 
"the primary task of statesmanship in this era," nevins wrote, "was to 
furnish a workable adjustment between the two sections, while offering strong 
inducements to the southern people to regard their labor system not as static 
but evolutionary, and equal persuasions to the northern people to assume a 
helpful rather than scolding attitude."... 
because the revisionists felt no moral urgency themselves, they deplored as 
fanatics those who did feel it, or brushed aside their feelings as the 
artificial product of emotion and propaganda. 
the revisionist here was stephen a.[douglas, who always thought that the 
great moral problems could be solved by sleight-of-hand. 
the phrase, "northern man of southern sentiments," randall remarked, was 
"said... as if it were a base thing for a northern man to work with his 
southern fellows." 
by denying themselves insight into the moral dimension of the slavery 
crisis, in other words, the revisionists denied themselves a historical 
understanding of the intensities that caused the crisis. 
it was the moral issue of slavery, for example, that gave the struggles 
over slavery in the territories or over the enforcement of the fugitive slave 
laws their significance. 
these issues, as the revisionists have shown... were not in themselves 
basic. 
but they were the available issues; they were almost the only points 
within the existing constitutional framework where the moral conflict could be 
faced... 
to say that the civil war was fought over the "unreal" issue of slavery in 
the territories is like saying that the second world war was fought over the 
"unreal" issue of the invasion of poland. 
the democracies could not challenge fascism inside germany any more than 
opponents of slavery could challenge slavery inside the south; but the 
extension of slavery, like the extension of fascism, was an act of aggression 
which made a moral choice inescapable... 
