The Battle of Principles / A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict

by Newell Dwight Hillis

Despite the abundant harvests, during the early part of the war the Northern people passed through gloom, anxiety and bitter disappointment. At first the colleges and universities were empty, because the students had all gone to the front, but the common schools were as full as usual. The churches were better attended than formerly, while the newspapers were more widely read than ever before. The crisis sobered the people. The serious note was manifest. One by one luxuries were given up, amusements seemed paltry, and people forgot their usual diversions. After Bull Run came a succession of calamities. Longfellow writes: "Sumner came to dine last night, but the evening was most gloomy, and all went away in tears." Governor Morton of Indiana wrote Lincoln, "Another three months like the last six, and we are lost." Robert Winthrop of Boston came down to New York, and spoke of three scenes that he had witnessed. The first was a group of soldiers on their way home, in charge of friends, some crippled, some emaciated, gaunt and broken, and the rest carried on stretchers. At another station he saw a group of young soldiers, intelligent, athletic and sturdy, climbing on the car to start to the front, but on the platform was a group of pale-cheeked and weeping women, wives, mothers and sweethearts. "Oh, it was terrible! It is all black, black, black!" said Winthrop.

But after the battle of Gettysburg, the high-water mark of the war, men's spirits began to rise. The North became inured to excitement. The emotion was converted into hard work and endurance, and that dogged determination to produce the raiment, the weapons and the food to support the army, or die in the attempt. Depositors took risks and loaned their money to the banks. Bankers took their courage in their hands and loaned the money to the manufacturers; manufacturers advertised for labour in Europe and started up their factories by night as well as by day. Wages rose, the balance of trade was largely in favour of the North, the oil regions began to prosper, and industry, commerce and finance all waxed mighty. In 1864 the whole land was in the full sweep of industrial prosperity. The debts incident to the panic of 1857 were fully liquidated. Iron is the barometer, and the country doubled its consumption of iron. An editor writing of his city says, "Old Hartford seems fat and rich and cozy, and everything is as tranquil as if there were no war."

But the industrial conditions of life in the South were very different. Be it remembered that the North was a self-supporting region, both as to foods and manufactured articles, while the South, under slavery, produced raw material, and used that raw stuff to build up factories in England. When the war came the South found herself without the means of supplying her own wants. Within six months the South discovered that every axe and saw and steam-engine and iron rail and bolt and nail had come from the North. Davis sent out men to scurry the country for old stoves and every iron scrap was picked up to be melted into weapons. At the close of the war tenpenny nails were used as five-cent pieces and currency in North Carolina. To crown all other disasters came the debasement of the currency. Macaulay says that the world has suffered less from bad kings than from bad shillings and sixpences. The Confederacy issued one billion dollars of paper money, States issued another flood of promises to pay, cities put out municipal currency, fire and life insurances their shin-plasters, and they kept pouring out paper money until finally all the printing presses broke down. A month before the collapse, a Confederate soldier, returning to his little cabin, paid $10,000 for a fifteen-year-old mule, knee sprung in front and spavined behind, and $7,500 for the shoes for shoeing the mule.

Lee's army would have collapsed but for the marvellous heroism, resourcefulness and courage of the Southern women. They took charge of the fields, planted the crops, gathered the harvests, and staggered on to the end. Not one Northern home in five was death-stricken through the war, but practically every Southern home had lost one or two members of the family, through father, son or brother.

Nor must we forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, the plantation a desolation, and where there had been prosperity and even luxury, famine and want and disease had set up their abiding places. Verily secession sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of destruction.

That the war influenced some people for good and influenced others for evil is beyond all doubt. During the first two years it was a distinct tonic to the intellect and conscience of the people. The sense of national peril quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied the weak drifters, furnished ballast to all the people, made the strong stronger, made the brave more heroic. The first sign of national decay is the note of frivolity. The sure sign of greatness in a generation is the note of seriousness. In the middle of 1863 James Russell Lowell wrote Bancroft that the war had been a great, a divine and a wholly unmixed blessing, and that all of the people were exalted to new levels. Had the war ceased with the battle of Gettysburg, probably Lowell's statement would have held true, but later came the reaction towards graft and corruption, intemperance, profligacy and gambling. Within four years the representatives of the government expended from seven to eight billions of dollars. Government contractors bought at a single time 50,000 suits of clothes, 100,000 rifles, 200,000 blankets. The temptation to graft was strong for all and irresistible to a few. The government records speak of one horse-trader in St. Louis who bought his horses and mules at $75 and sold them to the government for $150, and made enough to buy Mississippi steamboats for $65,000. He then rented these boats to the government for one year for $295,000, and at the end of the year still owned the boats. To what extent charges of graft were made is indicated by the fact that one claim was reduced from fifty millions to thirty-three millions. A cartoon of that time with strange exaggeration represents one man saying to his friend, "So-and-so has obtained a third contract from the government." To which his friend answers, "Well, well! A couple of more contracts and he will die worth a million." For any manufacturer to obtain a government contract was for that man to be on the highroad to wealth.

Yet the historians who analyze these reports find a large amount of exaggeration in the statements. Some waste there was, but the authorities seem to think that it was the waste of inexperience for the most part. When the war opened the Navy Department was spending $1,000,000 a year. By 1862 it was spending $145,000,000, and with no organization to handle such enormous interests. In general, in view of the sudden emergency thrust upon the people, the marvel is not that there was so much corruption among government contractors, but that there were so many honest contractors, and that there was so little waste through inexperience.

In general it may be said that the moral and religious sentiment of both North and South alike steadily strengthened during the conflict. After Gettysburg, the Southern people and army, always deeply religious, in their distress turned to their fathers' God for support. Jackson and Lee's men fought by day, and held prayer-meetings by night. In the North, during 1861 and '62 and '63, religious meetings were held all over the land. When the winter twilight fell, the candles began to burn in the little schoolhouses, where the farmers assembled and prayed to God. In the small towns and tiny villages the little churches were packed with worshippers, not simply on Sundays but during the evenings of the week. During this interval the layman became as influential as the ordained preachers. At this time, the Young Men's Christian Association took its rise, all of the old men saw visions, and all of the young men dreamed dreams, and many a Saul was found among the prophets. Poets like Lowell were moved by deeply religious inspirations. During the war Whittier wrote his loftiest songs and his noblest and most exalted prayers. The influence of the great conflict upon philosophers like Emerson is easily traced. American literature lost its note of unreality. Preaching became practical. There was a revival of ethics in politics. The war cleared the atmosphere of the country by sweeping away slavery with all its foundation of lies.

Wendell Phillips once said the French Revolution was the greatest and most unmixed blessing of the last one thousand years. Now that it is all over, and the slain soldiers and the brave women who went down in the conflict have had all their hard questions asked before the throne of God, perhaps these heroes and heroines who now live unto God look back upon this era as an era of sorrow overruled for justice and liberty. The conclusion of the whole matter is this: a good house must be founded upon a rock, and no government or civilization can be permanent that is not based on the freedom, property and intelligence of the working classes.

To-day the leaders of thought in the South believe that Lee and Gordon were right in the statement that they "thanked God that they failed to establish States' rights, and that Northern men had succeeded in maintaining the Union." Time has cleared the air of misunderstandings. At last the North and South understand Lincoln's last words regarding the Civil War: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drop of blood drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."