In Sweden slavery ceased in 1847. In the following year Denmark passed
an Act of Emancipation. But the Netherlands did not follow in the good
work until the year 1860. The Spaniards and Portuguese have been among
the last to cling to the system of human servitude. In the outlying
possessions of Spain, in Spanish America and elsewhere, the
institution still maintains a precarious existence. In Brazil it was
not abolished until 1871. In the Mohammedan countries it still exists,
and may even be said to flourish. In Russia serfdom was abolished in
1863. He who at that date looked abroad over the world, might see the
pillars of human bondage shaken, and falling in every part of the
habitable globe which had been reclaimed by civilization.

In the meantime, Great Britain, in her usual aggressive way, had
established an anti-slavery propaganda, from which strong influences
extended in every direction. Her Anti-slavery Society re-established
itself in the United States. Abolition candidates for the presidency
began to be heard of and to be voted for at every quadrennial
election. Such was Birney in 1844. Such (strange to say) was Martin
Van Buren in 1848. Such four years afterward was John P. Hale, of New
Hampshire, and such in 1856, as the storm came on, was John C.
Fremont.

The political history of the United States shows at this epoch an
astounding growth of anti-slavery sentiment; and this expanding force
culminated in the election of Lincoln. Great, indeed, was the change
which had already swept over the landscape of American thought and
purpose since the despised Birney, in 1844, received only a few
thousand votes in the whole United States. Now the Rail-splitter had
come! The tocsin of war sounded. The Union was rent. War with its
flames of fire and streams of blood devastated the Republic. But the