seemed, indeed, to belie the existence of any such feeling. The
Northern capitalist class aimed steadily at being non-sectional,
and it made free use of the word national. We must not forget,
however, that all sorts of people talked of national
institutions, and that the term, until we look closely into the
mind of, the person using it, signifies nothing. Because the
Northern capitalist repudiated the idea of sectionalism, it does
not follow that he set up any other in its place. Instead of
accomplishing anything so positive, he remained for the most part
a negative quantity.

Living usually somewhere between Maine and Ohio, he made it his
chief purpose to regulate the outflow of manufactures from that
industrial region and the inflow of agricultural produce. The
movement of the latter eastward and northward, and the former
westward and southward, represents roughly but graphically the
movement of the business of that time. The Easterner lived in
fear of losing the money which was owed him in the South. As the
political and economic conditions of the day made unlikely any
serious clash of interest between the East and the West, he had
little solicitude about his accounts beyond the Alleghanies. But
a gradually developing hostility between North and South was
accompanied by a parallel anxiety on the part of Northern capital
for its Southern investments and debts. When the war eventually
became inevitable, $200,000,000 were owed by Southerners to
Northerners. For those days this was an indebtedness of no
inconsiderable magnitude. The Northern capitalists, preoccupied
with their desire to secure this account, were naturally eager to
repudiate sectionalism, and talked about national interests with
a zeal that has sometimes been misinterpreted. Throughout the