The Western pioneers were so fascinated with the vision of millions of pale-faced democrats, leading free and prosperous lives as the reward for virtuously taking care of their own business, that the Constitutional existence of negro slavery did not in the least discommode them.

Disunionism they detested and would fight to the end; but to waste valuable time in bothering about a perplexing and an apparently irremediable political problem was in their eyes the worst kind of economy.

They were too optimistic and too superficial to anticipate any serious trouble in the Promised Land of America; and they were so habituated to inconsistent and irresponsible political thinking, that they attached no importance to the moral and intellectual turpitude implied by the existence of slavery in a democratic nation.

The responsibility of the Whigs for evading the issue is more serious than that of the Democrats.

Their leaders were the trained political thinkers of their generation.