What it was necessary for
patriotic American citizens and particularly for Western Democrats to
understand was, not whether the South possessed a dubious right of
secession, because that dispute, in case it came to a head, could only
be settled by war; but whether a democratic nation could on democratic
principles continue to shirk the problem of slavery by shifting the
responsibility for it to individuals and localities. As soon as Lincoln
made it plain that a democratic nation could not make local and
individual rights an excuse for national irresponsibility, then the
Unionist party could count upon the support of the American conscience.
The former followers of Douglas finally rallied to the man and to the
party which stood for a nationalized rather than a merely localized
democracy; and the triumph of the North in the war, not only put an end
to the legal right of secession, but it began to emancipate the American
national idea from an obscurantist individualism and provincialism. Our
current interpretation of democracy still contains much dubious matter
derived from the Jacksonian epoch; but no American statesmen can
hereafter follow Douglas in making the democratic principle equivalent
to utter national incoherence and irresponsibility.
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