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In both the Slave and the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists."
We cannot forbear to say, that the strenuous opposition waged against this appeal of common humanity arose from political influence, supported by a set of ultra partisans, whose theoretical restrictions, assisted by the voice of the press, catered to the war-spirit of the abstractionists.
Therefore, continue our abstractionists, we must conceive it as essentially thus unrelated, so that even were a billion men to sport the same opinion, and only one man to differ, we could admit no collateral circumstances which might presumptively make it more probable that he, not they, should be wrong.
The mind of this school is the representative mind, and all men recognise it as that, because, in its products, that nature which is in all men, which philosophy had, till then, scorned to recognise, which the abstractionists had missed in their abstractions, that nature of will, and sense, and passion, and inanity, is brought out in its true historical proportions, not as it exists in books, not as it exists in speech, but as it exists in the actual human life.
In this all-important respect I do not hesitate to say we theorists and abstractionists of the North, throughout that long anti-slavery discussion which ended with the 1861 clash of arms, were thoroughly wrong.
First, the abstractionists of the Virginia school men who "would cavil for the ninth part of a hair" affirmed in general terms, that this Government was established with the view of regulating our external affairs, leaving all internal matters to be regulated by the States; and then, descending to particulars, declared, that, while Congress had the power to make improvements on salt water, it could do nothing on fresh.
His severity in this line was a living rebuke to all abstractionists and would-be biological philosophers. More than once have I heard him quote with deep feeling the lines from Faust: "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie. Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum." The only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could bring him facts.
They have registered a vow in Heaven to employ every lawful and constitutional means to roll back the dark tide of slavery from the temple of Freedom, and vindicate the character of the Republic from the disgrace and reproach of establishing slavery in a free territory. We are no abstractionists.
Everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or finer according to its stuff. They relieve and recommend each other, and the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction which is rare and casual.
That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first. The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction, that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.
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