To be sure, in retrospect the abolition of slavery seems inevitable, a preordained result of the evolution of American society or, in some tellings, a logical outgrowth of the ideals of the American Revolution. Yet it is important to remember that despite decades of antislavery agitation there were more slaves in the United States when the war began than at any point in the nation’s history. Slaveholders and their allies had controlled the federal government for nearly the entire period since the founding of the republic. In 1858, the Chicago Tribune, a major journalistic voice of antislavery
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