ers, sweethearts and wives wrought innumerable garments
and hospital supplies, while from full hearts giving inspiration or
courageously bearing the miseries of bereavement. Orators went forth to
incite, ministers brought divine sanctions to inspire men towards
patriotism and self-sacrifice. Statesmen supported the leaders by war
measures, manufacturers and bankers stood behind the government. But to
all these workers must be added the work of the correspondents at the
front, with the editors who consecrated the press to liberty.

The power and wealth of the newspaper of to-day is explained, in no
small measure, by the battles of the Civil War, that kindled the
interest of millions who had never before read the daily newspaper, but
who became after the first battle students of God's book of daily
events. During those terrible days men slept in dread and wakened in
fear as to what might have happened on the Potomac or the Mississippi.
Out of these tumultuous conditions the Sunday newspaper was born. Before
the battle of Bull Run people of New York and Chicago frowned upon the
Sunday newspaper, just as the people of London and Edinburgh to-day will
have none of it. But when there were a million men in arms and the whole
land trembled with the thunder of cannon and the stroke of battle,
anxious parents, fearful wives, knowing that the conflict was on, when
Saturday's sun set felt that they could not wait till Monday morning for
news from the front.

But if the war did much for the press, newspaper men did much for
liberty. To supply the people of the country with news from the field, a
veritable army of war correspondents was organized, a telegraphic
service was organized and built up, plans were laid that developed into
the Associated Press. This telegraphic service became a vast and shining
web lying all over this land, with wires that trembled by night and day,
flashing out now despair, and now hope, to innumerable hearts. Liberty
owes a great debt to the press, for it assembled all the people in one
vast speaking chamber, and told them how events were going with the
slave and the Union.

If we are to appreciate fully the place of the press during the
anti-slavery epoch, we must recall the conditions of American life in
the olden time. When the colonies revolted and published their
Declaration there were in the United States only forty-three newspapers,
most of them weeklies. There were fourteen papers in New England,