ere was wider
diversity of opinion. In general, the effect of continued discussion, of
larger knowledge of facts, and of the enforcement on the common
conscience, by the course of public events, of a sense of responsibility
and duty in the matter, had been to make more intelligent, sober, and
discriminating, and therefore more strong and steadfast, the resolution
to keep clear of all complicity with slavery. There were few to assume
the defense of that odious system, though there were some. There were
many to object to scores of objectionable things in the conduct of
abolitionists. And there were a very great number of honest,
conscientious men who were appalled as they looked forward to the boldly
threatened consequences of even the mildest action in opposition to
slavery--the rending of the church, the ruin of the country, the horrors
of civil war, and its uncertain event, issuing perhaps in the wider
extension and firmer establishment of slavery itself. It was an immense
power that the bold, resolute, rule-or-ruin supporters of the divine
right of slavery held over the Christian public of the whole country, so
long as they could keep these threats suspended in the air. It seemed to
hold in the balance against a simple demand to execute righteousness
toward a poor, oppressed, and helpless race, immense interests of
patriotism, of humanity, of the kingdom of God itself. Presently the
time came when these threats could no longer be kept aloft. The
compliance demanded was clearly, decisively refused. The threats must
either be executed or must fall to the ground amid general derision. But
the moment that the threat was put in execution its power as a threat
had ceased. With the first stroke against the life of the nation all
great and noble motives, instead of being balanced against each other,
were drawing together in the same direction. It ought not to have been
a surprise to the religious leaders of disunion, ecclesiastical and
political, to find that those who had most anxiously deprecated the
attack upon the government should be among the most earnest and resolute
to repel the attack when made.

No man can read the history of the American church in the Civil War
intelligently who does not apprehend, however great the effort, that the
Christian people of the South did really and sincerely believe
themselves to be commissioned by the providence of God to "conserve the
institution of slavery" as an institution of "divi