But the north is by no means yet in the kingdom. Each of its radical ideas of free society is violated and perverted by a considerable portion of every commonwealth; some of its principles by entire states. Out of the competitions of free labor has sprung a fierce and selfish love of money which scorns honesty and tramples down man in its accursed lust for gold. Whole classes of men are cursed by this venal insanity which, culminating in the marble streets of the commercial metropolis, distills its venom to the remotest log cabin in the wilderness. Out of the opportunities of free social life has sprung a mushroom growth of vulgar social ambition, luxury and sensuality; which struggles to become the fashion on the pavement of the Atlantic city and in the “percussion” village of the west. The sacred freedom of printing and speech has been perverted to a satanic press and the open advocacy of every vagary of despotism and sin. Political freedom has been demoralized to the freedom of unlimited office seeking, the betrayal of human rights for individual success and fearful corruption in public affairs. And out of the noblest feature of our church, its liberty of worship, comes that pernicious strife for sectarian supremacy and worldly success which endangers the most liberal religious organizations.
These abuses of northern society marshal a host in New England. They rage through the great cities of the Middle States. They demoralize multitudes on the prairies, and on the Pacific struggle with fearful intensity for the possession of society. The point to which this tendency gravitates is _popular servility_. So we have, in the North, a great crowd of men and women debauched by the abuse of the opportunities of free society, to the point of yielding to the blandishments and menaces of any despotism that promises to pay its way.
Let us distinctly understand that in this direction lies the sin and peril of northern civilization. It is not our free institutions and their faithful disciples which are endangering the peace of the country, as is slanderously asserted by every tyrant and tyrant’s jackall in America; but the chief peril of the Union is from _this margin of servility_ in northern civilization, which is always in the market, ready to tamper with any abomination from abroad, within or without its own borders, as its wretched selfishness may be stimulated thereby. Perhaps its present direction is least dangerous to the national welfare. It now succumbs to the slave power of our Southern States, as the nearest, most powerful, and remunerative purchaser of its influence. Were there no slave power, it would be in league with foreign civil and religious despotism, or fasten upon some Northern institution as the representative of the aristocratic idea. But now it has turned its shameless face away from Northern civilization, which is growing up behind its back into an adamantine wall overtopping its base hopes and impotent threats. While its preachers, and politicians, and journals and saloons are facing towards despotism, and calling free society anarchy, the majority of the North is calmly marching onward to the victory for the right which is only a question of a few decades, unswayed by the promises, undaunted by the croakings of its _margin of servility_. The idea of free society, of which New England is the foremost representative, is gradually subduing every region of these eighteen states to itself.