Chapter XX (2)

“For more than twenty-five years I have been made perfectly familiar with popular assemblies in all parts of my country except the extreme South. There has not for the whole of that time been a single day of my life when it would have been safe for me to go south of Mason and Dixon’s line in my own country, and all for one reason: my solemn, earnest, persistent testimony against that which I consider to be the most atrocious thing under the sun—the system of American slavery in a great, free republic. [Cheers.] I have passed through that early period when right of free speech was denied to me. Again and again I have attempted to address audiences that, for no other crime than that of free speech, visited me with all manner of contumelious epithets; and now since I have been in England, although I have met with greater kindness and courtesy on the part of most than I deserved, yet, on the other hand, I perceive that the Southern influence prevails to some extent in England. [Applause and uproar.] It is my old acquaintance; I understand it perfectly [laughter], and I have always held it to be an unfailing truth that where a man had a cause that would bear examination he was perfectly willing to have it spoken about. [Applause.] And when in Manchester I saw those huge placards, ‘Who is Henry Ward Beecher?’ [laughter, cries of ‘Quite right,’ and applause], and when in Liverpool I was told that there were those blood-red placards, purporting to say what Henry Ward Beecher had said, and calling upon Englishmen to suppress free speech—I tell you what I thought; I thought simply this: ‘I am glad of it.’ [Laughter.] Why? Because if they had felt perfectly secure that _you_ are the minions of the South and the slaves of slavery, they would have been perfectly still. [Applause and uproar.] ... And, therefore, when I saw so much nervous apprehension that if I were permitted to speak [hisses and applause]—when I found they were afraid to have me speak [hisses, laughter, and ‘No, no’]; when I found that they considered my speaking damaging to their cause [applause]; when I found that they appealed from facts and reasonings to mob law [applause and uproar], I said: No man need tell me what the heart and secret counsel of these men are. They tremble and are afraid. [Applause, laughter, hisses, ‘No, no,’ and a voice: ‘New York mob.’] Now, personally, it is a matter of very little consequence to me whether I speak here to-night or not. [Laughter and cheers.] But one thing is very certain—if you do permit me to speak here to-night you will hear very plain talking. [Applause and hisses.] You will not find a man [interruption]—you will not find me to be a man that dared to speak about Great Britain 3,000 miles off, and then is afraid to speak to Great Britain when he stands on her shores. [Immense applause and hisses.] And if I do not mistake the tone and the temper of Englishmen, they had rather have a man who opposes them in a manly way [applause from all parts of the hall] than a sneak that agrees with them in an unmanly way. [Applause and ‘Bravo.’] Now, if I can carry you with me by sound convictions, I shall be immensely glad [applause]; but if I cannot carry you with me by facts and sound arguments, I do not wish you to go with me at all; and all that I ask is simply FAIR PLAY. [Applause, and a voice: ‘You shall have it, too.’] Those of you who are kind enough to wish to favor my speaking—and you will observe that my voice is slightly husky, from having spoken almost every night in succession for some time past—those who wish to hear me will do me the kindness simply to sit still and to keep still; and I and my friends the Secessionists will make all the noise. It is just as important to have customers educated, intelligent, moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool. [Applause.] They are able to buy; they want variety, they want the very best; and those are the customers you want. That nation is the best customer that is freest, because freedom works prosperity, industry, and wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral considerations, has a direct commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization, and wealth of every people and every nation on the globe. [Loud applause.] You have also an interest in this, because you are a moral and a religious people. [‘Oh! oh!’ laughter, and applause.] You desire it from the highest motives; and godliness is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life that is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no hereafter, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import—it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise—Hungary, Italy, Poland—it is a duty for humanity’s sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with them; but beside all these there is a material and interested reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design. Now, Great Britain’s chief want is—what? They have said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your chief want is consumers. [Applause and hisses.] ... Now, there is in this a great and sound principle of political economy. [‘Yah! yah!’ from the passage outside the hall, and loud laughter.] If the South should be rendered independent—[at this juncture mingled cheering and hisses became immense; half the audience rose to their feet, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there was the greatest commotion and uproar.] You have had your turn now; now let me have mine again. [Loud applause and laughter.] It is a little inconvenient to talk against the wind; but, after all, if you will just keep good-natured—I am not going to lose my temper; will you watch yours? [Applause.] Besides all that, it rests me, and gives me a chance, you know, to get my breath. [Applause and hisses.] And I think that the bark of those men is worse than their bite. They do not mean any harm—they don’t know any better. [Loud laughter, applause, hisses, and continued uproar.] What will be the result if this present struggle shall eventuate in the separation of America, and making the South [loud applause, hisses, hooting, and cries of ‘Bravo!’] a slave territory exclusively [cries of ‘No, no,’ and laughter], and the North a free territory—what will be the first result? You will lay the foundation for carrying the slave population clear through to the Pacific Ocean. There is not a man that has been a leader of the South any time within these twenty years that has not had this for a plan. Never have they for a moment given up the plan of spreading the American institutions, as they call them, straight through towards the West, until the slave who has washed his feet in the Atlantic shall be carried to wash them in the Pacific. [Cries of ‘Question!’ and uproar.] There! I have got that statement out, and you cannot put it back. [Laughter and applause.] ... Now, here are twelve millions of people, and only one-third of them are customers that can afford to buy the kind of goods that you bring to market. [Interruption and uproar.] My friends, I saw a man once, who was a little late at a railway station, chase an express-train. He did not catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going to stop this meeting you have got to stop it before I speak; for after I have got the things out you may chase as long as you please—you will not catch them. [Laughter and interruption.] But there is luck in leisure; I’m going to take it easy. [Laughter.] Two-thirds of the population of the Southern States to-day are non-purchasers of English goods. [A voice, ‘No, they are not,’ ‘No, no,’ and uproar.] And if by sympathy or help you establish a slave empire, you sagacious Britons [‘Oh! oh!’ and hooting]—if you like it better, then, I will leave the adjective out [laughter, hear, and applause]—you will be busy in favoring the establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest customers and the largest non-buying population. [Applause; ‘No, no.’] ... It was the South that obliged the North to put the tariff on. [Applause and uproar.] Just as soon as we begin to have peace again and can get our national debt into a proper shape, as you have got yours [laughter], the same cause that worked before will begin to work again; and there is nothing more certain in the future than that the American is bound to join with Great Britain in the world-wide doctrine of free-trade. [Applause and interruption.] Here, then, so far as _this_ argument is concerned, I rest my case, saying that it seems to me that in an argument addressed to a commercial people it was perfectly fair to represent that their commercial and manufacturing interests tallied with their moral sentiments; and as by birth, by blood, by history, by moral feeling, and by everything, Great Britain is connected with the liberty of the world, God has joined interest and conscience, head and heart, so that you ought to be in favor of liberty everywhere. [Great applause.] There! I have got quite a speech out already, if I do not get any more. [Hisses and applause.] ...

“It is said that the North is fighting for Union, and not for emancipation. The North is fighting for Union, because we never shall forget the testimony of our enemies. They have gone off declaring that the Union in the hands of the North was fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There is testimony in court for you. [A voice, ‘See that,’ and laughter.] We are fighting for the Union, because we believe that preamble which explains the very reason for which the Union was constituted. I will read it. ‘We’—not the States—‘We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect NATION’ [uproar]—I don’t wonder you don’t want to hear it [laughter]—‘in order to form a more perfect NATION, establish justice, assure domestic tranquillity [uproar], provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of LIBERTY [‘oh! oh!’] to ourselves and our posterity, ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.’ [A voice: ‘How many States?’] It is for the sake of that justice, that common welfare, and that liberty for which the National Union was established, that we fight for the Union. [Interruption.] Because the South believed that the Union was against slavery, they left it. [Renewed interruption.] Gentlemen, I have travelled in the West ten or twelve hours at a time in the mud knee-deep. It was hard toiling my way, but I always got through my journey. I feel to-night as though I were travelling over a very muddy road; but I think I shall get through. [Cheers.] ... In the first place, I am ashamed to confess that such was the thoughtlessness [interruption], such was the stupor of the North [renewed interruption]—you will get a word at a time; to-morrow will let folks see what it is you don’t want to hear—that for a period of twenty-five years she went to sleep, and permitted herself to be drugged and poisoned with the Southern prejudice against black men. [Applause and uproar.] ... When I was twelve years old my father hired Charles Smith, a man as black as lampblack, to work on his farm. I slept with him in the same room. [‘Oh! oh!’] Ah! that don’t suit you. [Uproar.] Now, you see, the South comes out. [Loud laughter.] I ate with him at the same table; I sang with him out of the same hymn-book [‘Good’]; I cried when he prayed over me at night; and if I had serious impressions of religion early in life, they were due to the fidelity and example of that poor humble farm-laborer, black Charles Smith. [Tremendous uproar and cheers.] ... There is another fact that I wish to allude to—not for the sake of reproach or blame, but by way of claiming your more lenient consideration—and that is, that slavery was entailed upon us by your action. [Hear, hear.] Against the earnest protests of the colonists the then government of Great Britain—I will concede not knowing what were the mischiefs—ignorantly, but in point of fact, forced slave-traffic on the unwilling colonists. [Great uproar, in the midst of which one individual was lifted up and carried out of the room amidst cheers and hisses.] ... We do not agree with the recent doctrine of neutrality as a question of law. But it is past, and we are not disposed to raise that question. We accept it now as a fact, and we say that the utterance of Lord Russell at Blairgowrie [applause, hisses, and a voice, ‘What about Lord Brougham?’], together with the declaration of the government in stopping war-steamers here [great uproar and applause], has gone far towards quieting every fear and removing every apprehension from our minds. [Uproar and shouts of applause.] And now in the future it is the work of every good man and patriot not to create divisions, but to do the things that will make for peace. [‘Oh! oh!’ and laughter.] On our part it shall be done. [Applause and hisses, and ‘No, no.’] On your part it ought to be done; and when, in any of the convulsions that come upon the world, Great Britain finds herself struggling single-handed against the gigantic powers that spread oppression and darkness [applause, hisses, and uproar], there ought to be such cordiality that she can turn and say to her first-born and most illustrious child, ‘Come!’ [Hear, hear, applause, tremendous cheers, and uproar.] I will not say that England cannot again, as hitherto, single-handed manage any power [applause and uproar]; but I will say that England and America together for religion and liberty [a voice, ‘Soap, soap,’ uproar, and great applause] are a match for the world. [Applause; a voice, ‘They don’t want any more soft soap.’]”

Thus in the wildest confusion, little by little, a few sentences at a time, the speech was delivered. For nearly three hours the fight was kept up, until at last the speech was done. Although the mob was not quieted—it did not come there for that purpose—yet the speech _was_ delivered, and, what was more to the point, was printed verbatim in the morning’s papers. The mob wholly failed to accomplish their object. It did not break down Mr. Beecher.

Four days later the concluding speech of the series was to be delivered at Exeter Hall, London. The great metropolis was the centre of political thought and influence. It was of great importance that the London speech should be a success, and to that end that the speaker should be in good condition himself.

But the constant strain upon his voice in his efforts to be heard in the first three speeches, culminating in the prolonged struggle at Liverpool, where his strength had been taxed to the uttermost, had at last gone beyond even his powers of endurance. The day before the London speech his voice failed him; by night he could not speak above a whisper. Voiceless, he was helpless. When he first realized the truth he was for a moment overwhelmed. To fail in London was, in very large measure, to lose the ground so hardly gained.

“I felt all day Monday that I was coming to London to speak to a public audience, but my voice was gone; and I felt as though about to be made a derision to my enemies, to stand up before a multitude and be unable to say a word. It would have been a mortification to any one’s natural pride. I asked God to restore me my voice, as a child would ask its father to grant it a favor. But I hoped that God would grant me His grace to enable me, if it was necessary for the cause that I should be put to open shame, to stand up as a fool before the audience. I said: ‘Lord, Thou knowest this. Let it be as Thou wilt.’”

Rest being of the first importance, he retired early, and, having wrapped his throat in wet bandages, dismissed all further thought of the morrow and slept.

In the morning waking refreshed, the first thought that came to him was, “Can I speak?” For a while he lay silent, fearing the attempt. First he tried a low whisper, then louder, finally spoke out. His voice had returned, not in its old strength, yet strong enough to use. Now his exaltation was as great as twelve hours before had been his depression.

The night came, and with it increased strength, fully sufficient for the work before him.

In this speech slavery was discussed in its moral relations. Of the meeting we quote briefly from the published account of an eye-witness:

“In the five great speeches which Mr. Beecher has made in England and Scotland on the American question, before vast audiences, he has taken care to observe a system of selection which has brought before the country all the great salient points of the American war. He has not repeated himself, but met the Confederate sympathizers here, upon every field which they had chosen for their own advantage. But the grand climax of all his efforts was that which was made at Exeter Hall last night, before a crowd as great as ever gathered into that immense hall, and which, despite the persistent efforts of the opposition to destroy the meeting and its effect, made a mark upon English opinion which must prove of the utmost importance.

“Mr. Beecher’s strokes in other cities of the kingdom having invariably drawn blood from the hides of the Confederate sympathizers here, it was plain that they had determined to meet with yells and uproar what they could not meet with argument. That an organized opposition was contemplated was not concealed. During all yesterday, posters were scattered through the length and breadth of the city, making all kinds of charges of a personal character against him, abounding in fictitious and distorted quotations from discourses and lectures delivered by him in old times. It had been considered of prime importance to the Confederate cause here that Lord Russell’s assertion at Blairgowrie, that the moral sympathies of the English people were adverse to the Southern cause, should be disproved; and it was hoped, through personal assaults upon Mr. Beecher, to injure the effect of the meeting, and then claim it in as the verdict of London in favor of the Southern Confederacy.

“At an early hour the hall was crowded to overflowing, and there was evidence, too, that they were orderly men and women, who, whether sympathizing with the North or not, had come to hear a fair discussion of the question which concerns all, and were determined to secure fair play. The crowd outside in the Strand and Exeter Street was enormous, and consisted chiefly of the opposition. One of the committee came in smilingly, and said: ‘Our shilling admission-fee has filtered the crowd. The Southern sympathizer is always a man who looks hard at a shilling before he parts with it, and then don’t part with it.’ Yet it was known that in two or three sections of the house there were parties who meant mischief.

“When Beecher arose there were five minutes of the most tremendous cheering that I have ever witnessed. Wave after wave, as of a tumultuous sea of sound, came thundering up from the gallery at one end to the organ at the other, in the midst of which stood Mr. Beecher, calm as a rock in the midst of the surges. A hiss was then begun, but at his first word it sank back into the diaphragms of those who uttered or meant to utter it. The first glance and the self-possessed manner of the man told plainly that he had something to say in Exeter Hall that night, and that he meant to be heard.

“Mr. Beecher’s voice was scarcely as sonorous and clear as it usually is, and all recognized that this was natural after the many speeches in immense halls which he had given during the week. ‘I expect to be hoarse,’ he said, ‘and I am willing to be hoarse if I can in any way assist to bring the mother and daughter heart to heart and hand to hand together.’ This sentiment was received with great applause; and Beecher’s hoarseness was thus impressed to the service of his cause. But he so economized his voice that every word was distinctly heard by the vast assembly. And I assure you that every word was freighted; in the day when men are called to give an account for every idle word spoken, Mr. Beecher will not be confronted by any one uttered last night at Exeter Hall. At one time, when there was an interval of a few moments arising from the effort of the hisses to triumph over the cheers, Mr. Beecher, with a quiet smile, said: ‘Friends, I thank you for this interruption; it gives me a chance to rest.’ The hisses thereupon died away, and had no resurrection during the evening. It was evident, indeed, that the speaker, who knows a thing or two about audiences, felt that the meeting was his and that no interruption would succeed. But many of his friends had serious apprehensions. One of the editors of the _Star_, himself a distinguished speaker, and thoroughly acquainted with English audiences, who sat near to me, whispered in my ear: ‘There are a great many here who do not cheer; there is a strong chance of a row yet; but the meeting is just in such a condition that its result will depend upon the power and equanimity of the speaker.’ ‘Then,’ I replied, ‘you needn’t fear.’ If Mr. Beecher had heard our brief whispers he could not have more distinctly appreciated the remark of the editor. At that moment, although he had been interesting all along, he suddenly stepped one side from the desk upon which his notes lay, and his face gleamed like a sword leaping from a scabbard. No more hisses, no more cheers, now for half an hour; the audience is magnetized, breathless; when the first pause came, a Sir Somebody, sitting behind me, said, ‘Why, he looked at first like a heavy man, but he’s got wings’; whilst a reporter near our feet whispered audibly to a brother writer, ‘Oh! but he _can_ put things!’ Mr. Beecher forgot all things but his subject; his tongue burned with living coals; his arm pointed like a prophet’s rod. The shams of our enemies in England; their talk of peace when they mean every kind of bloodshed except that which is for justice—‘the aspect of a lamb with the voice of a dragon,’ as St. John saw it; their cant about emancipation being not a principle with Mr. Lincoln, but only an expedient, as if that would make liberty any less a prize to the slave and humanity if they got it—all these collapsed palpably before the masses then gathered, and all the fine points of Roebuck and Lindsay became toads under the touch of his flame-tipped spear.

“‘This cannot go on,’ whispered a clergyman near; ‘these strokes draw too much blood; the victim is writhing in pain now.’

“Again did Mr. Beecher level his lance; it was at those who were making capital out of what they call ‘American sympathy with the oppressor of Poland.’ Nothing could exceed the drollery with which, almost blushing, he presented the loving and jealous maiden who, when her suitor is not attentive enough, gets up a flirtation with some other man. ‘America flirts with Russia, but has her eye on England.’ Now, the presence of warships from Russia at New York has been the leading card of the Confederates here in their game to win popular sympathy for the South; for our friends among the English people are also the friends of the Poles. It was plain that the opposition in the meeting did not mean to let this matter pass without trying to get some capital. Consequently, when Mr. Beecher said, ‘But it is said it is very unworthy that America should be flirting with the oppressor of Poland,’ there were violent shouts, ‘Yes, yes,’ ‘Certainly it is,’ etc. Mr. Beecher waited until the cries had entirely subsided, and a little time had been allowed for friend and foe to speculate as to his reply; then, leaning a little forward, he put on an indescribably simple expression, and said mildly: ‘_I think so, too. And now you know exactly how we felt when you flirted with Mason at the lord-mayor’s banquet._’ I cannot attempt to describe the effect of these words on the throng. The people arose with a shout that began to be applause, but became a shout of laughter. The hit was so perfect and felicitous that roars of hearty laughter told that that topic was summed up for ever. Three loud groans given for the late lord-mayor—his place is now filled with a much better man—ended that scene, and the drama proceeded.

“In the heart of Mr. Beecher’s oration was given a denunciation of slavery more powerful than I have ever heard from his lips. He scored and scourged it until it seemed to stand before us a hideous monster, bloated with human blood and writhing under his goads.

“Mr. Beecher, having sustained himself throughout better than I had ever known him to do before—and I am pretty familiar with his grand successes in our own country—having carried the meeting entirely and evoked the warmest expressions of good-will to America, sat down, leaving the audience hungry and shouting ‘Go on, go on!’”

London was captured; the speech was discussed in every parlor and in every club. It was the topic of the day. Farewell meetings, veritable love-feasts, were held in London, Manchester, and Liverpool on the 23d, 24th, and 30th of October, and then Mr. Beecher sailed for home.

That these speeches, delivered just at this time, in connection with the events at home, produced a marked effect cannot be doubted. They certainly cleared up many gross misconceptions that filled the English mind, and gave the English people a clearer insight into the real purpose of our government and the true object of the South. This seems to have been the judgment of contemporaneous opinion. A prominent English paper said:

“Before he left England he had thoroughly enlisted the sympathies of the people with the cause of the North; and he had no small share in averting a collision, which at one period of the Civil War threatened ominously, between this country and the United States.”

On his return to Brooklyn he was called to address two monster meetings on his English experiences, one in Brooklyn in aid of the War Fund Committee, and one in New York in aid of the United States Sanitary Commission. In his introductory speech at the former, Dr. R. S. Storrs thus eloquently summarizes Mr. Beecher’s work abroad:

“We are here as American citizens all, to welcome one who has done to our country on foreign shores a signal service! The rapid and private trip which he undertook, simply for the purposes of rest and recreation, was transformed, not so much by his own device or desire or will as by the persistent urgency of Englishmen, into a real international embassy of peace and good-will. And by consent of all who know, of all the interpreters, the advocates, the champions of our great national cause in England—of whom there have been not a few able and eloquent—no one has labored more faithfully, zealously, and effectively than he....

“We may gratefully recognize the kindness and the wisdom of that preceding preparation of both body and mind which fitted him for this work. The rest and leisure of those weeks upon the Continent prepared him not only to face the rough seas that have delayed his return, but to meet and master the more tempestuous savagery of the Liverpool mob. The Alpine peaks to whose summit he climbed contributed, no doubt, to lift him afterwards to the climax of his eloquence at London and at Manchester. And so it has come to pass that to him it is owing, as much, perhaps, as to any other one man on either hemisphere, that the mind of the great middle class in England—which is the mind that in the last analysis moulds and governs the government of Great Britain—is at least now partially informed concerning the principles and the history of our struggle; that the warships framed by Confederate malice and commercial cupidity to harass our commerce, break our blockade, or desolate our cities, are not to be left to step out to sea through any loose interpretation of the law, but are to be kept chained to the docks and held there by the strong arm of the government, and that stars of promise are shining in the east, where lately the thunderbolts of war seemed to gather.”

At this same meeting Mr. Beecher himself gave an outline of the state of public opinion when he reached England, and some estimate of his own work in changing this public opinion:

“I desire this evening to speak upon that which you all have come to hear—namely, my impressions and experiences in respect to the condition of things in Great Britain, as they relate to this struggle and this country.

“There are many reasons why an American would have presumed it easy to understand British feeling and British policy. There was a similarity of institutions in England and America and a sameness of radical principles; but that very similarity, since it begets, through different institutions and different vehicles, different policies, is liable to deceive us. If I had judged of the condition of England from the impressions produced upon me by my first four weeks’ tarry there in the summer, I should have judged very wrongly. You are aware that the original expectation of our people was almost universal that in Great Britain we should find a sympathizer. One thing we counted sure, and that was that, if all the other nations stood aloof, there was one which would stand by us in the hour of our peril, and that one was Great Britain. And the sharpness of our retaliatory complaints was acuminated by that very disappointment of a very confident conviction. We never asked for help. We never asked that she should lend us anything, or stretch out so much as the little finger of her right hand. We did ask simply a generous confidence and a generous moral sympathy, and that was all. I found, in the first place, on going there, that every man I met was a Southern man—not literally born in the South, but this is the designation they have themselves made. They are Southerners and Northerners even more than we are here. I found that on the railways, on the boats, in the hotels, and wherever there was a travelling public, there was a public that sympathized with the South and adverse to the North.

“The nobility as a class are also against us, though there are some very noble exceptions.

“In Parliament, if a vote were taken to-day according to the private thoughts, sympathies, and wishes among its members, I suppose they would vote five to one against the North and in favor of the South. It is believed, too, by those well informed, that at least a portion of the government have been entirely willing to go into a rupture with the North, and that but for the unflinching restraints they would have done so long ago. But it is the impression throughout the realm that the sovereign of Great Britain has been from the first our judicious but our steadfast friend. It is believed, and so represented to me, that her never-rightly-estimated and lamented consort was our fast friend, and that among the last acts of his life were those which erased from documents presented to him sentences that would have inflamed the growing anger. And if you ask me what is the great underlying influence that has been at work upon the upper class of England, I answer thus:

“1. Commercial interest and rivalry therein.

“2. Class-power and the fear of contagion from American ideas.

“3. (I know not how I shall say it so that it shall be the least offensive to our friends on the other side, but neither they nor you have come to the bottom of the conduct of Great Britain until you have touched that delicate and real foundation cause.) We are too large and strong a nation.

“With this state of facts you will ask how it is that the English people have been restrained? How is it that they have not gone into overt belligerency? That is the very question that I propose to answer, and in the statement that the English heart is on our side. The nobility is against us; the government is divided and a part is against us. I think I may say that while the brains that represent progress in Great Britain are in our favor, yet the conservative intelligence of Great Britain is against us, and that all there is on the surface of society, representing its dignities, its power and intelligence, is anti-American. And the question I propose to you is, How, with the papers, magazines, and universities, how with their titled estates opposed to us, that they have been restrained from manifesting this in open hostility? It is because there is a great underlying influence that restrains them—it is the influence of that under-life, and to a very great extent of the non-voting English, which has produced this effect, It is a thing I could not understand at first, and which it is very difficult for us to understand; for wherever in our country there is a majority of the votes there is sure to be a direction of affairs. But it is not so in England. I learned that the men who could not vote, where they were united and determined, had the power to control the men who do vote. I hold in my hand a letter from Richard Cobden. He says: ‘You will carry back an intimate acquaintance with a state of feeling in this country among what, for a better name, I call the ruling class. Their sympathy is undoubtedly strongly for the South, with the instinctive satisfaction at the prospect of the disruption of the great Republic. It is natural enough. But do not forget that we have in this case, for the first time in our history, seen the masses of the British people taking sides for a foreign government against its rebellious citizens. In every other instance, whether in the case of the Poles, Italians, Hungarians and Corsicans, Greeks, or South Americans, the popular sympathy of this country has always leaped to the side of the insurgents the moment the rebellion has broken out. In the present case our masses have an instinctive feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the States—the United States. It is true that they have not a particle of power in the direct form of a vote, but, when millions in this country are led by the religious middle class, they can go and prevent the governing class from pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies.’

“Into such an atmosphere and among such a people I went. And when, unsought, and indeed against my feelings if not against my judgment, I entered upon the labor of the past few weeks of my sojourn in England, I assumed the responsibility, I cannot say with trembling—for I am not accustomed much to tremble—but I assumed the responsibility with the gravest sense of what it was. I have felt the inspiration of nationality often, but I never before was placed between two such great peoples, where I saw them both in prospective, both in their present relations and in their future. I never before felt so much as I felt all the time, waking or dreaming, night or day, what it was to stand and plead for the unity of these two great nations, for the sake of struggling mankind; and it was at once an excitement to me and a support. But, after all, I did not know how my countrymen would regard my efforts. If you had disapproved I should have been sorry that you disapproved, but not sorry for what I had done. I did the best I knew how to do, every time, everywhere disinterestedly, for the love I bear to the cause and to the principles which underlie it. I did not hear from home whether my representations of policy, of fact, of history, and of the tendencies of things would accord with yours, or whether I should not be caught up in the whirl of conflicting parties, my reasonings traversed, and my arguments denied. When I landed in Boston I learned for the first time that my services had been accepted by my countrymen....

“That to a certain extent my speeches produced among the common people beneficial results there can be no doubt; but how far that extended, or whether they had influence upon the thinking classes, others could say better than I. They were certainly greatly aided by the fact that Lee was defeated at Gettysburg and driven back to Virginia, and that at the same time Grant received the surrender of Vicksburg. Those timely victories, together with other causes, held in check the manœuvres and diplomacy of crowned heads and made intervention less certain and more remote; and gave time for Grant’s success at Chattanooga, and his transfer to the Army of the Potomac, and in turn his promotion to general-in-chief of the operations in the field.

“I put no immoderate estimate on my services. I believe I did some good wherever I spoke. But it should be remembered that a single man, a stranger in the community, would be eaten up by vanity if he said or supposed, that he had done all the good that had been accomplished. There must have been preparation. He merely came to touch the train that had already been laid. When, in October, you go to the tree and give it a jar, and the fruit comes down all around you, it is not you that ripens it. A whole summer has been doing that. You merely brought down the fruit prepared. It was my happy fortune to be there to jar the tree. The fruit that fell was not of my ripening.”

A few brief extracts from three of the leading papers in New York, published at the time, are quoted as indications of the popular sentiment as to the value of his work:

“It is plain, from the whole tone of the British press, that Mr. Beecher has been instrumental in starting, or at least hastening, a complete revolution of the popular feeling of the kingdom in favor of our National cause. He is the man who ought to have been sent to England two years ago to enlighten and rouse the people. Had this been done he could have hardly failed of preventing a vast deal of that bitterness which has since, all the while, been fermenting between the two nations.”

“The Administration at Washington have sent abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North and press it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is a person who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere private mission to recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his four or five speeches in England have not done more for us, by their frank and manly exposition of our principles, our purpose, and our hopes, than all the other agencies employed.”

“Every loyal American, whatever his opinions respecting the past words and acts of Henry Ward Beecher, will thank him for his work across the water. It is no exaggeration to affirm that the five speeches he has delivered—in Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London—each pursuing its own line of argument and appeal, have done more for our cause in England and Scotland than all that has been before said or written.”

Whatever may have been the causes, it is historical that the English government, which had been trembling upon the very verge of intervention, withdrew from this project and began to entertain much more peaceful and friendly feelings towards the United States—feelings that have grown stronger and deeper with each successive year.