Sublime

The practical methodologies evolved over many years, and were largely the work of John Hall, a gunsmith from Portland, Maine, and inventor of the “Hall carbine” that became notorious when muckrakers dug into the youthful Pierpont Morgan’s dealings with Civil War procurement authorities.

Nineteenth-century political audiences were extremely well-informed—it was the age’s mass entertainment—and Lincoln’s listeners perfectly understood whom he was talking about. Slavery’s apologists often spoke of the need for a social “mudsill”—“a class to do the mean duties, to perform the drudgeries of life,” as a South Carolinian put it. Slavery

«As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.» Harrington Emerson8

The white man behind it was Elihu Embree, an iron manufacturer and former slave owner who had evolved, at age thirty, into an abolitionist. Elihu mailed his newspapers to Southern politicians, intent on persuading them to end the horrors of slavery.