We must listen to the
distinct voices that gave utterance to their views, and we must
observe the definite schemes of their political leaders.
Directly we do this, the fact stares us in the face that the
North had become a democracy. The rich man no longer played the
role of grandee, for by this time there had arisen those two
groups which, between them, are the ruin of aristocracy--the
class of prosperous laborers and the group of well-to-do
intellectuals. Of these, the latter gave utterance, first, to
their faith in democracy, and then, with all the intensity of
partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as the agent of
democracy. The prosperous laborers applauded this expression of
anopinion in which they thoroughly believed and at the same time
gave their willing support to a land policy that was typically
Northern.
American economic history in the middle third of the century is
essentially the record of a struggle to gain possession of public
land. The opposing forces were the South, which strove to
perpetuate by this means a social system that was fundamentally
aristocratic, and the North, which sought by the same means to
foster its ideal of democracy. Though the South, with the aid of
its economic vassal, the Northern capitalist class, was for some
time able to check the land-hunger of the Northern democrats, it
was never able entirely to secure the control which it desired,
but was always faced with the steady and continued opposition of
the real North.
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