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. The
accepted economical theories of the period were to a large extent
corollaries of the fundamental proposition, and differing material and
social conditions. Beyond all this, and coming still under the head of
individual theories, was the doctrine enunciated by Thomas Jefferson in
the Declaration of Independence,--the doctrine that all men were created
equal,--meaning, of course, equal before the law. But the theorist and
humanitarian of the North, accepting the fundamental principle laid down
in the Declaration, gave to it a far wider application than had been
intended by its authors,--a breadth of application it would not bear.
Such science as he had being of scriptural origin, he interpreted the
word "equal" as signifying equal in the possibilities of their
attributes,--physical, moral, intellectual; and in so doing, he of
course ignored the first principles of ethnology. It was, I now realize,
a somewhat wild-eyed school of philosophy, that of which I myself was a
youthful disciple.

But, on the other hand, beside these, between 1850 and 1860 a class of
trained and more cautious thinkers, observers, scientists and
theologians was coming to the front. Their investigations, though we did