Chapter XIII (2)

“One of the most disgraceful things took place under the jurisdiction of Bishop Doane, of New Jersey—I take it for granted, without his knowledge. I have the book. It was an edition of the Episcopal prayer-book. They had put into the front of it a steel engraving of Ary Scheffer’s ‘Christus Consolator’—Christ the Consoler. There was a semi-circle around about the beneficent and aerial figure of our Saviour—the poor, the old, the sick, the mother with her dead babe, bowed in grief; every known form of human sorrow belonged to the original design and picture, and among others a fettered slave, with his hands lifted to heaven, praying for liberty. But this was too much; and so they cut out the slave, and left the rest of the picture, and bound it into the Episcopal prayer-book of New Jersey. I have a copy of it, which I mean to leave to the Historical Society of Brooklyn when I am done using it.

“These things are important as showing the incredible condition of public sentiment at that time. If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.”

After the intense excitement, within and without Congress, upon the discussion and the passage of the Compromise measures of 1850, a reaction followed, and the year 1851 is, in many respects, a marked contrast to that immediately preceding. The people, in the main, tired of the discussion and the consequent turmoil, thankful for their escape, as they thought, from the threatened danger of the dissolution of the Union, were determined to preserve the peace that had been won, and frowned upon everything that endangered its continuance. Public meetings and conventions, held for the expression of free-State sentiments, were regarded with great disfavor and often broken up by mob violence.

Four millions of people in a Christian land were denied every right belonging to them, not only on the ground of Christianity but of humanity, and yet they must be dumb. The pulpit, which represented Him who came to set the captive free and preach the Gospel to the poor, on this great matter must utter no voice. Statesmanship must see consummated an utter perversion of the fundamental principles and policy of the nation, and yet offer no protest. A common humanity, outraged by the atrocities committed against a fellow human being, must be silent or join in the hue and cry for the capture of the unhappy victim.

This was the programme that conservatism, through the press, in the pulpit, by the ballot-box, through business patronage, social frowns or favors, and not unfrequently through mob violence, attempted to execute. It was as vain as to try to still the voice of Niagara or the noise of the breakers upon the coast.

One thing more powerful than any other contributed to prevent a complete reaction and consequent stagnation upon this subject—the activity of the South in availing itself of the advantages offered by the Fugitive Slave Bill for obtaining possession of the property that had escaped and was living on Northern soil. The year 1851 was emphatically a year of slave-hunting. And since these refugees from labor had, many of them, lived for years at the North, had become respectable citizens and reared families, their violent capture invariably occasioned, if not forceful resistance, at least deep and bitter indignation.

The quiet of 1851 was not perfect and it could not be made permanent. It was only the lull which weariness compels in every hard-fought battle.

In December of this year Kossuth visited this country at the invitation of the Senate, coming in a government steamer sent to Asia especially for his conveyance. Many things contributed to awaken immense enthusiasm for him. He had represented Hungary in the Austrian Diet; had championed the liberty of free press and free speech so fearlessly as to gain the honor of an Austrian dungeon; had been elected governor of Hungary, and for two years had waged successful war with Austria. Overcome by the immense military power of that great empire in alliance with Russia, he had been forced into exile with a price set upon his head. He represented, in that year of European revolutions, the struggles of the common people for liberty. These experiences, united with his personal appearance and marvellous eloquence, combined to secure for him a most enthusiastic reception by the people of this country. The Senate, on the other hand, were far more chary of their welcome. The Hungarian exile stood for universal liberty, and that was just what at that time the Senate of the United States were most interested in suppressing. However, though granted no reception, a banquet was given in his honor, at which most of our public men were present, and Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, delivered the principal address.

Quick to perceive the dilemma in which Congress found itself, and eager that the nation at large should appreciate it, Mr. Beecher writes a Star Paper in which, in his usual happy and effective style, he describes the incongruity in the action of our government in welcoming this fugitive from the oppression of the Old World while we are engaged in remanding to their oppressors fugitives in the New.

Invited by Mr. Beecher, Kossuth delivered an address in Plymouth Church in behalf of the cause of Hungarian liberty. So great was the eagerness of the people to hear him that some ten thousand dollars were realized from the sale of tickets.

So did the pastor of this church link himself with the cause of freedom all over the earth.

Fifty-two, being “election year,” saw efforts more persistent, if possible, than ever before to regard the Compromise measures as a finality and discourage all agitation of the subject of slavery. A public pledge was signed by more than fifty senators, among them the most influential from both the great parties, including Henry Clay, agreeing that they would thereafter support no candidate who did not approve and promise to abide by the provisions of that compact. Both the great parties of the day—the Whig and Democratic—put into their platforms resolutions declaring that the above Compromise was accepted as a final settlement of the questions at issue, and agreed to resist all attempts at renewing the agitation of the slavery question under any pretext whatsoever. In the election Franklin Pierce, who had but two qualifications for the office of chief magistrate—he was a gentleman and a radical pro-slavery man—was chosen by an overwhelming majority for President, for the reason that his party affiliations gave the best assurance that the pledges which all had alike made would in his case be fulfilled.

General Scott and the Whig party made just as profound an obeisance to the slave-power, and offered just as heavy a bid for its favors; but there was not the same confidence in their ability to perform the service demanded as in that of their Democratic rivals, and they were in consequence disastrously defeated. So did the popular vote upon its first opportunity endorse the action of Congress and declare that discussion on this great matter was closed. Yet, in spite of the verdict of the ballot-box, in spite of resolutions, compacts, and threats, agitation still went on. Mr. Beecher explains the phenomenon:

“Politicians inquire whence is the tenacity of life of the anti-slavery movement. It is not fanaticism that animates or controls it, it is the religious principle that is the secret of the strength of this cause; it is because Jesus Christ is alive, and there are Jesus Christ men who count this cause dearer than their lives.”

In the summer and autumn of 1852 Mr. Beecher was engaged in what was called “The Parker Controversy.”

We have no desire to open anew the bitterness of those old matters which have passed so long ago into history, and almost into forgetfulness, but no biography of the man would be complete without a reference to this trial, the severest which he had thus far endured, and which prepared him for other and greater ones to come. In our study of the character and disposition of Henry Ward Beecher we find him, as we believe, to have been pre-eminently a man of peace. In his history we see him almost continuously engaged in war. This anomaly is easily explained. It was not from desire or disposition, but a necessary consequence of the progress which he was making and the position which he occupied. The age was moving forward: wrongs must be overcome, new positions of advantage must be gained. By the habit of his mind, the intuitions of his genius, and the earnestness and simplicity of his purpose he found himself a leader in this progress.

While others stopped to discover the truth by laborious study in their libraries, he found it among the results of former researches, derived it intuitively from well-admitted principles, or gathered it from the people with whom he associated by the way. While others were carefully weighing the consequences of their actions, he, trusting in God, in the righteousness of his cause, in the forces of nature and in himself, stepped forward to the front. While others were laboriously forging their speeches his sprang like the fabled Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, alive, armed, and beautiful. He came into battle for the same reason that the head of a column advancing to seize a favorable position within the enemy’s lines is early brought under fire, or that a heavy field-battery, which is sending its shot with deadly effect into the ranks of the enemy, is attacked.

In his discussion with a New York daily, of which we have already spoken, he had come in conflict with the commercial spirit of the day which held its principles and its goods both for sale, and against it had defended the right of the pulpit to discuss the live topics of the hour. This had drawn fire. Men who had been scored as he scored them in a Star Paper of January 24, 1850, entitled “A Man in the Market”— “... They hang themselves up in the shambles of every Southern market; they trust the pliant good nature of the North, and are only fearful lest they should fail to be mean enough to please the South”—and who deserved the scoring, would not be likely to forget it soon or forgive it readily. The conflict in which he now became engaged was more painful than the former, for it was waged with Christian brethren. Beginning as a skirmish, it became a general battle, in which the conservatism of the Church, which had expurgated its religious tracts, curbed the religious press, and toned down the utterances of the pulpit, so as not to hurt the feelings of slave-holders, was engaged and brought to judgment.

It came about in this way: In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Mrs. Stowe had described the sale of a child taken from the arms of the mother, and of Tom’s feeling on the subject. “To him it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize and take in large views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade—a trade which is the vital support of an institution which some American divines tell us has no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.”

In a note she refers to Dr. Joel Parker by name as the man who had given utterance to these sentiments, and as representing the class which entertained them. The words, “No evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life,” had been printed as his in a discussion which he had held in Philadelphia, had gone the rounds of the papers as his and had been printed and commented upon in England, and he had never denied that they rightfully belonged to him. But the quickened moral feeling which followed the publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” made the authorship of such sentiments less pleasant than formerly, and Dr. Parker suddenly discovered that he had been wronged in having these words ascribed to him, and threatened Mrs. Stowe with a suit for libel. A friend of his lawyer visited her brother Henry, and suggested that this matter could be arranged without a law-suit. With a confidence that was born of sincerity and inexperience, the brother attempts that most difficult rôle—that of peace-maker. He visits Dr. Parker, becomes satisfied that his language is capable of a less violent construction than had been put upon it, confers with Mrs. Stowe and finds her ready to take the most favorable view of the case possible, bears a letter from her to the doctor, writes and discusses with him the answer which he shall make, forwards Mrs. Stowe’s letter, which had been somewhat changed in the discussion, to her for approval—which being gained, he publishes both letters over the united signatures of the two parties, and goes off to Indiana on a lecturing trip, with the happy consciousness that he has done a good thing. Never was a man waked from a sweeter dream to a more bitter disappointment. Instead of making peace between them, he found, as a result of his labors, their differences increased and embittered, and himself charged with forgery both of letter and signature. Offended professional pride, newspaper rivalry, the hatred of men who had been lashed by his tongue and pen, the fears of conservatives and the bitter hatred of pro-slavery men, suddenly united their forces for his destruction. This young radical had left himself open to attack, and they all rushed to the onset or stood back and cheered others on, and were already beginning to rejoice in his downfall. The lead in the attack soon passed out of the doctor’s hands into those of more able and less scrupulous men, and aimed at nothing less than his annihilation. “The arrow was well shot,” he said; “had I been unshielded it would have done its work, for the point was poisoned.” But he was not unshielded! the overthrow was not accomplished, and he stood, at the end, fully vindicated from all the aspersions of his enemies.

In a long, carefully written article over his own name he gives the whole beginning, continuance, and end of this unhappy matter:

“For myself I profess that no event of my life, not the loss of my own children nor bereavements of friends most dear, have ever filled me with so deep a sorrow as that which I have in being made a party to a public dispute when three of the parties concerned are ministers of the Gospel, and when the fourth is a woman and the wife of a clergyman. At the very best it is a shame and a disgrace. To avert it I labored most honestly and with all my might.”

He closes with these words:

“I commit this narrative to the sober judgment of all good men, and myself I commit to the charge of Almighty God.”

“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”

Two letters selected from the voluminous correspondence of that time, one to a friend who approved, and the other to one who condemned, his course, are given, that the spirit which he cherished may be more thoroughly understood:

“BROOKLYN, Oct. 12, 1852.

”BARNABAS BATES, ESQ.:

“DEAR SIR: Your kind letter gave me much pleasure, not as adding anything to that quiet which belongs to a conscience void of offence, but as showing that I have been able to manifest to others that which was undoubted truth to me. It is very painful to be placed before the public as I have been, even when the verdict is ultimately favorable; for there is something repugnant to one’s feelings even to feel it possible that a suspicion of his honor could be for a moment entertained.

“But I am sure that I should be the most ungrateful of men if I failed to recognize the presence and abundant blessing of my God in all the passages of this painful experience.

“Not a promise made to me has been left unfulfilled, and I know that it has been a better sermon to me than was ever preached by human lips.

“Toward the parties of this wrong much must be allowed to wounded vanity, much to partisanship, something perhaps to forgetfulness. After all this, however, the rest will be a burden to their conscience whenever they shall hereafter look back upon it. And while I do most heartily forgive them, and could with earnest good-will do either of them a kindness, I cannot refrain from thanksgiving that I was the accused, not the accuser. Your kindness I have felt the more because personally (although not otherwise) a stranger to me, and because, coming among the first letters of sympathy, it has been the harbinger of great kindnesses, similar in kind, from many.

“I am, with sincere esteem,

“Gratefully yours,
“H. W. BEECHER.“

”BROOKLYN, Oct. 12, 1852.

“RICHARD HALE, ESQ.:

”DEAR SIR: I was for a moment pained by the reading of your note this morning, and but for a moment; for it has pleased God to grant Himself to me in such measure that neither the wrath of enemies, nor the strife of tongues, nor the unadvised blows of friends have power to do me harm or unsettle my peace. Had I ever doubted the promises of God I should now find every shadow swept away; and I surely count the little annoyance which this perversion of honor and truth in these unprincipled men has caused me not worthy to be mentioned in the joy which I have had in being folded into the very bosom of my Saviour.

“All that I can ask in your behalf is that when the day of trouble shall come to you (with as little fault on your part as this on mine) God may sustain you by that certainty of integrity and that consciousness of honor which have given me unspeakable comfort, and _would_ were I this day standing before God’s judgment-seat.

“I do not blame you; I believe that you meant me no unkindness; but it is manifest that with your present views it would be as painful for you to associate with me as it would be impossible for me to permit it.

“Whenever the evil impressions which have tempted you into misjudgments shall have passed away (and they assuredly _will_), and when my righteousness shall shine forth as the light (and God _will_ bring it forth), then you will find me unchanged in my affections for you; nor shall I then remember anything but that you were once my friend.

“I am, with God’s unwavering support, and with the patience and peace which Christ only can give,

“Truly your brother,
“HENRY WARD BEECHER.“

Also we give extracts from a third:

”BROOKLYN, October 12, 1852.

“R. W. LANDIS:

”DEAR SIR: Your welcome letter I received this morning. It gave me great pleasure, though I did not need it for my happiness. For it has pleased God so graciously to stand by me in this fiercest attack of my life that if every friend in the world had abandoned me I should not have been alone. I need not tell you, who have both known and taught to others, that Christ has a peace which, surpassing all other experience of earthly joy, requires for its possession an unusual earthly trial. In that peace I have rested as in God’s pavilion....

“I never expected to stand up in the publicity which God has been pleased to draw me into, and faithfully to declare His truth against the interests of commercial and political circles, and not be visited with this wrath.

“But they shall neither destroy me nor daunt me nor silence me, for my God is greater than their devil. I will work yet harder and speak more plainly for every blow they deal. May God repay your kindness to me a thousand-fold!

”H. W. BEECHER.”

We find no word from Mr. Beecher concerning the election of this year, but an article immediately following shows that he kept his eye upon the main issue, and that none of its humorous any more than its sorrowful features escaped him. It was entitled “Degraded into Liberty”:

“A Southern gentleman _en route_ for Texas brought to New York eight slaves, to be shipped hence by one of our ocean-going steamers. The birds of the air informed the Abolitionists of the facts, and it was not long before a writ was served upon the whole chattel-gang, and they were hauled up before Judge Paine to show cause why they should not be doomed to freedom. The cruel inhospitality of New York was never more manifest. These innocent fellow-beings, blessed by being born slaves, and not painfully educated for it, as Northern Southerners are; having had all the manifold mercies which make a Virginia slave so much better off than a free factory-girl in Massachusetts; having grown up in the indulgence of those hilarious dances and in the practice of those songs which make plantation life perfectly paradisaical, they were on their way to that land waving with sugar-cane and cotton-plants, where, hoe in hand, they were to while away the brilliant hours with gentle dalliances with loam and clay—when lo! they were suddenly arrested.

“From these bright anticipations they have been ruthlessly snatched, and plunged into freedom utterly unprepared! Are there no tears in Castle Garden? Ought not the Union Committee to spend something for a trifle of crape? Eight innocent fellow-chattels changed into fellow-_beings_! No kind master have they now. The tender relation is sundered. Our bereaved master and mistress must depart slaveless and alone. Having been worked for so long, and tended and taken care of, it is doubtful whether they will be able to take care of themselves now. Much as we sympathize with them, we do not consider their affliction at all comparable to that of the late happy slaves. These poor creatures are free, and we are assured in the highest quarter that no greater evil than that can well befall the slave population. They have degraded themselves. They have refused to be ‘_content_ rather.’ In all the world they cannot find a man who _owns_ them. They are now to sneak through life, like white men, owning themselves! They must have had some awful moments of compunction when the conviction first flashed upon them that they owned their own hands, trod upon their own feet, put their clothes upon their own shoulders, and felt that thing throbbing under their ribs to be their own heart. Some natural feelings must have shot through the maternal heart as she pressed her own babe to her own breast, and dropped her own tears upon its dusky cheek....

“Only one woman can be found faithful in this emergency. Their former mistress alone has appealed to their conscience and adjured them to return to her! Where were the teachers, the chaplains, the casuists, the lawyers, that a little time ago choked the press with beatitudes of slavery? ‘His watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant; they are all dumb dogs; they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.’

“In reply to Mrs. Lemmon’s appeal the deluded slave-woman drew herself up, and, pressing her child to her breast, said, ‘_I had rather be free!_’ What! not value the radiant mercies of slavery more than that? The creature is crazy! Slaves in their senses are always contented. They are mere pets. The Uncle Toms of Virginia do nothing but look after the children, or sit in sunny nooks and smoke their stubbed pipes. The Aunt Phillises are always fat, rollicking cooks, bursting with laughter. Nobody is happy but slaves. The poor masters have all the care and burden, slaves all the glee and leisure....

“It is a dreadful state of things here in New York, where we feed upon Cotton, and have our very living in the smiles and favor of the South, to be hurting their feelings by talking so much about liberty and all that. A few more slaves set free, and the South will get angry again; and then New York will be in a world of trouble, and another call will call together another Castle Garden full of anxious merchants, all full of love to the South; and we shall have more sermons and more newspaper articles; and nobody can tell what will happen the next time.

“In part, the South is at fault. It has sent North the wrong kind of negroes. Those who have run away, or been judicially sentenced to freedom, or been bought—all these have _loved liberty_. Now, won’t the South send us some of another sort—some of those model slaves that love bondage and wouldn’t take liberty if they could get it? With a few specimen copies of such, we believe that we could do Southern institutions great good in the North. *”

Fifty-three follows in much the same line as that of the two years immediately preceding. Franklin Pierce, who had been elected in November last, takes the oath of office on the 4th of March. His inaugural gives expression to what was undoubtedly the general feeling of the country—a determination that the Compromise measures shall be enforced, and a fervent trust that the question of slavery has been settled; and in his annual message, upon the assembling of Congress in that year, promises that the peace which now so happily existed through the land should not be disturbed during his term of office, if he could prevent it. A large majority of the people, both North and South, were undoubtedly in perfect accord with this desire, greatly pleased with this assurance, and tried to share his confidence.

Those were days in which a great deal of sympathy was felt in this country for the Irish, and by many, too, who were stanch opposers of liberty for the negro. Mr. Beecher had no patience with men, on either side of the Atlantic, whose sympathy was limited by the bounds of race or color; and when John Mitchel, who had posed as the “Great Irish Patriot” of that day, having escaped from an English penal colony and been received here with great enthusiasm, took occasion to state in an editorial in the _Citizen_, “We deny that it is a crime or a wrong, or even a peccadillo, to hold slaves, to buy slaves, to sell slaves, to keep slaves to their work by flogging or other needful coercion; we only wish we had a good plantation well stocked with healthy negroes in Alabama,” he (Mr. Beecher) enters into public correspondence with him, in which he denies the claims of the refugee to be an “apostle of liberty,” sorrows over his downfall, and dismisses him to the test of history in these words:

“Once you stood like some great oak whose wide circumference was lifted up above all the pastures, the glory of all beholders, and a covert for a thousand timid singing-birds! Now you lie at full length along the ground, with mighty ruptured roots ragged and upturned to heaven, with broken boughs and despoiled leaves! Never again shall husbandman predict spring from your swelling buds! Never again shall God’s singing-birds of liberty come down through all the heavenly air to rest themselves on your waving top! Fallen! Uprooted! Doomed to the axe and the hearth!

“But there is a future beyond this, even on earth! There is a time promised, and already dawning, in which the human family shall be one great brotherhood, and Love shall be the law of man! In that golden age there shall be research made for all the names that, since the world began, have wrought and suffered for the good of their kind. There will be a memorable resurrection of forgotten names. From the obscurity into which despotism has flung all who dared to defy it, from the shades and darkness of oblivion by which oppressors would cover down the memory of all who proclaimed human right and human liberty, they will come forth shining like the sun, and none be forgotten that labored to bring to pass the world’s freedom! In that day, when ten thousand names shall be heard, in all their number not one shall utter that gone and forgotten name—John Mitchel!”

We do not wish it to be inferred from our words that Mr. Beecher was the only anti-slavery leader who was doing good service in those days. There were many others, and some, perhaps, were doing as effective work in a single line as he. But we believe that, when the whole sphere of his activity was considered, he went far beyond any man of his time.

In any one of the three channels of largest influence, of that or of any time—the pulpit, the press, and the platform—he was the peer, if not the superior, of any leader; and while the most of his co-laborers used but one, or at the most two, of these instrumentalities, he was constantly employing the three, and each with unequalled efficiency.

His beliefs, as his labors, were broader than the most who were at that day prominently identified with the anti-slavery cause. He believed in the Constitution of the United States, and claimed that, if the government should be administered according to the original intent of this document, slavery must speedily cease. In this he differed from Garrison and his school, who held that “the (Federal) Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” He believed in the ballot-box, and in using its power to the utmost. In this he differed from Wendell Phillips and others of his school, who had disfranchised themselves for years, lest by voting they should seem to countenance an institution that was being used for the perpetuity of so great an injustice. He believed in the Church and the moral forces which she could bring to the work. He believed in love rather than hate, and most of all, with a triumphant, joyful faith, he believed in the person, presence, and leadership of the Redeemer and Reformer of the world. In all this he separated from the great body, individuals here and there excepted, of the Garrison and Pillsbury school of Abolitionists.

His judgment of the spirit of the leaders in this great movement may be inferred from the following extracts:

“Events made Garrison a leader. We never thought, and we do not now think, that Garrison deserved the one-half of the bitter reproaches that have been heaped upon him. His worst faults have been the reaction, in him, of the opposite faults of men favoring slavery or indifferent to it. But we regard him as one of the most unfortunate of all leaders for the best development of anti-slavery feeling. He is a man of no mean ability, of indefatigable industry, of the most unbounded enterprise and eagerness, of perseverance which pushes him like a law of nature, and of courage which amounts to recklessness. These are the qualifications which make a man powerful for stimulation. Had he possessed, as a balance to these, conciliation, good-natured benevolence, or even a certain popular mirthfulness; had he possessed the moderation and urbanity of Clarkson, or the deep piety of Wilberforce, he had been the one man of our age. These all he lacked. Had the disease of America needed only counter-irritation, no better blister could have been applied.

“Garrison did not _create_ the anti-slavery spirit of the North. He was the offspring of it. It existed before he was born. But he at one time more powerfully developed and organized it than any other one mind; and developed it in modes and spirit, as we think, most unfortunate. Anti-slavery under his influence was all teeth and claw. It fought. It never conciliated. It gained not one step by kindness. It won not a single fort by surrender. It bombarded everything it met, and stormed every place which it won. We do not deny that Garrison and his early followers did a great work. Another generation will divide praise and blame, as no one is fitted to do in the heats of the present day. But when bare justice shall be done we believe that it will be found that a noble soul, deeply and truly benevolent, who sought the truest interests of his age, yet sought them with such a fierceness and such a hard and relentless courage as constantly roused up in his path the worst feelings of man, and heaped obstacles before him to such a degree that at length, in combating them, his sympathies for good seemed swallowed up in a bitter hatred of evil. The result of the agitation, inspired largely with this feeling, was that almost every interest in the nation rose up against the movement with which he was identified. Churches dreaded abolitionism, parties hated abolitionism, commerce abhorred abolitionism. Mobs rioted around the meetings, and threatened the dwellings, the stores, and the very persons of Abolitionists.

“There was odium and influence enough arrayed against the anti-slavery movement, under the form of early abolitionism, to have sunk ten enterprises which depended on men for existence. But there was a spirit in this cause, there was a secret strength, which nerved it, and it lived right on, and grew, and trampled down opposition, and came forth victorious! There was an irresistibility in it which made it superior to the faults of its friends and the deadly hatred of its enemies.”

It will be seen from the above how thoroughly he differed from what may be called the right wing of the Abolition party.

This difference is emphasized and the spirit which impelled him is indicated in an address which he delivered before the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, and in a letter which he wrote to the New York _Tribune_ in answer to a criticism that appeared in that paper:

“I believe there is to be found Christianity enough in the world, in the Church and out of it, in the Bible and out of it, _i.e._, in the record and in the living heart, and, I had almost said, breathed through the very air, as a Divine Providence, inspiring the great organic laws of society, controlling the moral sense of the Church, yea, beating in the veins of political economy, subtly guiding the common generosities of men into a public sentiment which, in God’s own time, in spite of recreant clergymen, apostate statesmen, venal politicians, and trafficking shopmen, shall fall upon this vast and unmitigated abomination and utterly crush it. But my earnest desire is that slavery may be destroyed by the manifest power of Christianity. If it were given me to choose whether it should be destroyed in fifty years by selfish commercial influences, or, standing for seventy-five years, be then the spirit and trophy of Christ, I had rather let it linger twenty-five years more, that God may be honored, and not mammon, in the destruction of it. So do I hate it that I should rejoice in its extinction, even did the devil tread it out, as he first kindled it; but how much rather would I see God Almighty come down to shake the earth with His tread, to tread all tyrannies and oppressions small as the dust of the highway, and to take unto Himself the glory!”

This having been severely criticised, especially his willingness to have slavery linger, if by so doing its destruction could become a trophy to the prevailing power of Christ, he replies in a letter addressed to the same journal:

“Our highest and strongest reason for seeking justice among men is _not_ the benefit to men themselves, exceedingly strong as that motive is and ought to be. We do not join the movement party of our times simply because we are inspired by an inward and constitutional benevolence. We are conscious of both these motives and of many other collateral ones; but we are earnestly conscious of another feeling stronger than either, that lives unimpaired when these faint, yea, that gives vigor and persistence to these feelings when they are discouraged; and that is a strong personal, enthusiastic love for Christ Jesus. I regard the movement of the world toward justice and rectitude to be of His inspirations. I believe my own aspirations, having a base in my natural faculties, to be influenced and directed by Christ’s Spirit. The mingled affection and adoration which I feel for Him is the strongest feeling that I know. Whether I will or not, whether it be a phantasy or a sober sentiment, the fact is the same nevertheless, that that which will give pleasure to Christ’s heart and bring to my consciousness a smile of gladness on His face in behalf of my endeavor, is incalculably more to me than any other motive. I would work for the slave for his own sake, but I am sure that I would work ten times as earnestly for the slave for Christ’s sake.

“I am not ashamed to own that I bear about with me an ineffaceable consciousness that I am what I am from Christ’s influence upon me. I accept the power to do good as His inspiration. Life is sacred to me only by my belief that I am walking in the scenes of a personal Divine Providence. When I drop from these beliefs life becomes void, the events of human society mere bubbles, and strifes of hope and fear, of good and bad, are useless as the turmoil of the rapids above Niagara. Nay, there is more than this: there is a heart-swell which no words can express; there is a sense of the sweet freedom of love, a sense of gracious pity, of patient condescension, of entire and transcendent excellence in Christ, which makes me feel how utterly true was the impassionate language of David: ‘Whom have I in heaven _but Thee_? and there is _none upon earth that I desire besides Thee_. My heart and my flesh cry out for God!’...

“This sentiment does not spring from any indifference to the slave, but from a yet greater sympathy with Christ Jesus—the slave’s only hope, my only hope, the Saviour of the world!”

With this letter we close our consideration of Mr. Beecher’s work in this era of slavery agitation. Great as were his labors—and we think they were unsurpassed and unequalled by those of any other man—we still believe that his best contribution to the great cause was the spirit which he manifested and the motives that influenced him. It was like the walking of the Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace and coming forth unscathed from the flames.