genuine romance. This new vision of the destiny of the country
had the practical effect of making the Northerners identify
themselves in their imaginations with all mankind and in creating
in them an enthusiastic desire, not only to give to every
American a home of his own, but also to throw open the gates of
the nation and to share the wealth of America with the poor of
all the world. In very truth, it was their dominating passion to
give "land to the landless." Here was the clue to much of their
attitude toward the South. Most of these Northern dreamers gave
little or no thought to slavery itself; but they felt that the
section which maintained such a system so committed to
aristocracy that any real friendship with it was impossible.

We are thus forced to conceive the American Republic in the years
immediately following the Compromise of 1850 as, in effect, a
dual nation, without a common loyalty between the two parts.
Before long the most significant of the great Northerners of the
time was to describe this impossible condition by the appropriate
metaphor of a house divided against itself. It was not, however,
until eight years after the division of the country had been
acknowledged in 1850 that these words were uttered. In those
eight years both sections awoke to the seriousness of the
differences that they had admitted. Both perceived that, instead
of solving their problem in 1850, they had merely drawn sharply
the lines of future conflict. In every thoughtful mind there
arose the same alternative questions: Is there no solution but
fighting it out until one side destroys the other, or we end as
two nations confessedly independent? Or is there some conceivable
new outlet for this opposition of energy on the part of the
sections, some new mode of permanent adjustment?