Liberty or Slavery; the Great National Question. Three Prize Essays on American Slavery.

In his second inaugural address Lincoln spoke to the core role of religion for both sides in the divide over slavery: "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other." Slavery not only split North from South, but also clergy and congregations. Liberty or Slavery contains three prize-winning antislavery essays from leading clergy, issued in hopes "of harmonizing Christian men." By 1857, when it appeared, abolitionists had long sought to enlist clergy and congregations. "But as long as nearly every American religious denomination recognized slaveholders as Christians in good standing, the moral case for abolitionism was seriously undermined... Both defenders of slavery and abolitionists believed it essential to prove that their cause was fully compatible with the basic sources of Christian faith." William Lloyd Garrison was not alone in breaking from churches, seeing "the nation's religious bodies as hopelessly corrupted by slavery" (McKivigan, Northern Churches and the Moral Problem of Slavery). These essays, which defend the antislavery work of some in the Presbyterian Church, resists "the immediate and total extinction of southern slavery" while also seeking to unite in the abolitionist cause.