a Britannica," vol. xvi., pp. 825-828;
Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," pp. 538-646.

[338:1] "Report of the Seybert Commission," Philadelphia, Lippincott.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CIVIL WAR--ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES.

It has been observed that for nearly half a generation after the
reaction began from the fervid excitement of the Millerite agitation no
season of general revival was known in the American church.

These were years of immense material prosperity, "the golden age of our
history."[340:1] The wealth of the nation in that time far more than
doubled; its railroad mileage more than threefolded; population moved
westward with rapidity and volume beyond precedent. Between 1845 and
1860 there were admitted seven new States and four organized
Territories.

Withal it was a time of continually deepening intensity of political
agitation. The patchwork of compromises and settlements contrived by
make-shift politicians like Clay and Douglas would not hold; they tore
out, and the rent was made worse. Part of the Compromise of 1850, which
was to be something altogether sempiternal, was a Fugitive Slave Law so
studiously base and wicked in its provisions as to stir the indignation
of just and generous men whenever it was enforced, and to instruct and
strengthen and consolidate an intelligent and conscientious opposition
to slavery as not a century of antislavery lecturing and pamphleteering
could have done. Four years later the sagacious Stephen Douglas
introduced into Congress his ingenious permanent pacification scheme for
taking the slavery question "out of politics" by perfidiously repealing
the act under which the western Territories had for the third part of a
century been pledged to freedom, and leaving the question of freedom or
slavery to be decided by the first settlers upon the soil. It was
understood on both sides that the effect of this measure would be to
turn over the soil of Kansas to slavery; and for a moment there was a
calm that did almost seem like peace. But the providential man for the
emergency, Eli Thayer, boldly accepted the challenge under all the
disadvantageous conditions, and appealed to the friends of freedom and
righteousness to stand by him in "the Kansas Crusade." The appeal was to
the same Christian sentiment which had just uttered its vain protest,
through the almost unanimous voice of the ministers of the gospel,
against the opening of the Territories to the p