There was no authentic intellectual discipline behind the agitation.

The pioneer democrat with all his limitations embodied the only living national body of opinion, and he remained untainted by this outburst of heresy.

He deprived it of all vitality by depriving its separate explosions, Abolitionism excepted, of all serious attention.

He crushed it far more effectually by indifference than he would have by persecution.

When the shock of the Civil War aroused Americans to a realization of the unpleasant political realities sometimes associated with the neglect of a "noble national theory," the ferment subsided without leaving behind so much as a loaf of good white bread.
For practical political purposes it exhausted itself, as I have said, in Abolitionism, and in that movement both its strength and weakness are writ plain.