CHAPTER XX HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR ALL of my young readers must know what a wonderful age this is that we live in, and what marvelous things have been done. Some of you, no doubt, have read the stories of magic in the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But if any one, a hundred years ago, had been told about the railroad, the telegraph, the photograph, the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the surface of the water, and ships that sail in the air, I fancy they would have called all this nonsense and "Arabian Nights" magic. Why, think of it, a trolley car is as magical, in its way, as Aladdin's wonderful lamp.

But while you know much about these things, there has been one great step of progress which, I fancy, you know or think very little about. I do not mean material but moral progress, for you must bear in mind that while the world has been growing richer it has also been growing better.

A hundred years ago many millions of men were held as slaves in America and Europe. Some of these were black and some were white, but they could be bought and sold like so many cattle, could be whipped by their masters, and had no more rights than so many brute beasts.

To-day there is not a slave in Europe or America. All these millions of slaves have been set free. Do you not think I am right in saying that the world has grown better as well as richer? Why, fifty years ago there were millions of slaves in our own country, and now there is not one in all the land. Is not that a great gain to mankind? But it is sad to think that this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall have to tell you about this war, after I have told you how slavery brought it on.

In the early part of this book you read of how white men first came to this country. I have now to tell you that black men were brought here almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after Captain John Smith and the English colonists landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the James River and sold them some negroes to be held as slaves.

You remember about Pocahontas, the Indian girl who saved the life of Captain John Smith. She was afterwards married to John Rolfe, the man who first planted tobacco in Virginia. John Rolfe wrote down what was going on in Virginia, and it was he who told us about these negroes brought in as slaves. This is what he wrote:

"About the last of August came in, a Dutch marine-of-war, that sold us 20 Negars."

These twenty "Negars," as he called them, grew in numbers until there were four million negro slaves in our country in 1860, when the war began. There are twice that many black people in the country to-day, but I am glad to be able to say that none of them are slaves. Yet how sad it is to think that it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, and misery to multitudes of families, to set them free.

"Where did all these black men come from?" I am sure I hear some young voice asking that question. Well, they came from Africa, the land of the negroes. In our time merchant ships are used to carry goods from one country to another. In old times many of these ships were used in carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The wicked captains would steal the poor black men in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had taken them prisoners in war. Some of them filled their ships so full of these miserable victims that hundreds of them died and were thrown overboard. Then, when they got to the West Indies or to the shores of our country, they would sell all that were left alive to the planters, to spend the rest of their lives like oxen chained to the yoke.

It was a very sad and cruel business, but people then thought it right, and some of the best men took part in it. That is why I say the world has grown better. We have a higher idea of right and wrong in regard to such things than our forefathers had.

Slaves were kept in all parts of the country, in the North as well as the South. There were more of them in the South than in the North, for they were of more use there as workers in the tobacco and rice and cotton fields. Most of those in the North were kept as house servants. Not many of them were needed in the fields.

The North had not much use for slaves, and in time laws were passed, doing away with slavery in all the Northern states. Very likely the same thing would have taken place in the South if it had not been for the discovery of the cotton-gin. I have told you what a change this great invention made. Before that time it did not pay to raise cotton in our fields. After that time cotton grew to be a very profitable crop, and the cultivation of it spread wider and wider until it was planted over a great part of the South.

This made a remarkable change. Negroes were very useful in the cotton fields, and no one in the South now thought of doing away with slavery. After 1808 no ships could bring slaves to this country, but there were a great many here then, and many others were afterwards born and grew up as slaves, so that the numbers kept increasing year after year.

There were always some people, both in the North and the South, who did not like slavery. Among them were Franklin and Washington and Jefferson and other great men. In time there got to be so many of these people in the North that they formed what were called Anti-slavery Societies. Some of them said that slavery should be kept where it was and not taken into any new states. Others said that every slave in the United States ought to be set free.

This brought on great excitement all over the country. The people in the North who believed in slavery were often violent. Now and then there were riots. Buildings where Anti-slavery meetings were held were burned down. One of the leaders of the Abolitionists, as the Anti-slavery people were called, was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope tied round his body, and would have been hanged if his friends had not got him away.

But as time went on the Abolitionists grew stronger in the North. Many slaves ran away from their masters, and these were hidden by their white friends until they could get to Canada, where they were safe. All through the South and North people were excited.

I do not think many of our people expected the cruel war that was coming. If they had they might have been more careful what they said and did. But for all that, war was close at hand, and two things helped to bring it on.

There had been fighting in Kansas, one of the territories that was to be made into a state, and among the fighters was an old man named John Brown, who thought that God had called him to do all he could for the freedom of the slaves.

Some people think that John Brown was not quite right in his brain. What he did was to gather a body of men and to take possession of Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac River, where there was a government army. He thought that the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid in multitudes and that he could start a slave war that would run all through the South.

It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But some troops came under Colonel Robert E. Lee, and Brown and his party were forced to surrender. Some of them were killed and wounded and the others taken prisoners. John Brown and six others were tried and hanged. But the half-insane old man had done his work. That fight at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to bring on the war.

I said there were two things. The other was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President.

For a long time, as I have told you, the Abolitionists, or people opposed to slavery, were few in number. When they grew more numerous they formed a political party, known as the Anti-slavery Party. In 1856 a new party, called the Republican Party, was formed and took in all the Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election of that year eleven states voted for its candidate, John C. Fremont, the man who had taken California from Mexico.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator of whom I shall soon tell you more, was the candidate of the Republican Party, and in the election of that year this new party was successful and Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

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