Its revolt on behalf of emancipation was courageous and
sincere. The patriotism which inspired it recognized the need of
justifying its protestantism by a better conception of democracy. But
the heresy was as incoherent and as credulous as the antithetic
orthodoxy. It sought to accomplish an intellectual revolution without
organizing either an army or an armament--just as the pioneer democrat
expected to convert untutored enthusiasm into acceptable technical work,
and a popular political and economic atomism into a substantially
socialized community. In its meaning and effect, consequently, the
revolt was merely negative and anti-national. It served a constructive
democratic purpose only by the expensive and dubious means of
instigating a Civil War. If any of the other heresies of the period, as
well as Abolitionism, had developed into an effective popular agitation,
they could have obtained a similar success only by means of incurring a
similar danger. The intellectual ideals of the movement were not
educational, and its declaration of intellectual independence issued in
as sterile a programme for the Republic of American thought as did the
Declaration of Political Independence for the American national
democracy.
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