the great historian whose history of England you must read
if you want to know how wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,)
organised a society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they
got a law passed which made "slave trading" illegal. And after the year
1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British colonies. The
revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the French possessions. The
Portuguese passed a law in the year 1858 which promised all slaves their
liberty in twenty years from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in
1863 and in the same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that
liberty which had been taken away from them more than two centuries
before.

In the United States of America the question led to grave difficulties
and a prolonged war. Although the Declaration of Independence had
laid down the principle that "all men were created free and equal," an
exception had been made for those men and women whose skins were dark
and who worked on the plantations of the southern states. As time
went on, the dislike of the people of the North for the institution
of slavery increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The
southerners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton
without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate raged
in both the Congress and the Senate.

The North remained obdurate and the South would not give in. When
it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the southern states
threatened to leave the Union. It was a most dangerous point in the
history of the Union. Many things "might" have happened. That they did
not happen was the work of a very great and very good man.

On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois
lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual fortune, had
been elected president by the Republicans who were very strong in the
anti-slavery states. He knew the evils of human bondage at first hand
and his shrewd common-sense told him that there was no room on the
northern continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern
states seceded and formed the "Confederate States of America," Lincoln
accepted the challenge. The Northern states were called upon for
volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of young men responded with eager
enthusiasm and there followed four years of bitter civil war. The
South, better prepared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and
Jackson, repeate