The two leading political parties deliberately and persistently sought
to evade the issue. The Western pioneers were so fascinated with the
vision of millions of pale-faced democrats, leading free and prosperous
lives as the reward for virtuously taking care of their own business,
that the Constitutional existence of negro slavery did not in the least
discommode them. Disunionism they detested and would fight to the end;
but to waste valuable time in bothering about a perplexing and an
apparently irremediable political problem was in their eyes the worst
kind of economy. They were too optimistic and too superficial to
anticipate any serious trouble in the Promised Land of America; and they
were so habituated to inconsistent and irresponsible political thinking,
that they attached no importance to the moral and intellectual turpitude
implied by the existence of slavery in a democratic nation. The
responsibility of the Whigs for evading the issue is more serious than
that of the Democrats. Their leaders were the trained political thinkers
of their generation.
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