The Battle of Principles
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NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS
THE BATTLE OF PRINCIPLES
A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery
Conflict
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THE CONTAGION OF CHARACTER
Studies in Culture and Success
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Studies, National and Patriotic on America of To-day
and To-morrow
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Studies of Character, Real and Ideal
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THE INVESTMENT OF INFLUENCE
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A MAN'S VALUE TO SOCIETY
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FAITH AND CHARACTER
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THE SCHOOL IN THE HOME
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The
Battle of Principles
A Study of the Heroism
and Eloquence of the
Anti-Slavery Conflict
By
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D. D.
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1912, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
Foreword
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.
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
intellectual giants and moral heroes. Great men walked in regiments up
and down the land. It was the age of our greatest statesmen of the North
and South,--Webster and Calhoun; of our greatest soldiers,--Grant,
Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan, and of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It was
the era of our greatest orators, Phillips and Beecher; of our greatest
editors, led by Greeley and Raymond; of our greatest poets and scholars,
Whittier and Lowell and Emerson; and of our greatest President, the
Martyr of Emancipation. So wonderful are those scenes named Gettysburg,
Appomattox, and the room where the Emancipation Act was signed, that
even the most skeptical have felt that the issues of liberty and life
for millions of slaves justified the entrance of a Divine Figure upon
the human battle-field. This Unseen Leader and Captain of the host had
dipped His sword in heaven, and carried a blade that was red with
insufferable wrath against oppression, cruelty and wrong.
Now that fifty years have passed since the Civil War, the events of that
conflict have taken on their true perspective, and movements once
clouded have become clear. For great men and nations alike, the
suggestive hours are the critical hours and epochs. That was a critical
epoch for Athens, when Demosthenes plead the cause of the republic, and
insisted that Athens must defend her liberties, her art, her laws, her
social institutions, and in the spirit of democracy resist the tyrant
Philip, who came with gifts in his hands. That was a critical hour for
brave little Holland, dreaming her dreams of liberty,--when the burghers
resisted the regiments of bloody Alva, and, clinging to the dykes with
their finger-tips, fought their way back to the fields, expelled Philip
of Spain, and, having no fortresses, lifted up their hands and
exclaimed, "These are our bayonets and walls of defense!" Big with
destiny also for this republic was that critical hour when Lincoln, in
his first inaugural, pleaded with the South not to destroy the Union,
nor to turn their cannon against the free institutions that seemed "the
last, best hope of men." But the eyes of the men of the South were
holden, and they were drunk with passion. They lighted the torch that
kindled a conflagration making the Southern city a waste and the rich
cotton-field a desolation.
At the very beginning, the founders and fathers of the nation were under
the delusion that it was possible to unite in one land two antagonistic
principles,--liberty and slavery. It has been said that the Republic,
founded in New England, was nothing but an attempt to translate into
terms of prose the dreams that haunted the soul of John Milton his long
life through. The founders believed that every man must give an account
of himself to God, and because his responsibility was so great, they
felt that he must be absolutely free. Since no king, no priest, and no
master could give an account for him, he must be self-governing in
politics, self-controlling in industry, and free to go immediately into
the presence of God with his penitence and his prayer. The fathers
sought religious and political freedom,--not money or lands. But the new
temple of liberty was to be for the white race alone, and these builders
of the new commonwealth never thought of the black man, save as a
servant in the house. For more than two centuries, therefore, the wheat
and the tares grew together in the soil. When the tares began to choke
out the wheat, the uprooting of the foul growth became inevitable.
Perhaps the Civil War was a necessity,--for this reason, the disease of
slavery had struck in upon the vitals of the nation and the only cure
was the surgeon's knife. Therefore God raised up soldiers, and anointed
them as surgeons, with "the ointment of war, black and sulphurous."
By a remarkable coincidence, the year that brought a slave ship to
Jamestown, Virginia, brought the _Mayflower_ and the Pilgrim fathers to
Plymouth Rock. It is a singular fact that the star of hope and the orb
of night rose at one and the same hour upon the horizon. At first the
rich men of London counted the Virginia tobacco a luxury, but the weed
soon became a necessity, and the captain of the African ship exchanged
one slave for ten huge bales of tobacco. A second cargo of slaves
brought even larger dividends to the owners of the slave ship. Soon the
story of the financial returns of the traffic began to inflame the
avarice of England, Spain and Portugal. The slave trade was exalted to
the dignity of commerce in wheat and flour, coal and iron. Just as ships
are now built to carry China's tea and silk, India's indigo and spices,
so ships were built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the
kidnapping of African slaves, and the sale of these men to the sugar and
cotton planters of the West Indies and of America. Even the stories of
the gold and diamond fields of South Africa and Alaska have had less
power to inflame men's minds than the stories of the black men in the
forests of Africa, every one of whom was good for twenty guineas.
The London of 1700 experienced a boom in slave stocks as the London of
1900 in rubber stocks. Merchants and captains, after a few years'
absence, returned to London to buy houses, carriages and gold plate, and
by their political largesses to win the title of baronet, and even seats
in the House of Lords. This illusion of gold finally fell upon the
throne itself, and King William and Queen Mary lent the traffic royal
patronage. At the very time when men in Boston, exultant over the
success of their experiment in democracy, were writing home to London
about this ideal republic of God that had been set up at Plymouth, and
the orb of liberty began to flame with light and hope for New England,
this other orb began to fling out its rays of sorrow, disease and death
across Africa and the southern sands.
At length, in 1713, Queen Anne, in the Treaty of Utrecht, after a long
and arduous series of diplomatic negotiations, secured for the English
throne a monopoly of the slave traffic, and the writers of the time
spoke of this treaty as an event that would make the queen's name to be
eulogized as long as time should last. But two hundred years have
reversed the judgment of the civilized world. History now recalls Queen
Anne's monopoly of the slave traffic as it recalls the Black Death in
England, the era of smallpox in Scotland,--for one such treaty is
probably equal to two bubonic plagues, or three epidemics of cholera and
yellow fever.
Finally, an informal agreement was entered upon between the English
slave dealers, the Spaniards and Portuguese,--an agreement that was
literally a "covenant with death and a compact with hell." The
Portuguese became the explorers of the interior, the advance agents of
the traffic, who reported what tribes had the tallest, strongest men,
and the most comely women. The Spaniards maintained the slave stations
on the coast, and took over from the Portuguese the gangs of slaves who
were chained together and driven down to the coast; the English slave
dealers owned the ships, bought the slaves at wholesale, transported the
wretches across the sea, and retailed the poor creatures to the planters
of the various colonies. Between 1620 and 1770 three million slaves were
driven in gangs down to the African seacoast, and transported to the
colonies. At this time some of the greatest houses in London, Lisbon and
Madrid were founded, and some of the greatest family names were
established during these one hundred and fifty years when the slave
traffic was most prosperous. De Bau thinks that another 250,000 slaves
perished during the voyages across the sea. For the eighteenth century
was a century of cruelty as well as gold,--of crime and art,--of
murderous hate and increasing commerce. If the prophet Daniel had been
describing the Spain, Portugal and England of that time, he would have
portrayed them as an image of mud and gold,--but chiefly mud. Little
wonder that Thomas Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," treating of
the influence and possible consequences of slavery, wrote, "Indeed, I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." As England
anchored war-ships in the harbour of Shanghai, and forced the opium
traffic upon China, so she forced the slave traffic upon the American
colonies by gun and cannon. The story of the English kings who crowded
slavery upon the South makes up one of the blackest pages in the history
of a country that has been like unto a sower who went forth to sow with
one hand the good seed of liberty and justice, while with the other she
sowed the tares of slavery and oppression.
From the very beginning, the climate and the general atmosphere of the
North was unfriendly to slavery, just as the cotton, sugar and indigo,
as well as the warm climate of the South encouraged slave labour. At
first, neither Boston nor New York associated wrong with the custom of
buying and using slave labour. And when, after a short time, opposition
began to develop, this antagonism to slavery was based upon economic,
rather than upon moral considerations.
Jonathan Edwards was our great theologian, but at the very time that
Jonathan Edwards was writing his "Freedom of the Will" and preaching his
revival sermons on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," he was the
owner of slaves. When that philosopher, whose writings had sent his name
into all Europe, died, he bequeathed a favourite slave to his
descendants. Whitefield was the great evangelist of that era, but
Whitefield during his visit to the colonies purchased a Southern
plantation, stocked it with seventy-five slaves, and when he died
bequeathed it to a relative, whom he characterizes as "an elect lady,"
who, notwithstanding she was "elect," was quite willing to derive her
livelihood from the sweat of another's brow.
And yet even in the Providence plantations, where more slaves were
bought and sold than in any other of the Northern colonies, the traffic
soon began to wane. The simple fact is that the rigour of the climate
and the severity of the winters of New England made the life of the
African brief. The slave was the child of a tropic clime, unaccustomed
to clothing, and the January snows and the March winds soon developed
consumption and chilled to death the child of the tropics. It was found
impracticable to use the black man in either the forests or fields, and
in a short time slaves were purchased only as domestic servants.
But about 1750 the conscience of New England awakened. Men in the pulpit
took a strong position against the traffic. The Congregational churches
of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut declared against slavery and
asked the legislatures to adopt the Jewish law, emancipating all slaves
whatsoever at the end of the tenth year of servitude. A little later,
slavery was made illegal in all the New England colonies, Pennsylvania
at length remembered William Penn, who had freed all his slaves in his
will, while the German churches of that State began to expel all members
who were known to have bought or held a slave. When, therefore, the
convention met in Philadelphia, in 1776, preparatory to the Declaration
of Independence, the delegates were able to say that as a whole the
Northern colonies had cleansed their borders of the abuse, and had
decided to build their institutions and civilization upon free labour,
as the sure foundation of individual and social prosperity.
But the antagonism to slavery in the Southern colonies was only less
pronounced, and this, not because of economic reasons, but because of
moral considerations. The Southern climate was friendly to cotton and
tobacco, indigo and rice. These products made heavy demands upon labour,
but white labour was unequal to the intense heat of the Southern summer
and workmen were scarce. During the revolutions under King Charles I and
Charles II and the wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
England needed every man at home. Virginia offered high wages and large
land rewards, but it was well-nigh impossible for her to secure
immigrants and the labour she needed. In that hour the captain of a
slave ship appeared in the House of Burgesses and offered to supply the
need, but the people of Virginia instructed the delegates to the
assembly to protest against the traffic. Finally, the colony imposed a
duty upon each slave landing, and made the duty so high as to destroy
the profits of the slave trade. King George was furious with anger, and
sent out a royal proclamation forbidding all interference with the slave
traffic under heavy penalty, and affirming that this trade was "highly
beneficial to the colonies, as well as remunerative to the throne."
Growing more antagonistic to slavery, the planters of Fairfax County
called a convention at which Washington presided. Later, in
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin brought in the resolutions condemning
slavery as "a wicked, cruel and unjustifiable trade." Soon the leading
men of the Southern colonies sent a formal protest to England. Lord
Mansfield supported them in a decision that in English countries,
governed by English laws, freedom was the rule, and slavery illegal,
unless the colony, through its assembly, expressly legalized the slave
traffic.
When the first convention met in Philadelphia, Jefferson included among
the articles of indictment against George the Third this paragraph: "He
has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery or to
incur a miserable death in the transportation thither." This passage,
however, was struck out of the Declaration in compliance with the wishes
of the delegates from two colonies, who desired to continue slavery. But
in 1784 Jefferson reopened the question by reporting an ordinance
prohibiting slavery after the year 1800 in the territory that afterwards
became Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the
territory north of the Ohio River. This anti-slavery clause was lost in
the convention by only a single vote. "The voice of a single
individual," wrote Jefferson, "would have prevented this abominable
crime. But Heaven will not always be silent. The friends to the rights
of human nature will in the end prevail."
Indeed, in the Southern States up to the very beginning of the Civil War
there was a strong anti-slavery sentiment. When the first meeting was
held in Baltimore to organize the Abolition Society, eighty-five
abolition societies in various counties of Southern States sent
delegates to the convention. It is a striking fact that the South can
claim as much credit for the organization of the Abolition Society as
William Lloyd Garrison and his friends in the North. For the real
responsibility for slavery does not rest upon Virginia, the Carolinas or
Georgia, but upon the mother-land, upon the avarice of the throne, the
cupidity of English merchants and the power of English guns and cannon.
By the year 1790, therefore, slavery in the North had either died of
inanition, or had been rendered illegal by the action of State
legislatures, and the chapter was closed. There are the best of reasons
also for believing that in the South slavery was waning, while the
influence of planters who believed free labour more economical was
waxing. Suddenly an unexpected event changed the whole situation. The
commerce of the world rests upon food and clothing. The food of the
world is in wheat and corn, the clothing in cotton and wool. But wool
was so expensive that for the millions in Europe cotton garments were a
necessity. England had the looms and the spindles, but she could not
secure the cotton, and the Southern planters could not grow it. The
cotton pod, as large as a hen's egg, bursts when ripe and the cotton
gushes out in a white mass. Unfortunately, each pod holds eight or ten
seeds, each as large as an orange seed. To clean a single pound of
cotton required a long day's work by a slave. The production of cotton
was slow and costly, the acreage therefore small, and the profits
slender. The South was burdened with debt, the plantations were
mortgaged, and in 1792 the outlook for the cotton planters was very
dark, and all hearts were filled with foreboding and fear. One winter's
night Mrs. General Greene, wife of the Revolutionary soldier, was
entertaining at dinner a company of planters. In those days the planters
had but one thought--how to rid their plantations of their mortgages. It
happened that the conversation turned upon some possible mechanism for
cleaning the cotton. Mrs. Greene turned to her guests, and, reminding
Eli Whitney, a young New Englander who was in her home teaching her
children, that he had invented two or three playthings for her children,
suggested that he turn his attention to the problem.