Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The History of the Civil War in America, Vol. 1
From the commencement of our Government there have been two antagonistic principles contending for the mastery - Slavery and Freedom. In the very heart of our democracy, the element of the most haughty and intolerant aristocracy has been nurtured, by the institution of human bondage. The most repulsive features of the old European feudalism have thus been transplanted into our Republic. The slaveholders, accustomed to despotic power over the wretched serfs, whom they have driven, by the lash, to till their soil, have assumed a sort of baronial arrogance over all men who do not own slaves, and have claimed to be the only gentle men, and the legitimate rulers of this land. But freedom has outstripped slavery in this race. And, consequently, the slaveholders, unreconciled to the loss of supremacy, strive to destroy the temple of liberty, wish ing to raise themselves into lords and potentates, over the ruin of their country.
The con?ict in which our nation is now involved, is simply a desperate struggle, on the part of the slaveholders, to retain, by force of arms, that domination in the government of this Republic, which they had so long held, and which, by the natural operation of the ballot-box, they were slowly but surely losing. We have here, simply the repetition of that great con?ict, which, for ages, has agitated our globe - the con?ict between aristocratic usurpation and popular rights. The battle has assumed the most momentous attitude, since it arrays, on either side, all the intel lectual and material energies developed by the nineteenth century.
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