It is necessary to keep clearly in mind the cause of the division of the Republican party into its two branches in order to understand the principles which distinguished them, for their names are somewhat misleading. For example, it is quite difficult to understand, upon general principles, why the slaveholders of the South should be called Democrats, while many of the little farmers and the artisans of the North should be called Whigs. The element of democracy which was to be found in the political creed of the Southern masters was strict construction of governmental powers, the least possible interference of government in private affairs, and the largest possible individual autonomy--in a word, individual immunity against government. The master could take care of himself, if left free to rule his slaves. In the second place, the Missouri decision involved the principle of constitutional law that the Congress has general powers of legislation in the Territories, and may do anything therein not forbidden by the Constitution. This is also a sound and valuable principle. It was this which won the great Northwest for free labor, so far as government could affect the question, and gave the Union the strength to meet the crisis of 1861-65. The Southerners eventually saw what they had lost in conceding this interpretation of the powers of Congress, and, as will be seen further on, sought to repudiate it; but their long acquiescence in it had allowed it to gain the power of constitutional precedent, too strong to be successfully overcome. {105} In the third place, the Missouri decision involved the principle that there was, before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, an United States citizenship which carried with it immunities and privileges which no Commonwealth could lawfully deny or abridge, and which the United States Government was bound to protect and defend against any Commonwealth seeking to impair them. It demonstrated the difficulties which could arise by allowing a Commonwealth to confer United States citizenship, and thereby bind the United States Government to sustain the acts of one Commonwealth within the jurisdiction of another Commonwealth, whose laws might be directly contradictory to those of the first Commonwealth upon the subject in point. It did not undertake to solve the difficulty. It only held firmly to the principle, while it made many of the best minds aware that this most national provision of the Constitution would, sooner or later, certainly require an advance all along the line in the further development of the governmental system of the country.