Like the Ionian Greeks, the "Yankees" stand before the
world as the recognized advocates and supporters of a pure democracy.
The descendants of the Cavaliers, on the contrary, join hands, as did
the ancient Dorians, in favor of an oligarchy, and of an oligarchy, too,
based on the institution of slavery. Upon this difference rested the
political dissensions of Greece, as do now those of our own country. The
negro plays no more important part in the difference between the North
and South than did the Helot in the contests between the Spartans and
the Athenians. It is not in either case the simple fact of human slavery
which necessitates the civil strife, but it is the radical opposition
between _a government that is founded upon slavery_ and one which is
not. The Athenians had slaves; and so, for that matter, might New
England have to-day: yet, for all that, the civil strife would have been
inevitable, because both in Greece and America this strife evidently
arises out of the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based
upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all,
exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical
social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract
justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into
conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as _a peculiar
institution_, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social necessity,
_must_ come into conflict with the totally opposite institutions of
democracy, and that not because it is merely or nominally slavery,
but because it is a political organ modifying the entire structure of
government.
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