Nevertheless, conditions had not become intolerable.

The terrible cost of disunion in money, blood, humiliation, and hatred had not actually been paid.

It might well have seemed cheaper to most Americans to drift on a little longer than to make the sacrifices and to undertake the labor demanded by the formation of an effective union.

There were plenty of arguments by which a policy of letting things alone could be plausibly defended, and the precedents were all in its favor.

Other people had acquired such political experience as they were capable of assimilating, first by drifting into some intolerable excess or some distressing error, and then by undergoing some violent process of purgation or reform.