The Northern Democrats insisted just as strenuously as the South on local self-government, and tried to erect it into the constituent principle of democracy; but they were loyal to the Union and would not admit either that slavery could be nationalized, or that secession had any legal justification.

Finally the Republicans believed with the Abolitionists that slavery was wrong; while they believed with the Northern Democrats that the Union must be preserved; and it was their attempt to de-nationalize slavery as undemocratic and at the same time to affirm the indestructibility of the Union, which proved in the end to be salutary.
Surely never was there a more distressing example of confusion of thought in relation to a "noble national theory." The traditional democratic system of ideas provoked fanatical activity on the part of the Abolitionists, as the defenders of "natural rights," a kindred fanaticism in the Southerners as the defenders of legal rights, and moral indifference and lethargy on the part of the Northern Democrat for the benefit of his own local interests.

The behavior of all three factions was dictated by the worship of what was called liberty; and the word was as confidently and glibly used by Calhoun and Davis as it was by Garrison, Webster, and Douglas.

The Western Democrat, and indeed the average American, thought of democratic liberty chiefly as individual freedom from legal discrimination and state interference in doing some kind of a business.

The Abolitionist was even more exclusively preoccupied with the liberty which the Constitution denied to the negro.
The Southerners thought only of the Constitutional rights, which the Abolitionists wished to abolish, and the Republicans to restrict.