The Battle of Principles: A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery ConflictHillis, Newell Dwight
History
The Battle of Principles: A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Antislavery movements -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865
That which starved the newspaper was the lack of facilities for
distribution. It cost twenty-five cents to send a letter. Most of the
correspondents were widely separated lovers. Romeo, knowing that Juliet
would not be able to pay twenty-five cents for his weekly effusion,
learned the use of the cypher, and by means of a large circle on the
outside of the letter and a pink spot within it succeeded in conveying
certain mystic symbols of osculation, that told the story of undying
fidelity without paying the postman for the letter that was left in his
hands. The old postman who jogged along between Philadelphia and New
York spent three days on the trip, and put in his time knitting
stockings. John Adams tells us that it took him six days on the coach
from Boston to New York, and that he rose every morning long before day,
took his seat in the cold, dark coach, and listened to the creaking of
the wheels on the snow until two hours after dark until late Saturday
night, cold and exhausted, he entered the little inn near Castle Garden.
For these reasons no newspaper had any circulation beyond its own
county.
The first railroads that helped distribute the newspapers began to be
built about 1836, and the first ship to carry our newspapers to England
sailed in 1838. The first telegraphic message was sent from Washington
to Baltimore in 1844. The first cablegram in the interest of the press
was sent in 1858. Meanwhile the people were isolated, starved, being
fully conscious that they were like peasants shut in between mountain
walls, while they longed to be citizens of the universe. A single
illustration from history will explain the isolation of communities at
that time:--the news that Jackson had been elected President in early
November did not reach his own State of Tennessee until after New Year's
Day!
Horace Greeley entered the scene at a great crisis for the people, and
was raised up to fill a national need. God had prepared the soldiers to
fight for the people, the orators to speak to the people, the physicians
to heal the people, the educators to instruct the people. He had raised
up the statesmen to make the laws, but the world waited for men to cause
knowledge to run up and down the land. The common people found a friend
in Horace Greeley. He was born in 1811, in Amherst, Massachusetts, near
the very cabin in which his forefathers had settled. God gave him a
hungry mind, which literally consumed facts of nature and life. Not John
Stuart Mill himself was more precocious than Horace Greeley. He was
reading without difficulty at three years of age, and read any ordinary
book at five. There never was an hour when he was not the best scholar
in the little log schoolhouse, where he suffered the long winter
through, scorched if he was on the inside circle next to the fire, or
freezing if he was on the outer rim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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