The instinct of self-preservation was altogether too masterful for the moral starveling.
It succumbed to circumstances, content to obtain an occasional sermon, an annual address, a few scattered societies to keep a human glow in the bosom of the infant Confederacy.
The Confederation failed.

The formation of a more perfect union was demanded and undertaken.

This transcendent task straightway thrust into the background every other enterprise and interest.

The feeble activity of the freedom-making principle was checked, for the time being, by the energy of the nation-making power.

They were not antagonistic forces--only in the natural order of things, the earliest stages in the evolution of the former had to come after the first steps were taken in the development of the latter.