But they were none the less, first and foremost, loyal citizens of the
American Federal state.
II
THE NEW NATIONAL DEMOCRACY
We must consider carefully this earliest combination of the national
with the democratic idea. The Western Democracy is important, not only
because it played the leading part in our political history down to
1850, but precisely because it does offer, in a primitive but
significant form, a combination of the two ideas, which, when united,
constitute the formative principle in American political and social
development. The way had been prepared for this combination by the
Republican acceptance of the Federal organization, after that party had
assumed power; but the Western Democrats took this alliance much more
innocently than the older Republican leaders. They insisted, as we have
seen, on a declaration of war against Great Britain; and humiliating as
were the results of that war, this vigorous assertion of the national
point of view, both exposed in clear relief the sectional disloyalty of
the Federalists of New England and resulted later in an attempted
revival of a national constructive policy.
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