Excerpt from Slavery and the War: A Historical Essay
From the commencement of that internecine war, which is now raging with so much fury in our country, the faith that it would eventuate in the entire destruction of American slavery was, with many good men, strong. They had long stood appalled before this gigantic national evil, afraid almost to utter in words the sentiments of condemnation that were burning in their hearts, and entirely unable to see how any exodus was to be opened for the enslaved. The problem was too profound for human solution. Girt around with constitutional defenses, and its righteousness maintained by the teachings of almost every pulpit in the South, an institution, once universally confessed to be but temporary, and destined before the march of civilization and religion to pass away, seemed fast imbedding itself indissolubly, into the very structure of a large part of American society.
But how changed was the whole aspect of this question, the very moment that this great national sin, in its vaulting ambition, grappled with liberty, and sought to hurl into the dust, the very institutions that had fostered its greatness! Timid philanthropists and religionists then saw, at once, that God had taken this problem, so insoluble with them, into His hands, and that now again, in the eyes of all the nations, would that prophecy of Christ be fulfilled - "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Doubtless at the outset, this expectation of the final issue was, as to the mode of its accomplishment, vague. Men walked to this sublime conclusion by a simple faith. Unable to believe that the purpose of God in permitting this rebellion was our national ruin, but seeing in it His design to cleanse and purify us, in what other direction could the process extend but in this? True, slavery was not our only national sin.
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