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What can South Carolina expect to do in the way of forcible secession on her own account?
Far-sighted and vigilant as he was, it is clear that the dissolution of the
Union had not yet come to be the all-absorbing topic of public discussion.
Evidently the widespread spirit of revolution which in 1848-49 had threatened every government in
Europe, and had so impressed him during his travels abroad with the necessity for social and economic reform, still held the uppermost place in his mind.
On another occasion, only a few days later,
Dana, after commenting upon the great triumph which we celebrate on the Fourth of July, declared with regret that while it put democracy into our political it failed to put it into our social institutions, and this idea it will be seen, by references to his addresses delivered on socialism and democracy many years afterwards, he never relinquished.
In August of this year the white merchants of
Virginia put forth an address, in which they took strong grounds against training and instructing negroes for the trades, and this called forth
Dana's most vigorous comments as follows:
... This address supposes throughout that a community composed of a servile class on the one hand, and a free class on the other, can be happy, prosperous, and progressive.
And this appears not as if it was a politic reticence, but a sincere and unsuspecting conviction.
Notwithstanding their talk about equity, justice, the destruction of monopolies, and the pure principles of republicanism, they are all ready to tolerate and even held perpetuate this most monstrous of monopolies, this worst form of injustice, this utmost of tyrannies.
A delusion so inhumane in a class which ought to manifest some degree of independence, intelligence, and freedom from prejudice is the lost conclusive argument that
