Visit to England in 1863—The Need of Rest—Condition of Affairs at
Home—Arrival at Liverpool—Refusal to Speak—Visit to the
Continent—Reception by the King of Belgium—Civil War Discussed—News
of Victories—Return to England.
The spring of 1863 found Mr. Beecher thoroughly exhausted and greatly in
need of both mental and physical rest. The past twelve years had been a
season of unremitting care and toil. In addition to the regular duties
of his new and growing church, and the active revival work carried on at
this period, which were quite enough to task the energies of any one
less fortunately endowed with mental and vital energy, he had taken a
very active part in the anti-slavery agitation, and from the pulpit, the
lecture platform, and the columns of the _Independent_ kept up a
constant fire upon this national evil. In 1856, as we have seen, he had
thrown himself heart and soul into the Fremont campaign, well-nigh
destroying his health. From 1860 he had been laboring, without rest, to
uphold the government, to rouse and maintain the patriotic confidence of
the North, and through all of this time was a contributor to the New
York _Independent_, and since 1861 its editor-in-chief. Fagged out and
despondent from exhaustion, rest was imperative.
His church, with that generous love which has always characterized it,
voted him a four months’ leave of absence with expenses paid.
In company with Dr. John Raymond, then the president of Vassar College,
a warm personal friend, he set sail early in June for a holiday, making
his second trip across the water.
Fortunately we are able to give almost wholly in his own words the
history of this trip:
“I left New York in June, 1863, for a tour through Europe during the
summer vacation. I was not requested, either by President Lincoln nor by
any member of the Cabinet, to act in behalf of this government; it was
purely a personal arrangement. The government took no stock in me at
that time. Seward was in the ascendency, and, as I had been pounding
Lincoln during the early years of the war, I don’t believe there was a
man in Washington, excepting perhaps Mr. Chase, who would have trusted
me with anything; at any rate, I went on my own responsibility, with no
one behind me except my church. They told me they would pay my expenses
and sent me off. I went away wholly for the sake of rest and
recuperation. I went simply as a private citizen, and I went with a
determination not to speak in Great Britain.
“It was perhaps the dreariest period in the whole war. One after another
of our generals had been sent to school in the field to learn the art of
generalship. The task was too large for most of them, and they took a
secondary rank. At that time, up to the date of my departure, we had
made a stand and maintained it, but had gained but very little. The most
defensible country, perhaps, on earth is our own in its southern
portion; and the line that ran two thousand miles of active warfare
through our middle had been so fortified, and was defended with such
skill and unquestionable bravery, that our forces had not been able to
push back the line of rebellion much, and there had been nothing to
encourage the hearts of our people beyond their faith—for we lived by
faith and not by sight in those days.
“I had not, except in times of sickness, when the whole tone of my
nervous system was lowered, had an hour of doubt. I was sure of victory.
There were some sick hours in which I remember distinctly thinking, ‘One
nation is ground to make soil for another, and it may be that this
nation will be ground up in order that another one may grow up on its
ruins’; but ordinarily I was full of courage and hope, not unfounded I
think now in review; and it stood me in good stead abroad.
“At that time Grant had not emerged. McClellan had, and had retired
again. Burnside had briefly shown that he was too modest and not strong
enough to take McClellan’s place. Hooker, who had lost his head in the
great battle which he fought, was at the head of affairs, and we were on
the eve of one more change—a change which has surrounded the name of
Meade with lustre. Grant was at the time besieging Vicksburg. Lee had
not yet ventured into Pennsylvania, out of which he never ought to have
been permitted to go.
“It was at about that stage of things that I left. The political
condition of the country, and also its civic and secular condition, will
justify a word or two. There was a great party of the Union, made up of
men indifferently from all foregoing parties. Old lines were effaced,
old questions sank to the bottom, and the one question that united the
strangest elements, discordant in every other respect, was the wise
determination to maintain intact the union of this whole country. That
formed the band and belt that gave unity to the party of war. The great
Democratic party was divided into three ranks. The largest part, and the
noblest, joined themselves to the party of the Union; and better men
never came from any party than those that formed under our banner,
bearing briefly and for a time the name of Republicans, but very largely
going back again, after the war was over, to the Democratic party. There
was a second division of lukewarm Unionists in the Democratic party,
that were always hoping the war would be compromised—men of great
patriotism, who could not forbear to ask: ‘What will be my position
politically when we shall have secured peace again?’ They were for
compromise and for easy adjustment.
“Now, war is good for nothing if it is not intense and cruel. It means
organized force; and it is nonsense to go into the field with anything
else except guns in your hands and swords at your side. The attempt so
to fight, as in the earlier periods of our struggle, as not to hurt
anybody, is most disastrous, whether in prudence or in civil successes.
The South never did make war except to hurt somebody; and in the earlier
day the vehemence, the courage, and the convictions which they brought
into the field, made them more than a match for our Northern soldiers.
Very largely our generals had anticipations of Congress, or the
Presidency, or what not, before them; and such political anticipations
never whet anybody’s sword.
“There was a third section, and that was the least—those that were
directly in league with the Southern and slavery element. Of them it is
not necessary that anything should be said. They are wiped out, and that
is fulfilled in regard to them which the Scriptures hath spoken: ‘The
name of the wicked shall rot.’
“In that divided state Lincoln was under great discouragements, yet
maintaining invincible his purpose, without compromise, to destroy all
oppositions to this Union. Meanwhile we were maintaining a blockade of
about three thousand miles—an unexampled blockade. We had to extemporize
a navy, as we shall again if we have any war. We are always wise
_afterward_. For the sake of economy we are the most wasteful of all
nations, without foresight in such matters; too confiding. There is not
a ship in the American navy to-day that could not be blown out of the
water in a ten minutes’ conflict with the best-armored ships of Europe;
and Congress, that has no end of money for votes, through pensions and
various other channels of distributing, cannot be persuaded to do
anything for stability and inexorable defence against foreign invasion
and warfare.
“We had at that time converted almost every sea-going craft into a
man-of-war; and this extended blockade was in the main well served.
Europe stood watching as a vulture does to see the sick lamb or kine
stagger to fall, and from her dried branch of observation she was ready
to plunge down. Napoleon did. He already had sent French armies into
Mexico. That was a mere preface. Mexico was not his final object. The
recovering again of territory that once had belonged to France lay in
the achievements or the expectations of this weak and wicked potentate
in the future.
“In this condition of things we were hovering on the very edge of
intervention. It was well known to those acquainted with the condition
of affairs in other lands that Napoleon was disposed by every art and
intrigue to persuade the government of Great Britain to interpose, to
break the blockade, and to give its moral support to the rebellion of
the South.
“I found in England the utmost scepticism prevailing as to our success,
and an exaggerated conception of the endurance and courage of the South;
and no sentence was more frequently uttered in my hearing than this,
‘You will never subdue the South’; to which I invariably replied, ‘We
_shall_ subdue the South.’
“I found that, with a few noble exceptions—Mr. John Bright, Richard
Cobden, Mr. Forster, and such like—that the statesmen of Great Britain
were either lukewarm or in avowed sympathy with the South. The
middle-class and laboring people of Great Britain were in sympathy, on
the whole, with the North; but they had no votes. As a general thing,
the officeholders under the government, the rich families, the
manufacturing interests, the educated and professional men of Great
Britain, believed that our Union had been or would soon be dissolved.
Some one said to me at that time, ‘All men who ride in first-class cars,
and put up at first-class hotels, and live upon intellectual
professions, together with most of the clergymen, even of the dissenting
bodies of England, are adverse to the Northern cause.’
“The conduct of the laboring classes in Great Britain was admirable.
While they were on the verge of starvation in the cotton districts, they
patiently endured their sufferings without retracting their sympathy for
the Northern cause. As a body, the Quakers, whose testimony against
slavery had been continuous and unswerving, were in sympathy with the
North. The Congregational churches of Great Britain, with few
exceptions, were adverse to the North. The Congregational churches of
Wales were almost wholly in sympathy with the North.
“All the world looked upon America as about to be split asunder. Here
and there was a faithful witness and a faithful friend. The civilized
nations of Europe looked with varying emotions upon our conflict, but
agreed generally that it was an impossible task that the North had
undertaken; and everywhere I felt the numbness that that produced.
“It was at just that period that I left our shores and was in Great
Britain.”
From his letters home we have gathered something of an outline of his
experience and first impressions:
“I reached the mouth of the Mersey, seven miles from Liverpool, on
Wednesday night. The tide would not let us across till five the next
morning.... Duncan was on the tug when we reached the city—for there are
no wharves at Liverpool, and we lay in the middle of the stream and
landed passengers by means of a little steam-tug.... Before leaving the
boat a Mr. Estcourt, of Manchester, was at hand to invite me to have a
reception and speech at Manchester. The same happened for Liverpool
within a few hours, and letters from London, from two committees, came
within a day, soliciting the same. I declined them all and declared my
intention not to speak anywhere at present, and until I had had time to
form some judgment of things. I find that all our American friends at
Liverpool approve highly of my decision. And even those who most
solicited speeches admit that they think my decision the wiser one. I
will not trouble you with any description of the state of the English
mind toward our country. We have nothing to hope from it when it might
be of use to us, and we shall not by and by care a pin whether they
think ill or well.” After a week’s run in the country he returned to
Liverpool and “went to meet some friends at the _parlor_ of a _store_.
The great stores here have parlors, in which the heads of departments
dine every day. Gave them a plain talk about America. At the end, as we
got familiar, they confessed that America _had_ sufficient reason for
her complaints against Great Britain.”
Writing from London a week later:
“Every man I meet who is on our side commends my determination to keep
quiet for the present. I do not mean in preaching, but public addresses
and public receptions. There _is_ but little favor for the North.
Whatever may be said, a narrow but intense jealousy is felt, and fear of
future rivalry....
”_London, July 7._—On Monday of this week (yesterday) I met a circle of
temperance men at a breakfast. It was private in this, that no reports
were to be made or published. I gave them a good talk on our affairs....
To-day a like meeting with a section of anti-slavery men.”
He attended the meeting. Of course he was expected to make some remarks,
and he did. He says, speaking of this incident: “Several speeches had
been made when I was called upon, and made a statement expressing my
indignation at the position of the Congregational clergy of England in
view of this war. They were men who were seeking to know the signs of
the times, and had as a whole body gone wrong and had virtually arrayed
themselves on the side of slavery and against liberty. I put my best leg
foremost, and, although I succeeded in making a favorable impression, I
saw that I was likely to be regarded as an enthusiast, and so determined
that I should clinch the arguments I had advanced with a speech from a
calm-minded man, and accordingly when I had concluded I said:
‘Gentlemen, Dr. John Raymond, president of Vassar College, is present
and will add a few views of his own.’ He was a cool man and not easily
excited, but his sympathies were with the Union, and when he had kindled
up to his work I sat and looked at him in perfect amazement. He went at
them like a hundred earthquakes, with a whirlwind thrown in. He made a
magnificent speech, of such towering indignation as I never have heard
before or since.”
The expectation that the speeches would not be reported was misplaced;
there appears to have been “a chiel amang us takin’ notes,” and the
substance of the speeches was quite fully reported the next day.
Almost immediately thereafter he crossed over to the Continent, and did
not return to England until the following September.
He remained strongly disinclined to make any formal addresses, though he
had been urged to speak in London, Liverpool, and Manchester on his
return.
Writing from Switzerland, July 28, to Mrs. Stowe, he refers to the two
meetings in London, and his views regarding his return in the fall:
“My time in London, where I spent ten days, was, for the last six or
eight, spent in meeting private circles of gentlemen, and talking to
them like a father. I breakfasted with almost a hundred from the
Temperance Alliance, with seventy-five of the Congregational Liberty
Association, with forty or fifty at a soirée at Mr. Evans’s, president
of the Emancipation League, where Baptist Noel was the questioner, and I
responded for two hours. I hear since that great good was done, and at
the time there was elicited a great deal of confession from many that
they had been both ignorant and wrong. There was a universal and
vehement desire that I should arrange to speak in London, and elsewhere,
when I return to England in the autumn. If I see the way clear to do so,
these conferences will have opened the door effectually. Meanwhile I
shall wait and watch the development of things.... But let me tell you
that the root of all the conduct of England is simple and absolute
_fear_. I do not mean fear of a narrow and technical kind. But the
shadow that the future of our nation already casts is so vast that they
foresee they are falling into the second rank—that the will of the
Republic is to be the _law of the world_. There is no disguising of this
among Englishmen.
“I was told by Rev. Henry Allen, of London, eminent among the
Congregationalists, that they had long felt that a time must come when
England would have to take hold of us and curb our power, and that, now
that we were divided against ourselves, they rejoice to see their work
done for them. The Duke of Argyle distinctly recognized this feeling,
not in himself but in others. Roebuck openly avowed it in the House of
Commons. The papers on all hands abused him for it. But, in fact, it was
because _he spoke the truth_, which they were ashamed to have spoken so
boldly and openly. I met at Yungfrau a young Irishman, friendly, who
gave the same view of English feeling. Indeed, I have searched into it
and am thoroughly satisfied that it is mainly and deeply the dread of
our gigantic national development in the future, that has been coiled up
as the main-spring under all the other reasons, excuses, and
pretendings, and that has, consciously or unconsciously, moved the whole
mind of England. Against this what will reasoning or exposition avail?
Is there any _explanation_ that will make England ready to stand
_second_? Is there any way of stating our gigantic power that would lead
her to rejoice in it? I do not propose to pull wool over their eyes, nor
to play the sheep in any way. For I distinctly see the difficulty. I
know it to be unremovable, and all that can be done is to appeal to the
higher feelings of the Christian part of England, that the elect few, in
both countries, may hold fast the golden cords of love till God in His
own way shall have settled the future.”
As late as August 27 we find him still in doubt as to what he will do in
England; at that date he writes:
“When you read this, therefore, I shall probably be in London. I cannot
yet decide anything about my course in England. From a distance I do not
see any occasion or necessity for my squandering time there in
speaking....”
On his way back to England he passed through Brussels; while there he
paid his respects to the United States minister, Mr. Sandford. We give
his experience in his own words:
“In drawing near to England I went to Brussels, and at a dinner by our
American minister there, found him very much wavering as to our final
success. I expressed such sentiments, and expressed them so firmly, as
to lead him to wish that I should see King Leopold of Belgium, who was
considered the wisest sovereign in Europe, and to whom Queen Victoria
and others were accustomed to refer many questions for judgment or
arbitration.
“For the first and only time in my life I prepared myself for the
ordeal. But oh! consider it, ye that dwell at home, ye that sit at ease
among flowers and all pleasant things—consider my sufferings in a
_fashionable hat_, a white cravat, and a pair of white gloves! Yes, it
was even so! I reluctated, but Sandford plead; and as it was more for
his sake than my own that I consented to the interview at all, and also
because the king was very influential with all the sovereigns of Europe,
and especially with Victoria, and was pleased with attentions from
Americans, I took to myself a hat, cravat, and gloves, and in an open
barouche with two white horses, and Mr. Simmonds sitting by the side of
the driver, large as life, and most happy to be the courier of a party
called on in all the capitals by American ministers and consuls, and
_now_ going actually to see the king! Happy, happy Simmonds! The crowd
stared; the people gave way right and left; the royal guard at the
Governor’s House opened; we dismounted just at eleven (hat, cravat,
gloves, and all). A golden-laced official received us at the lower door
and jabbered French in our faces, which we answered by making for the
stairs beyond him. At the top two officers, much dressed, bowed and
seemed to be expecting us, showing us toward a pair of folding-doors
which, opening into the ante-room, revealed to us an aide-de-camp in
waiting, who took my card, walked softly to the next door, communed with
some one within, returned, and said that in a moment the king would
receive us.
“In a moment the door opened, a servant beckoned us, and we entered. A
tall man in full military uniform, blue, with eleven orders, crosses,
etc., on his left breast, with hair black (not his own), of a face quite
reverend, long, thin, somewhat corrugated, came towards us graciously
and paternally, bowed gently, and began a conversation of our travels,
of Europe, of America a _little_. Well, it was my duty, of course,
always to address him as ‘Sire,’ but I generally managed to call him
‘Sir’ with a hasty correction to ‘Sire.’
“After some conversation, in which he plainly intimated to me that he
would rejoice in bringing us to terms and peace again, all the while
intimating that the South could not be overcome, and that it would be
very wise for us to make a compromise, and that he would be entirely
willing to render service in that direction, I said to him: ‘Your
majesty’—I got it out once or twice right—‘if there were any ruling
sovereign in Europe to whom more than to another we should be glad to
refer this question, it would be to the king of Belgium, a judge among
nations and adviser among kings; but we do not propose to refer it to
any one. We are going to fight it out ourselves; the strongest will win
in our conflict, and so it must be settled.’
“Turning from that, he asked me what I thought of sending Maximilian to
Mexico—for at that time he had not been sent to be the emperor of this
new nation the Latins had established there; and, without suitable
diplomacy, I said to him: ‘Your majesty, any man that wants to sit upon
a throne in Mexico, I would advise to try Vesuvius first; if he can sit
there for a while, then he might go and try it in Mexico.’
“This very soon brought our conversation to a close. He bowed, we bowed.
He stepped back a step, we two, and, repeating the operation, we were
soon at the door and out of it.”
The next day finds Mr. Beecher at London. But a short time before, and
while in Paris, an event occurred that had a marked effect upon his
subsequent course in England and the results which he achieved. The news
came to him of the fall of Vicksburg and the repulse of Lee at
Gettysburg:
“Such a revulsion of feeling as I experienced myself, and such a
revulsion and intoning as all patriotic Americans experienced (for all
Americans were not patriotic; very largely they were commercial
cowards), from those tidings, one can scarcely imagine who was not there
to see. At this time I was staying in Paris at the Grand Hotel. It was
on a radiant Sunday, as I wended my way from the hotel to the church,
that the news came of the surrender of Vicksburg. No words can tell the
buoyancy, the awful sense of gladness that I had. I went into the house
of God and sat down in the pew of our minister to France, Mr. Dayton. By
my side sat his daughter. In a pause in the service I turned to Miss
Dayton and asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’ ‘No,’ said she, looking
earnestly at me. ‘_Vicksburg has fallen!_’ ‘_Is it true?_’ ‘Yes, be
sure.’ She answered me not a word, but turning to her companion, another
young lady, she whispered it to her, and both sat still as statues. The
hymn was given out, the music sounded, and she began to sing; but no
sooner had she opened her lips than, in a flood of tears, she buried her
face in her hands and wept for gladness and triumph. It overwhelmed her,
and it overwhelmed me too. And before the sun went down, yea, before the
sun was at noon, the other tidings came of the victory at Gettysburg;
and then my cup ran over. No man can tell how victoriously I walked. In
the ample court of the Grand Hotel there usually gathered a very large
company of Southern men, to whom my name was not savory; and day after
day, as I went out, they were wont to collect in one corner, and with
sneers and undisguised attempts at insult they met me as I came in and
went out, even sending contemptible messages to me by the servants
(which I never received, being intercepted at the office, although I
heard of them afterwards). But on that day when I heard that Lee had
been driven out of Pennsylvania and that Vicksburg had surrendered to
Grant, I put on my best coat, walked down-stairs and out into that court
to see how it fared with my brethren of the South; but, alas! they were
not there, not one of them. They, too, had heard something!
“The effect which these tidings produced throughout Great Britain was
immense. Before this no avowed friend of the North could go through the
Exchange in Liverpool without being looked at and watched, largely as
one would look at a bear escaped from a menagerie. My friend Charles
Duncan had scarcely been able to transact business without being
insulted at every step; when the good news came he went down into the
Exchange to look into the faces of these men that had been so insulting,
but there was not a man in the whole Exchange who had not been on our
side from the very beginning, and who had not always believed in us, in
our cause, and in our final victory! How wonderful are the workings of
Providence!
“On returning to England representations were made to me which compelled
me to consent to a series of public speeches. Our friends said: ‘We have
sacrificed ourselves in your behalf, and have been counted as the
offscouring, because we had championed the cause of the North; and now
if you go home without making a recognition of our efforts we will be
overwhelmed.’ Aside from other considerations, I found that a movement
was on foot to induce Parliament to declare for the Southern
Confederacy. This they were very willing to do, but did not dare to
without the approval of the unvoting English, who held great power.
Steps had been taken by friends of the Southern cause to have orators go
through the manufacturing districts for the purpose of enlisting the
sympathies of the laboring classes.
“By projecting a series of meetings on the other side it was hoped that
this mischievous course might be baffled and forestalled. At first there
was thought of but a single speech, and that at Manchester. So soon as
it was known that there was to be such a meeting applications were made
from Glasgow, from Edinburgh, from Liverpool and London, for like
meetings in these places.”