entire period from 1850 to 1865, capital in American politics
played for the most part a negative role, and not until after the
war did it become independent of its Southern interests.

For the real North of that day we must turn to those Northerners
who felt sufficient unto themselves and whose political
convictions were unbiased by personal interests which were
involved in other parts of the country. We must listen to the
distinct voices that gave utterance to their views, and we must
observe the definite schemes of their political leaders.
Directly we do this, the fact stares us in the face that the
North had become a democracy. The rich man no longer played the
role of grandee, for by this time there had arisen those two
groups which, between them, are the ruin of aristocracy--the
class of prosperous laborers and the group of well-to-do
intellectuals. Of these, the latter gave utterance, first, to
their faith in democracy, and then, with all the intensity of
partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as the agent of
democracy. The prosperous laborers applauded this expression of
anopinion in which they thoroughly believed and at the same time
gave their willing support to a land policy that was typically
Northern.

American economic history in the middle third of the century is
essentially the record of a struggle to gain possession of public
land. The opposing forces were the South, which strove to
perpetuate by this means a social system that was fundamentally
aristocratic, and the North, which sought by the same means to
foster its ideal of democracy. Though the South, with the aid of
its economic vassal, the Northern capitalist class, was for some