The Western Democrats were suspicious of any increase of the national organization in power and scope, but they were even more determined that it should be neither shattered nor vitally injured.

Although they were unable to grasp the meaning of their own convictions, the Federal Union really meant to them something more than an indissoluble legal contract.

It was rooted in their life.

It was one of those things for which they were willing to fight; and their readiness to fight for the national idea was the great salutary fact.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality.