VI

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE; JOHN BROWN: THE CONFLICT PRECIPITATED


About 1850, as the result of the long agitation of the editors and
orators, preachers and poets, the people of this country entered upon a
heated mood, when excitement dwelt like fire in the intellect and
conscience. For thinking men, it was becoming clear that civil war was
inevitable, and that commercial relations between North and South would
soon be broken off. But the North had goods to sell, and the South had
money with which to buy; so the word was passed that every one must keep
silence about slavery, lest discussion bring on a financial panic. It
was the era of imprisoned moral sense. In the ocean, some waves are
tidal waves, and on land sometimes the soil is heaved by an earthquake;
at this time God began to heave the conscience of the people as the full
moon heaves the sea. And although we now see that God was behind the
movement, foolish men then tried to stay these moral forces. Northern
merchants and politicians cried, "Peace!" and the Southern successors of
Calhoun lifted the old club, the threat of secession; but the agitation
went on all over the North. Toombs, the Southern senator, tried sheer
bombast, and said he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of
Bunker Hill monument. Timid men in the North began to cry: "Conciliate,
conciliate!" But there can be warfare, and only warfare between darkness
and light, between sickness and health, between wrong and right. At
length Phillips and Greeley took up the cry: "Let the South go!" But the