Though we of the North certainly did not
appreciate its gravity, the situation was portentous in the extreme.
Involved in this problem of African slavery was the incidental issue of
Free Trade and Protection,--apparently only economical and industrial in
character, but in reality fundamentally crucial. And behind this lay
the constitutional question, involving as it did not only the
conflicting theories of a strict or liberal construction of the
fundamental law, but nationality also,--the right of a Sovereign State
to withdraw from the Union created in 1787, and developed through two
generations.
These may be termed concrete political issues, as opposed to basic
truths generally accepted and theories individually entertained. The
theories were constitutional, social, economical. Constitutionally, they
turned upon the obligations of citizenship. There was no such thing then
as a citizen of the United States of and by itself. The citizen of the
United States was such simply because of his citizenship of a Sovereign
State,--whether Massachusetts or Virginia or South Carolina; and, of
course, an instrument based upon a divided sovereignty admitted of
almost infinitely diverse interpretation. It is a scriptural aphorism
that no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
And in the fulness of time it literally with us so came about.
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