The Battle of Principles | Page 2

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.
In retrospect, the Great Rebellion seems the mightiest battle and the
most glorious victory in the annals of time. The battle-field was a
thousand miles in length; the combatants numbered two million men;
the struggle was protracted over four years; the hillsides of the whole
South were made billowy with the country's dead; a million men were
killed or wounded in the two thousand two hundred battles; thousands
of gifted boys who might have permanently enriched the North and
South alike, through literature, art or science, were cut off as unfulfilled
prophecies in the beginning of their career, and what is more pathetic,
another million women, desolate and widowed, remained to look with
altered eyes upon an altered world, while alone they walked their Via
Dolorosa. In the physical realm the black shadow of the sun's eclipse
remains but for a few minutes, but through four awful years the nation
dwelt in blackness and dreadful night, while fifty more years passed,
and the shadow has not yet disappeared fully from the land.
Strictly speaking, the Civil War began with the debate between Daniel
Webster and Calhoun in 1830. These intellectual giants set the battle
lines in array in the halls of the Senate. The warfare that began with
arguments in Congress was soon transferred to the lyceum and lecture
hall, then to the pulpit and press, then to the assembly rooms of State
legislatures, until finally it was submitted to the soldiers. At last Grant,
Sherman and Thomas witnessed to the truth of Webster's argument,
that the Union is one and inseparable, that it should endure now and
forever, but the endorsement was written with the sword's point, and in
letters of blood. The conflict raged, therefore, for thirty-five years, and
some of the most desperate battles were fought not with guns and
cannon, but with arguments, in the presence of assembled thousands,
who listened to the intellectual attack and defense. In their famous
debate, Lincoln and Douglas were over against one another like two
fortresses, bristling with bayonets, and with cannon shotted to the

muzzle.
The many millions of people in the United States, born or immigrated
here since the Civil War, busied with many things during this rich,
complex and prosperous era, have suffered a grievous loss, through the
weakening of their patriotism. Multitudes have forgotten that with great
price their fathers bought our industrial liberty for white and black alike.
The study of no era, perhaps, is so rewarding to the youth of the
country as the study of the Anti-Slavery epoch. It was an era of