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THE WAR OF SECESSION.

CHAPTER I.

THE CAUSES.

WHEN, within a period of eighteen months, a Dutch vessel entered the James River with a small cargo of African slaves (1619), and the "Mayflower" landed at Plymouth, Mass., a company of seekers after liberty (1620), the prime conditions were established for one of the mightiest conflicts that the world has ever seen. It is true that some of the descendants of those slaves, while still in bondage under indulgent masters, lived easy, careless, and even slothful lives; it is true that the Pilgrims themselves had but a narrow definition of liberty; but none the less the two antagonistic principles were there, and each was working toward an extreme development. When two centuries had gone by, the sorrowful negro knew the difference between his native Virginia and the horrors of the cotton plantations where he was sent in gangs to be used up in seven years; while the educational advancement of a people endowed with democratic government, common schools, and a free press,

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