The Battle of Principles

These are days of destiny for the people of the Republic. Democracy, like a beautiful civilization, is sweeping over all the earth. From Portugal comes the news of a monarchy that is taking on democratic forms. Turkey has announced the liberty of the printing press, Russia is planning a new system of popular education, China is in process of adopting a constitutional government, with a cabinet responsible to the people. Unless one reads the newspapers in many languages, the observer will miss daily some new victory for democracy. Great changes are on also for the Republic. Now that the Civil War is fifty years away, the new North and the new South represent a solid nation. Indeed, if every Northern soldier were to die to-day, not one interest or liberty of this Republic would be permitted to suffer by the sons of the Confederate soldiers, who would defend the nation unto blood as bravely as men born north of Mason and Dixon's line--indeed, who fought gallantly for it in the Cuban war. The North has entered upon a new industrial epoch, but the South also is in the midst of its greatest industrial movement, and in sight of its enlargement, by reason of the Panama Canal.

The Western Continent is not large, but it holds more than half the farm land of the planet, and it is already evident that the United States and Canada, with their free institutions, will indirectly and directly control the thousand millions of people that will soon live between the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and Cape Horn. The one question of the hour is how to make all the coming millions patriots towards their country, scholars towards the intellect, obedient citizens towards the laws of nature and God. Our national peril is Mammonism, and the sordid pursuit of gold. Our fathers came hither in pursuit of God and liberty,--not gold and territory. Sixty of our present ninety millions of people have entered the earthly scene since the Civil War. Our young men and women, and the children of foreign born peoples need to open the pages of history, setting forth the great men and events of the Anti-Slavery epoch in this land.

The time has come for the teachers in the schoolroom and the preachers in their pulpits to assemble the youth of the nation, and drill them in the history of industrial democracy, and of political liberty. If our youth are to make the twentieth century glorious, they must realize the continuity of our institutions, and often return to the nineteenth century and the Anti-Slavery epoch. The phrase, "For God, home and native land," is often on the lips of our teachers. Love towards God gives religion; the love of home gives marriage; the love of country, patriotism. But patriotism is a fire that must be fed with the fuel of ideas. These chapters are written in the belief that the youth of to-day will find in the history of their fathers a storehouse filled with seed for a world sowing, an armoury filled with weapons for to-morrow's battle, a library rich with wisdom for the morrow's emergency, a cathedral, bright with memorials of yesterday's heroes, its soldiers and scholars, its statesmen, and above all, its martyred President.

NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS.

Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Contents

I. Rise of American Slavery: Growth of the Traffic 11

II. Webster and Calhoun: The Battle Line in Array 40

III. Garrison and Phillips: Anti-Slavery Agitation 68

IV. Charles Sumner: The Appeal to Educated Men 95

V. Horace Greeley: The Appeal to the Common People 117

VI. Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown: The Conflict Precipitated 136

VII. Lincoln and Douglas: Influence of the Great Debate 160

VIII. Reasons for Secession: Southern Leaders 188

IX. Henry Ward Beecher: The Appeal to England 212

X. Heroes of Battle: American Soldiers and Sailors 242

XI. The Life of the People at Home Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 263

XII. Abraham Lincoln: The Martyred President 288

INDEX 327

I

RISE OF AMERICAN SLAVERY: GROWTH OF THE TRAFFIC

The history of the nineteenth century holds some ten wars that disturbed the nations of the earth, but perhaps our Civil War alone can be fully justified at the bar of intellect and conscience. That war was fought, not in the interest of territory or of national honour,--it was fought by the white race for the enfranchisement of the black race, and to show that a democratic government, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, could permanently endure.