I SLAVERY AND AMERICAN NATIONALITY Both the Whig and the Democratic parties betrayed the insufficiency of their ideas by their behavior towards the problem of slavery.

Hitherto I have refrained from comment on the effect which the institution of slavery was coming to have upon American politics because the increasing importance of slavery, and of the resulting anti-slavery agitation, demand for the purpose of this book special consideration.

Such a consideration must now be undertaken.

The bitter personal and partisan controversies of the Whigs and the Democrats were terminated by the appearance of a radical and a perilous issue; and in the settlement of this question the principles of both of these parties, in the manner in which they had been applied, were of no vital assistance.
The issue was created by the legal existence in the United States of an essentially undemocratic institution.

The United States was a democracy, and however much or little this phrase means, it certainly excludes any ownership of one man by another.