"A nation it is, and not a partnership. A nation, one and inseparable, we propose that it shall continue. We deny that the founders and fathers ever contemplated a mere temporary alliance dissoluble at the caprice of any member. To the Union, established under the Constitution, just as earnestly as to the cause of independence, they virtually pledged 'their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.' With every year the nation has knitted its texture closer, as its benefits increased and its associations grew. A nation is something other than a pleasure party, or a mutual admiration society,--it includes a principle of rightful authority and necessary submission. The harmony vital to national unity is not merely a mutual complacence of the members,--at its root is a habitual, disciplined obedience to the central authority, which in a democracy is the orderly expressed will of the majority. You cannot leave us and we cannot let you go. And if you attempt to break the bond, it is at your peril." CHAPTER XXII HOW THEY DIFFERED If the typical Secessionist and the typical Unionist, as just described, could rally a united South and a united North to their respective views, there was no escape from a violent clash. Whether the two sections could be so united each in itself appeared extremely doubtful. But below these special questions of political creed were underlying divergences of sentiment and character between North and South, which fanned the immediate strife as a strong wind fans a starting flame. There was first a long-growing alienation of feeling, a mutual dislike, rooted in the slavery controversy, and fed partly by real and partly by imaginary differences. Different personal and social ideals were fostered by the two industrial systems. The Southerner of the dominant class looked on manual labor as fit only for slaves and low-class whites. His ideal of society was a pyramid, the lower courses representing the physical toilers, the intermediate strata supplying a higher quality of social service, while the crown was a class refined by leisure and cultivation and free to give themselves to generous and hospitable private life, with public affairs for their serious pursuit. He regarded the prominence of the laboring class in Northern communities as marking the inferiority of their society, and in the absorption of the wealthier class in trade he read a further disadvantage. The virtues he most honored were courage, courtesy, magnanimity,--all that he delighted to characterize as "chivalry." He was inclined to consider the North as materialistic and mercenary, and even its virtues as based largely on "honesty is the best policy."