Some excellent analysis from 1854 or so...

“The real issue...that will continue in this country...is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle.

It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race [or class] of men as an apology for enslaving another race [or class], it is the same tyrannical principle.”   --Abraham Lincoln