts to establish an aristocratic government. In an aristocracy there are two classes: the people to be governed, and the governing class, the nobility which is to govern. This nobility may be movable, and depend on wealth; or immovable, and depend on birth. In the Southern States the nobility is immovable, and depends on color.
In 1840, in the North there were ten million free men, and in the South five million free men and three million slaves. Three eighths of the population have no human rights at all—privileges as cattle, not rights as men. There the slave is protected by law, as your horse and your ox, but has no more human rights.
Here, now, is the great cause of the difference in the condition of the North and South; of the difference in the material results, represented by towns and villages, by farms and factories, ships and shops. Here is the cause of the difference in schools, colleges, churches, and in the literature; the cause of the difference in men. The South, with its despotic idea, dishonors labor, but wishes to compromise between its idleness and its appetite, and so kidnaps men to do its work. The North, with its democratic idea, honors labor; does not compromise between its idleness and its appetite, but lays its bones to the work to satisfy its appetite; instead of kidnapping a man who can run away, it kidnaps the elements, subdues them to its command, and makes them do its work. It does not kidnap a freeman, but catches the winds, and chains them to its will. It lays hands on fire and water, and breeds a new giant, which "courses land and ocean without rest," or serves while it stands and waits, driving the mills of the land. It kidnaps the Connecticut and the Merrimac; does not send slave-ships to Africa, but engineers to New Hampshire; and it requires no fugitive slave law to keep the earth and sea from escaping, or the rivers of New England from running up hill.
This is not quite all! I have just now tried to hint at the causes of the difference in the condition of the people, North and South. Now let me show the cause of the agitation and alarm. We begin with a sentiment; that spreads to an idea; the idea grows to an act, to an institution; then it has done its work.
Men seek to spread their sentiments and ideas. The democratic idea tries to spread; the despotic idea tries to spread. For a long time the nation held these two ideas in its bosom, not fully conscious of either of them. Both came here in a state of infancy, so to say, with our fathers; the democratic idea very dimly understood; the despotic idea not fully carried out, yet it did a great mischief in the State and church. In the Declaration of Independence, writ by a young man, only the democratic idea appears, and that idea never got so distinctly stated before. But mark you, and see the confusion in men's minds. That democratic idea was thus distinctly stated by a man who was a slaveholder almost all his life; and unless public rumor has been unusually false, he has left some of his own offspring under the influence of the despotic and not the democratic idea; slaves and not free men.
In the Constitution of the United States these two ideas appear. It was thought for a long time they were not incompatible; it was thought the great American party might recognize both, and a compromise was made between the two. It was thought each might go about its own work and let the other alone; that the hawk and the hen might dwell happily together in the same coop, each lay her own eggs and rear her own brood, and neither put a claw upon the other.
In the mean time each founded institutions after its kind; in the Northern States, democratic institutions; in the Southern, aristocratic. What once lay latent in the mind of the nation has now become patent. The thinking part of the nation sees the difference between the two. Some men are beginning to see that the two are completely incompatible, and cannot be good friends. Others are asking us to shut our eyes and not see it, and they think that so long as our eyes are shut, all things will go on peacefully. Such is the wisdom of the ostrich.
At first the trouble coming from this source was a very little cloud, far away on the horizon, not bigger than a man's hand. It seemed so in 1804, when the brave senator from Massachusetts, a Hartford Convention Federalist, a name that calls the blood to some rather pale cheeks now-a-days, proposed to alter the Constitution of the United States, and cut off the North from all responsibility for slavery. It was a little cloud not bigger than a man's hand; now it is a great cloud which covers the whole hemisphere of heaven, and threatens to shut out the day.
In the last session of Congress, ten months long, the great matter was the contest between the two ideas. All the newspapers rung with the battle. Even the pulpits now and then alluded to it; forgetting their decency, that they must preach "only religion," which has not the least to do with politics and the welfare of the State.
Each idea has its allies, and it is worth while to run our eye over the armies and see what they amount to. The idea of despotism has for its allies: