He succeeded
in imbuing both men of property and the mass of the "plain people" with
the idea that the well-to-do were the peculiar beneficiaries of the
American Federal organization, the result being that the rising
democracy came more than ever to distrust the national government.
Instead of seeking to base the perpetuation of the Union upon the
interested motives of a minority of well-to-do citizens, he would have
been far wiser to have frankly intrusted its welfare to the good-will of
the whole people. But unfortunately he was prevented from so doing by
the limitation both of his sympathies and ideas. He was possessed by the
English conception of a national state, based on the domination of
special privileged orders and interests; and he failed to understand
that the permanent support of the American national organization could
not be found in anything less than the whole American democracy. The
American Union was a novel and a promising political creation, not
because it was a democracy, for there had been plenty of previous
democracies, and not because it was a nation, for there had been plenty
of previous nations, but precisely and entirely because it was a
democratic nation,--a nation committed by its institutions and
aspirations to realize the democratic idea.
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