It was not, as many suppose, a compact of scurvy politicians for the
sake of political victory. Every great party, whether religious' or
political, that has held power long in a country, has been founded
upon conviction,--disinterested conviction. Some of the cotton and
tobacco lords, men of intellect and culture, were democrats and
abolitionists, like Jefferson himself. Others took up with
republicanism because it was the reigning affectation in their circle,
as it was in the chateaux and drawing-rooms of France. But their State
pride it was that bound them as a class to the early Republican party.
The Southern aristocrat saw in Jefferson the defender of the
sovereignty of his State: the "smutched artificer" of the North
gloried in Jefferson as the champion of the rights of man. While the
Republican party was in opposition, battling with unmanageable John
Adams, with British Hamilton, and with a foe more powerful than both
of those men together, Robespierre,--while it had to contend with
Washington's all but irresistible influence, and with the nearly
unanimous opposition of educated and orthodox New England,--this
distinction was not felt.
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