Back of these, back of individuals, he sees
humanity, superior to individuals, superior to states,
governments, and laws, and holds that he may trample on them all
or give them to the winds at the call of humanity or "the higher
law." The principle on which he acts is as indefensible as the
personal or egoistical democracy of the slaveholders and their
sympathizers. Were his socialistic tendency to become exclusive
and realized, it would found in the name of humanity a complete
social despotism, which, proving impracticable from its very
generality, would break up in anarchy, in which might makes
right, as in the slaveholder's democracy.
The abolitionists, in supporting themselves on humanity in its
generality, regardless of individual and territorial rights, can
recognize no state, no civil authority, and therefore are as much
out of the order of civilization, and as much in that of
barbarism, as is the slaveholder himself. Wendell Phillips is as
far removed from true Christian civilization as was John C.
Calhoun, and William Lloyd Garrison is as much of a barbarian and
despot in principle and tendency as Jefferson Davis. Hence the
great body of the people in the non-slaveholding States, wedded
to American democracy as they were and are could never, as much
as they detested slavery, be induced to make common cause with
the abolitionists, and their apparent union in the late civil war
was accidental, simply owing to the fact that for the time the
social democracy and the territorial coincides or had the same
enemy.
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