Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/19

CIVIL WARS attack on the national church gave the King a party, and made war possible. As the conflict proceeded the religious question grew in importance, and freedom of conscience became by degrees the only solution of the problem. "Religion," said Cromwell in 1655, "was not the thing at first contested for, but God brought it to that issue at last; and gave it unto us by way of redundancy; and at last it proved that which was the most dear to us." "Undoubtedly," he said a year later, "this is the peculiar interest all this while contested for ." It became so dear to the Puritans that some were willing to sacrifice political liberty for the sake of it.

In the American struggle the question at issue was not the rights of conscience but the common rights of humanity. Slavery was directly and obviously the cause of the conflict, as men had seen for years that it would be. "Our political problem now," wrote Lincoln in 1865, "is, can we as a nation 11