But negro slavery, just in so far as it became an issue, tended to make the alliance precarious.

The national organization embodied in the Constitution authorized not only the existence of negro slavery, but its indefinite expansion.

American democracy, on the other hand, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the spirit and letter of the Jeffersonian creed, was hostile from certain points of view to the institution of negro slavery.
Loyalty to the Constitution meant disloyalty to democracy, and an active interest in the triumph of democracy seemed to bring with it the condemnation of the Constitution.

What, then, was a good American to do who was at once a convinced democrat and a loyal Unionist?
The ordinary answer to this question was, of course, expressed in the behavior of public opinion during the Middle Period.

The thing to do was to shut your eyes to the inconsistency, denounce anybody who insisted on it as unpatriotic, and then hold on tight to both horns of the dilemma.
Men of high intelligence, who really loved their country, and believed in the democratic idea, persisted in this attitude, whose ablest and most distinguished representative was Daniel Webster.