Slavery was only incidentally involved in the late war.
The war was occasioned by the collision of two extreme parties;
but it was itself a war between civilization and barbarism,
primarily between the territorial democracy and the personal
democracy, and in reality, on the part of the nation, as much a
war against the socialism of the abolitionist as against the
individualism of the slaveholder. Yet the victory, though
complete over the former, is only half won over the latter, for
it has left the humanitarian democracy standing, and perhaps for
the moment stronger than ever. The socialistic democracy was
enlisted by the territorial, not to strengthen the government at
home, as it imagines, for that it did not do, and could not do,
since the national instinct was even more opposed to it than to
the personal democracy; but under its antislavery aspect, to
soften the hostility of foreign powers, and ward off foreign
intervention, which was seriously threatened. The populations of
Europe, especially of France and England, were decidedly
anti-slavery, and if the war here appeared to them a war, not
solely for the unity of the nation and the integrity of its
domain, as it really was, in which they took and could take no
interest, but a war for the abolition of slavery, their
governments would not venture to intervene. This was the only
consideration that weighed with Mr.
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