CHAPTER XX.

Facing the Mob in Manchester—Glasgow—Edinburgh—Desperate Attempts to

break Mr. Beecher down at Liverpool—Victory in London.

“After spending some days in the Lake district I went to Manchester to

meet the engagement there for October 9th. Great excitement existed; the

streets were placarded with vast posters, printed in blood-red,

appealing to the passions and even to the spirit of violence on the part

of the people. Threats resounded on every side. Both there and at

Liverpool afterwards it was declared that I should never come out of the

audience alive.

“I was met at the station by John Estcourt and young Watts, whose father

was Sir Something Watts and had the largest business house in Central

England. When they approached me I saw that there was something amiss,

and before I had proceeded twenty steps they let the cat out of the bag:

‘Of course you know there is a great deal of excitement here’—at the

same time pointing to placards printed in red letters, with which the

streets were flooded, denouncing the Northern cause and all its

advocates. I always feel happy when I hear of a storm, and I looked at

them and said: ‘Well, are you going to back down?’ ‘No,’ said they, ‘but

we didn’t know how you would feel.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you’ll find out how

I’m going to feel. I’m going to be heard. I won’t leave England until I

have been heard.’

“The Free Trade Hall, I was informed, held from five to six thousand. It

was the purpose of our adversaries to break down my first speech in

England there, and prevent my being heard thereafter. All the great

papers of London and of the kingdom were represented. The tumult defies

description. No American audience, under any amount of excitement that I

have ever known, could be compared for one moment with the condition of

the audience at Manchester; and that was equalled, and surpassed even,

by the one subsequently at Liverpool. If one can imagine a shipmaster

giving orders to a mutinous crew in the midst of a tropical

thunder-storm, he will have some faint idea of the task that was on my

hands.

“Although in every speech I was obliged to rehearse substantially the

same general facts in regard to the questions at issue in America, yet

each speech had a field peculiar to itself. In Manchester I discussed

the effect of slavery upon manufacturing interests of the world, and

gave a history of the external political movement for fifty years past,

so far as it was necessary to illustrate the fact that the American war

was only an overt and warlike form of a contest between liberty and

slavery that had been going on politically for over half a century.”

After Mr. Beecher was introduced, and before he had fairly entered upon

his speech, the mob began to show its teeth, and in a few seconds there

was one unparalleled scene of riot and confusion. Mr. Beecher took the

measure of his audience, about one-fourth of whom only were against him,

but they made up in noise and tumult what they lacked in numbers. They

had been systematically bunched about the house, so as to make their

interruptions the more effective. He had come with his speech carefully

prepared in manuscript, but when the interruptions began he tossed the

paper to one side, and, stepping forward, with head erect, said: “My

friends, we will have a whole night’s session, but we will be heard.” It

was like attempting to preach a sermon through a trumpet in a howling

gale; but the press was well represented, and, bending forward, he said

to the reporters: “Gentlemen, be kind enough to take down what I say. It

will be in sections, but I will have it connected by and by.” The uproar

continued, and all sorts of insulting questions were hurled at the

speaker. The latter, however, had made up his mind to be heard, and he

was. He would wait until the noise had somewhat subsided, then,

arresting the attention of the audience by some witticism, he would take

advantage of the lull to give them some telling sentences. Finally,

after about an hour of speaking by fits and starts, the audience became

manageable. The English admire pluck, and they had an excellent example

of the article before them, and finally could not fail to show their

appreciation. His cool, determined appearance as he said, “I have many

times encountered similar opposition, and afterwards been heard; _I

shall be heard to-night_,” produced a marked effect, and in a short time

thereafter the vast assemblage was brought in perfect silence and into

full sympathy with the speaker. They listened during the remaining hour,

and were convinced; the next morning every paper in England printed the

entire speech.

Just as the speaker was drawing to a close, occurred a stirring incident

that strongly emphasized the effect of this speech. The chairman, taking

advantage of a slight pause, touched Mr. Beecher on the shoulder and

whispered a few words to him. The latter retired sufficiently to give

his place to the chairman, who, raising a paper which he held, said in a

distinct voice: “I hold in my hand a telegram just received from London,

stating that her Majesty has to-night caused the ‘broad arrow’ to be

placed on the rams in Mr. Laird’s yard at Birkenhead.” This meant the

stoppage of the ships which were being built for Confederate cruisers.

The effect was startling. The whole audience rose to its feet. Men

cheered and waved their hats, while women waved their handkerchiefs and

wept.

At the conclusion of his address the feeling of the audience, which a

short time previous had been a howling mob, can be best portrayed by the

following incident: A big, burly Englishman who was sitting in the

gallery, seeing that it would be impossible to reach Mr. Beecher to

shake hands with him, cried, “Shake my umbrella,” at the same time

reaching it down to him. Mr. Beecher complied with the request, and as

he did so the enthusiastic Englishman cried, “By Jocks! nobody sha’n’t

touch that umbrella again!” Hundreds of others, more fortunate, crowded

in to shake the speaker’s hand.

Of course it will be impossible, within our space, to give the speeches

entire, whilst an attempt at analysis would be like presenting a bony

skeleton bared of its flesh, omitting all that gave them life and

strength. But a few of the more striking passages from each speech may

not be uninteresting:[7]

-----

Footnote 7:

These speeches have been reprinted in full in “Patriotic Addresses,”

by Messrs. Ford, Howard & Hulburt, of New York.

-----

“I have not come to England to be surprised that those men whose cause

cannot bear the light are afraid of free speech. I have had practice of

more than twenty-five years, in the presence of tumultuous assemblies,

opposing those very men whose representatives now attempt to forestall

free speech. Little by little, I doubt not, I shall be permitted to

speak to-night. Little by little I have been permitted in my own country

to speak, until at last the day has come there, when nothing but the

utterance of speech for freedom is popular. You have been pleased to

speak of me as one connected with the great cause of civil and religious

liberty. I covet no higher honor than to have my name joined to the list

of that great company of noble Englishmen from whom we derived our

doctrines of liberty. For although there is some opposition to what are

here called American ideas, what are these American ideas? They are

simply English ideas bearing fruit in America. We bring back American

sheaves, but the seed corn we got in England; and if, on a larger sphere

and under circumstances of unobstruction, we have reared mightier

harvests, every sheaf contains the grain that has made Old England rich

for a hundred years....

“Allusion has been made by one of the gentlemen to words or deeds of

mine that might be supposed to be offensive to Englishmen. I am sure

that in the midst of this mighty struggle at home, which has taxed every

power and energy of our people, I have never stopped to measure and to

think whether my words, spoken in truth and with fidelity to duty, would

be liked in this shape or in that shape, by one or another person,

either in England or America. I have had one simple, honest purpose,

which I have pursued ever since I have been in public life, and that

was, with all the strength that God has given to me, to maintain the

cause of the poor and of the weak in my own country. And if, in the

height and heat of conflict, some words have been over-sharp and some

positions have been taken heedlessly, are you the men to call one to

account? What if some exquisite dancing-master, standing on the edge of

a battle where Richard Cœur de Lion swung his axe, criticised him by

saying that ‘his gestures and postures violated the proprieties of

polite life’? When dandies fight they think how they _look_, but when

_men_ fight they think only of _deeds_. But I am not here either on

trial or on defence. Here I am before you, willing to tell you what I

think about England or any person in it. The same agencies which have

been at work to misrepresent good men in our country to you, have been

at work to misrepresent to us good men here; and when I say to my

friends in America that I have attended such a meeting as this, received

such an address, and beheld such enthusiasm, it will be a renewed pledge

of amity. I have never ceased to feel that war, or even unkind feelings

between two such great nations, would be one of the most unpardonable

and atrocious offences that the world ever beheld, and I have regarded

everything, therefore, which needlessly led to those feelings out of

which war comes, as being in itself wicked. The same blood is in us. We

hold the same substantial doctrines. We have the same mission amongst

the nations of the earth. Never were mother and daughter set forth to do

so queenly a thing in the kingdom of God’s glory as England and America.

Do you ask why we are so sensitive, and why have we hewn England with

our tongue as we have? I will tell you why. There is no man who can

offend you so deeply as the one you love most.... Now (whether we

interpreted it aright or not is not the question), when we thought

England was seeking opportunity to go with the South against us of the

North, it hurt us as no other nation’s conduct could hurt us on the face

of the globe; and if we spoke some words of intemperate heat, we spoke

them in the mortification of disappointed affection. It has been

supposed that I have aforetime urged or threatened war with England.

Never! This I have said—and this I repeat now and here—that the cause of

constitutional government, and of universal liberty as associated with

it, in our country, was so dear, so sacred that, rather than betray it,

we would give the last child we had; that we would not relinquish this

conflict though other States rose and entered into a league with the

South; and that, if it were necessary, we would maintain this great

doctrine of representative government in America against the armed

world—against England and France.... We ask no help and no hindrance. We

do not ask for material aid. We shall be grateful for moral sympathy;

but if you cannot give us moral sympathy we shall still endeavor to do

without it. All that we say is, Let France keep away, let England keep

hands off; if we cannot manage this rebellion by ourselves, then let it

not be managed at all. We do not allow ourselves to doubt the issue of

this conflict. It is only a question of time. For such inestimable

principles as are at stake—of self-government, of representative

government, of any government at all, of free institutions rejected

because they inevitably will bring liberty to slaves unless subverted,

of national honor, and fidelity to solemn national trusts—for all these

war is waged; and if by war these shall be secured, not one drop of

blood will be wasted, not one life squandered. The suffering will have

purchased a glorious future of inconceivable peace and happiness! Nor do

we deem the result doubtful. The population is in the North and West.

The wealth is there. The popular intelligence of the country is there.

THERE _only_ is there an educated _common people_. The right doctrines

of civil government are with the North. It will not be long before one

thing more will be with the North—victory. Men on this side are

impatient at the long delay; but if we can bear it, can’t you? You are

quite at ease; we are not. You are not materially affected in any such

degree as many parts of our own land are. But if the day shall come in

one year, in two years, or in ten years hence, when the old stars and

stripes shall float over every State of America; if the day shall come

when that which was the accursed cause of this dire and atrocious

war—slavery—shall be done away; if the day shall have come when through

all the Gulf States there shall be liberty of speech, as there never has

been; when there shall be liberty of the press, as there never has been;

when men shall have common schools to send their children to, which they

never have had in the South; in short, if the day shall come when the

simple ordinances, the fruition and privileges, of civil liberty, shall

prevail in every part of the United States—it will be worth all the

dreadful blood and tears and woe. You are impatient; and yet God

dwelleth in eternity, and has an infinite leisure to roll forward the

affairs of men, not to suit the hot impatience of those who are but

children of a day and cannot wait or linger long, but according to the

infinite circle on which He measures time and events!...

“The institutions of America were shaped by the North; but the _policy_

of her government, for half a hundred years, by the South. All the

aggression and filibustering, all the threats to England and tauntings

of Europe, all the bluster of war which our government has assumed, have

been under the inspiration and under the almost monarchical sway of the

Southern oligarchy. And now, since Britain has in the past been snubbed

by the Southerners, and threatened by the Southerners, and domineered

over by the Southerners—yet now Great Britain has thrown her arms of

love around the Southerners, and turns from the Northerners. [A voice,

‘No.’] She don’t? I have only to say that she has been caught in very

suspicious circumstances. I speak as I have, perhaps as much as anything

else, to bring out from you this expression; to let _you_ know, what

_we_ know, that all the hostility felt in my country towards Great

Britain has been sudden, and from supposing that you sided with the

South and sought the breaking up of our country; and I want you to say

to me, and through me to my countrymen, that those irritations against

the North, and those likings for the South, that have been expressed in

your papers, are not the feelings of the great mass of your nation.

[Great cheering, the audience rising.] Those cheers already sound in my

ears as the coming acclamations of friendly nations; those waving

handkerchiefs are the white banners that symbolize peace for all

countries. Join with us, then, Britons. From you we learnt the doctrine

of what a man was worth; from you we learnt to detest all oppressions;

from you we learnt that it was the noblest thing a man could do TO DIE

FOR A RIGHT PRINCIPLE. And now, when we are set in that very course, and

are giving our best blood for these most sacred principles, let the

world understand that the common people of Great Britain support us....”

The attempt to “break Beecher down at his first speech” signally failed.

He had beaten the mob. He had made himself heard, and the full reports

of his speech were scattered throughout the entire kingdom. Many crude

misconceptions were corrected, not a few of his opponents were

converted, while many others were forced to admit that they had received

some new ideas respecting the North and the United States government. On

the 13th he spoke in Glasgow, where the blockade-runners were being

built, and where the laboring-classes were in some sense bribed by their

occupation in the shipyards. Here were discussed the effects of slavery

upon the welfare of the working-classes the world over, showing the

condition of work or labor necessitated by any profitable system of

slavery, demonstrating that it brought labor into contempt, affixing to

it the badge of degradation; that a struggle to extend servile labor

across the American continent interests every free workingman on the

globe, and that the Southern cause was the natural enemy of free labor

and the free laborer all the world over.

A strong Southern sentiment existed here, and the same attempt was made

as in Manchester to break the speaker down. The City Hall was crowded to

its utmost limits with friends and opponents. The opposition here was

neither so determined nor prolonged as at Manchester. His success there

had encouraged him while it discouraged them.

His opening sentences established a kindly bond between the hearers, so

devotedly attached to their own country, and the speaker. Their kindly

interest once aroused, it was not difficult to gain and keep their

sympathy throughout the speech. The unruly element was soon put down,

but little disturbance occurring after the first half-hour.

“No one who has been born and reared in Scotland can know the feeling

with which, for the first time, such a one as I have visited this land,

classic in song and in history. I have been reared in a country whose

history is brief. So vast is it that one might travel night and day for

all the week, and yet scarcely touch historic ground. Its history is yet

to be written; it is yet to be acted. But I come to this land, which,

though small, is as full of memories as the heaven is of stars, and

almost as bright. There is not the most insignificant piece of water

that does not make my heart thrill with some story of heroism or some

remembered poem; for not only has Scotland had the good fortune to have

had men that knew how to make heroic history, but she has reared those

bards who have known how to sing her histories.... I come to Scotland,

almost as a pilgrim would go to Jerusalem, to see those scenes whose

stories had stirred my imagination from my earliest youth; and I can pay

no higher compliment than to say that, having seen some part of

Scotland, I am satisfied; and permit me to say that if, when you know

me, you are a thousandth part as satisfied with me as I am with you, we

shall get along very well together. And yet, although I am not of a

yielding mood nor easily daunted, I have some embarrassment in speaking

to you to-night. I know very well that there are not a few things which

prevent my doing good work among you. I differ greatly from many of you.

I respect, although I will not adopt, your opinions. I can only ask as

much from you for myself. I am aware that a personal prejudice has been

diligently excited against me.... It is not a pleasant avenue to a

speech for a man to walk through himself. But since every pains is taken

to misrepresent me, let me once for all deal with that matter. In my own

land I have been the subject of misrepresentation and abuse so long that

when I did not receive it I felt as though something was wanting in the

atmosphere. I have been the object of misrepresentation at home simply

and only because I have been arrayed, ever since I had a voice to speak

and a heart to feel—body and soul I have been arrayed, without regard to

consequences, and to my own reputation or my own ease, against that

which I consider the damning sin of my country and the shame of human

nature—slavery. I thought I had a right, when I came to Great Britain,

to expect a different reception; but I found that the insidious

correspondence of men in America had poisoned the British mind, and that

representations had been made that I had indulged in the most offensive

language and had threatened all sorts of things against Great Britain.

Now, allow me to say that, having examined that interesting literature,

so far as I have seen it published in British newspapers, I here declare

that ninety-nine out of one hundred parts of those things that I am

charged with saying I never said and never thought—they are falsehoods

wholly and in particular. Allow me next to say that I have been

accustomed freely and at all times, at home, to speak what I thought to

be sober truth both of blame and of praise of Great Britain, and if you

do not want to hear a man express his honest sentiments fearlessly, then

I do not want to speak to you. If I never spared my own country, if I

never spared the American Church, nor the government, nor my own party,

nor my personal friends, did you expect I would spare you?... I have

heard the voice of my Master, saying, ‘If any man come unto Me and hate

not father, and mother, and brother, and sister, yea, and his own life

also, he is not worthy of Me.’ When, therefore, the cause of truth and

justice is put in the scale against my own country, I would disown

country for the sake of truth; and when the cause of truth and justice

is put in the scale against Great Britain, I would disown her rather

than betray what I understood to be the truth. _We are bound to

establish liberty_, regulated Christian liberty, _as the law of the

American Continent_. This is our destiny, this is that towards which the

education of the rising generation has been more and more assiduously

directed as the peculiar glory of America—to destroy slavery and root it

out of our land, and to establish in its place a discreet, intelligent,

constitutional, regulated Christian liberty.... I call your attention to

a few propositions, then, in reference to slavery as it exists in the

extreme Southern States. And, first, the system of slavery requires

ignorance in the slave, and not alone intellectual but moral and social

ignorance. Anybody who is a slaveholder will find that there are reasons

which will compel him to keep slaves in ignorance, if he is going to

keep them at all. Not because intelligence is more difficult to govern;

for with an intelligent people government is easier.... The slave would

not be less easily governed if he were educated. If the slaveholder

taught him to read and write, if he made him to know what he ought to

know as one of God’s dear children, the South would not be so much

endangered by insurrection as she is now. There is nothing so terrible

as explosive ignorance. Men without an idea, striking blindly and

passionately, are the men to be feared. Even if the slaves were educated

they would be better slaves. What is the reason, then, that slaves must

be kept in ignorance? The real reason is one of _expense_. In order to

make slave labor profitable you must reduce the cost of the slave; for

the difference between the profit and the loss turns upon the halfpenny

per pound. If the price of slaves goes up and cotton goes down a shade

in price, in ordinary times, the planters lose. The rule is, therefore,

to reduce the cost of the man; and the slave, to be profitable, must be

simply a working creature. What does a man cost that is a slave? Just a

little meal and a little pork, a small measure of the coarsest cloth and

leather—that is all he costs. Because that is all he needs—the lowest

fare and the scantiest clothing. He is a man with two hands, and two

feet, and a belly. That is all there is of a profitable slave. But every

new development within him which religion shall make—the sense of

fatherhood, the wish for a home, the desire to rear his children well,

the wish to honor and comfort his wife, every taste, every sentiment,

every aspiration—will demand some external thing to satisfy it. His

being augments. He demands more time.... Profitable slaveholding

requires only so much intelligence as will work well, and only so much

religion as will make men patient under suffering and abuse. More than

that—more conscience, more ambition, more divine ideas of human nature,

of men’s dignity, of household virtue, of Christian refinement—only

makes the slave too costly in his tastes. Not only does the degradation

of the slave pass over to his work, but it affects all labor, even when

performed by free white men. Throughout the South there is the most

marked public disesteem of honest homely industry.... But even in the

most favored portions of the South manual labor is but barely redeemed

from the taint of being a slave’s business, and nowhere is it honored as

it is in the great and free North. Whereas, in the richer and more

influential portions of the South, labor is so degraded that men are

ashamed of it. It is a badge of dishonor. The poor and shiftless whites,

unable to own slaves, unwilling to work themselves, live in a precarious

and wretched manner but a little removed from barbarism, relying upon

the chase for much of their subsistence, and affording a melancholy

spectacle of the condition into which the reflex influence of slavery

throws the neighboring poor whites. Having turned their own industry

over to slaves, and established the province and duties of a gentleman

to consist of indolence and politics, it is not strange that they hold

the people of the North in great contempt. The North is a vast hive of

universal industry. Idleness there is as disreputable as is labor in the

South. The child’s earliest lesson is faithful industry. The boy works,

the man works. Everywhere through all the North men earn their own

living by their own industry and ingenuity. They scorn to be dependent.

They revolt at the dishonor of living upon the unrequited labor of

others. Honest labor is that highway along which the whole body of the

Northern people travel towards wealth and usefulness. From Northern

looms the South is clothed, from their anvils come all Southern

implements of labor, from their shops all modern ware, from their lasts

Southern shoes. The North is growing rich by its own industry. No

wonder, then, that Southerners have been wont to deride the free workmen

of the North. Governor Hammond only gave expression to the universal

contempt of Southern slaveholders for _work_ and workmen when he called

the Northern laborer the ‘_mudsill of society_,’ and stigmatized the

artisan as the ‘greasy mechanic.’ The North and South alike live by

work: the North by their own work, the South by that of their slaves!

Which is the more honorable? I have a right to demand of the workmen of

Glasgow that they should refuse their sympathy to the South, and should

give their hearty sympathy to those who are, like themselves, seeking to

make work honorable and to give to the workman his true place in

society. Disguise it as they will, distract your attention from it as

they may, it cannot be concealed that the American question is the

_workingman’s question_ all over the world! The slavemaster’s doctrine

is _that capital should own labor_—that the employers should own the

employed. This is Southern doctrine and Southern practice. Northern

doctrine and Northern practice is that the laborer should be free,

intelligent, clothed with full citizen’s rights, with a share of the

political duties and honors. The North has from the beginning crowned

labor with honor. Nowhere else on earth is it so honorable.”

On the following evening, October 14, he spoke in Edinburgh. The crowd,

that packed the hall and completely blocked the entrances, was so vast

that it very nearly deprived the meeting of both chairman and speaker.

With great difficulty they managed to struggle through and finally

reached the platform. Edinburgh being a centre of refinement and

learning, Mr. Beecher aimed to give some idea of the philosophy of

slavery, showing, how, out of separate colonies and States intensely

jealous of their individual sovereignty, there grew up and was finally

established a nation; and how, in that nation of united States, the

distinct and antagonistic systems were developed and strove for the

guidance of the national policy, which struggle at length passed and the

North gained the control. Thereupon the South abandoned the Union,

simply and solely because the government was in future to be

administered by men who would give their whole influence to freedom.

Comparatively speaking, but little opposition was encountered at this

meeting. At the outset some disturbance was attempted, but the temper of

the audience was opposed to the unruly ones and they were soon quieted.

The speech produced a marked impression, the resolution and vote of

thanks being carried with “loud and prolonged applause.” We give a few

extracts from it:

“During the last fifteen years I believe you cannot find a voice,

printed or uttered, in the cotton States of the South, which deplored

slavery. All believed in and praised it, and found authority for it in

God’s Word. Politicians admired it, merchants appreciated it, the whole

South sang pæans to the newfound truth that man was born to be owned by

man. This change of doctrine made it certain that the South would be

annoyed and irritated by a Constitution which, with all its faults,

still carried the God-given principle of human rights, which were not to

be taken by man except in punishment for crime. That Constitution, and

the policy which went with it at first, began to gnaw at, and irritate,

and fret the South when they had adopted slavery as a doctrine. How

could they live in peace under a Constitution that all the time declared

the manhood of men and the dignity of freedom? It became necessary that

they should do one of two things, either give up slavery or appropriate

the government to themselves, and in some way or other drain out of the

Constitution this venom of liberty and infuse a policy more in harmony

with Southern ideas. They took the latter course. They contrived to

possess themselves of the government; and for the last fifty years the

policy of the country has been Southern. Was a tariff wanted? It was

made a Southern tariff. Was a tariff oppressive? The Southerners

overthrew it. Was a tariff wanted again? The Southern policy declared it

to be necessary, and it was passed. Was more territory wanted? The South

must have its way. Was any man to obtain a place? If the South opposed

it he had no chance whatever. For fifty years most of the men who became

judges, who sat in the presidential chair and in the courts, had to base

their opinions on slavery or on Southern views. All the filibustering,

all the intimidations of foreign powers, all the so-called snubbing of

European powers, happened during the period in which the policy of the

country was controlled by the South. May I be permitted to look on it as

a mark of victorious Christianity that England now loves her worst

enemy, and is sitting with arms of sympathy round her neck? The man who

was an Abolitionist when I was twenty-one years of age might bid

farewell to any hopes of political advancement; and the merchant who

held these opinions was soon robbed of customers. As far as I remember,

there was nothing in the world that so ruined a man—not crime itself was

so fatal to a man’s standing in the country—as to be known to hold

abolition sentiments. The churches sought to keep the question of

slavery out; so did the schools and colleges; so did synods and

conventions. But still the cause of abolition progressed; and still, as

is always the case with everything that is right, though the men who

held those sentiments were scoffed at, though such men as Garrison were

dragged through the streets with halters round their necks, yet the more

it was spoken of and canvassed the more the cause prospered, because it

was true. The insanity at last abated; for the command came from on High

saying to the evil spirit concerning the North: ‘I command thee to come

out of her.’ Then the nation wallowed on the ground and foamed at the

mouth; but the unclean spirit passed out, and she became clean. The more

some people wanted to keep down this subject and keep out the air, the

more God forced the subject on their minds. When Missouri knocked at the

door there were those who opposed its admission as a slave State, but by

Southern management and intimidation Henry Clay persuaded the North to a

compromise. Now, when there is no difference in principle, but only

conflicting interests, a compromise is honorable and right; but when

antagonistic principles are in question I believe compromises to be

bargains with the devil, who is never cheated.... We do not want to

quarrel; we do not want animosity between Great Britain and America. No

man has spoken of Great Britain words of praise and blame with more

honest heart than I have. That man is not your friend who dares not

speak of your faults to your face. The man that is your friend, tells

you when he thinks you are wrong; and whether I am right or wrong, I

assert that in giving moral sympathy largely to the South, and, above

all, in allowing the infamous traffic of your ports with the rebels,

thus strengthening the hands of the slaveholders—and that without public

rebuke—you have done wrong. I have said this because, dear as your

country is to us, precious as were the legacies given to us of learning

and religion, and proud as we have been for years past to think of our

ancestry and common relationship to you, yet so much dearer to us than

kindred is the cause of God that, if Great Britain sets herself against

us, we shall not hesitate one moment on her account, but shall fulfil

our mission! ... I have a closing word to speak. It is our duty in

America, by every means in our power, to avoid all cause of irritation

with every foreign nation, and with the English nation most especially.

On your side it is your duty to avoid all irritating interference, and

all speech that tends to irritate. Brothers should be brothers all the

world over, and you are of our blood, and we are of your lineage. May

that day be far distant when Great Britain and America shall turn their

backs on each other and seek an alliance with other nations! The day is

coming when the foundations of the earth will be lifted out of their

places; and there are two nations that ought to be found shoulder to

shoulder and hand in hand for the sake of Christianity and universal

liberty, and these nations are Great Britain and America.”

The effect of these three speeches was being very widely felt. It looked

at first as though the backbone of opposition had been broken.

This pleasant impression was soon dispelled. The mob spirit was not

dead; it was only resting and gaining breath for a final and more

desperate effort.

The next speech was to be in Liverpool on the 16th, at the great

Philharmonic Hall.

Liverpool was the headquarters of the Southern sympathizers. A great

many Southern men were there.

The feeling was very strong that if Mr. Beecher should succeed there he

would carry the day. A determined and desperate effort was to be made,

at any cost, to prevent the delivery of the speech.

The streets were placarded with abusive and scurrilous placards, often

posted over the notices of the meeting, couched in the most inflammatory

language, urging that “Englishmen see that he gets the welcome he

deserves.” On the morning of the 16th the leading papers came out with

violent editorials against Mr. Beecher, full of falsehoods and

misquotations from his speeches. Every art was resorted to to work the

passion of the mob up to the point of violence.

We quote a brief extract from the Liverpool _Courier_ of that date:

“The visit of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher to Liverpool to-night is not likely

to do the Federal cause much service in this neighborhood. His views on

slavery are too violent and unreasonable to meet with much favor from

thoughtful people; and even those who earnestly desire the freedom of

the Southern slaves would not consent to adopt the extreme, sanguinary

principles enunciated by Mr. Beecher.... But, apart from his abolition

doctrines, Mr. Beecher, unless he has been greatly misrepresented, has

displayed the most intense hatred of Great Britain, and has vilified the

British people in a disgraceful manner. He was most violent in his

denunciations of England during the never-to-be-forgotten _Trent_

affair, and if his views had been adopted the two great Anglo-Saxon

peoples would have been plunged into war. When he said, ‘The best blood

of England must flow for the outrage England had perpetrated upon

America,’ he used language unbecoming a man, still more a professing

preacher of the Gospel. Yet the person who could thus insult the British

nation has now the audacity to come amongst us to lecture us on American

politics. Such conduct evidences unbounded impudence and little

discretion, and can only be explained by the assumption that he is the

accredited emissary of the Federal government.”

It was openly declared that if he should dare to address the meeting he

would never leave the hall alive—a threat believed to have been

sincerely made, with the fullest intention of fulfilment. The friends of

Mr. Beecher were greatly alarmed, many advising him not to attend the

meeting.

He was fully conscious of the risk that he ran, and knew that to be

present was to carry his life in his hand. During the whole day he was

under the shadow of a black cloud. He was plunged into the depths of

despondency. _He was going to the meeting_, but would he leave it alive?

Could he make himself heard? Must he fail now that he was on the very

verge of success? These and similarly anxious thoughts tormented him

throughout the day. No light illumined the darkness of his soul until,

having left the hotel, he was on his way to the hall; then, he says,

suddenly a great light burst in upon him, and, night though it was, it

seemed as if the whole heavens blazed with light like the noonday. Fears

and anxious doubts disappeared like mists before the morning sun. A

great peace settled down upon him, and as he entered the hall he was

filled with the certainty of succeeding.

It was well known that the mob was armed; it was not so well known that

a small but determined band of young men, occupying a commanding

position to the right of the platform, were also armed, determined, if

any dangerous outbreak occurred, to protect Mr. Beecher at all hazards.

Mr. Beecher himself was in ignorance of the fact until some days later.

Happily nothing more serious than noise was developed, the cool and

determined appearance of the speaker and the earnest demonstration by

the majority present seeming to discourage a resort to violence.

The speech was devoted to a discussion of the relation of slavery to

commerce, showing that, in the long run, it was as hostile both to

commerce and manufactures the world over as it was to free interests in

human society; that a slave nation must be a poor customer, buying the

poorest and fewest goods, and the least profitable to the producers;

that it was the interest of every manufacturing country to promote

freedom, intelligence, and wealth amongst all nations; that the attempt

to cover the fairest portion of the globe with a slave population that

buys nothing, and a degraded white population that buys next to nothing,

should array against it every political economist and every thoughtful

and far-seeing manufacturer, as tending to strike at the vital wants of

commerce, which was not cotton but rich customers.

It would be impossible for tongue or pen adequately to describe the

scenes at the meeting. The great hall was packed to the crushing point.

The mob was out in force, with lungs in good working order and a

disposition to use them to the best advantage.

Manchester and Glasgow were love-feasts in comparison.

We give an attempt at description from one of the Liverpool papers:

“For several days before the meeting it was understood that efforts

would be made to create a disturbance.

“For some moments before the time fixed for the commencement of the

proceedings, cat-calls, groans, cheers, hisses, etc., were freely

indulged in, and it was evident that a strong force of the pro-Southern

(or at least of the anti-Beecher) party had congregated in front of the

gallery and at the lower end of the body of the hall. The _début_ of the

Rev. Mr. Beecher was, judging from the frequently manifested impatience

of the audience, awaited with intense interest. Several occupants of

seats in the upper gallery loudly insisted upon somebody bringing him

out; and when the reverend gentleman did step on the platform, the

enthusiasm of his friends and the indignation of his opponents were

almost indescribable. Cheer rolled after cheer with deafening effect,

and, in the brief pauses between each hurrah, hisses fell upon the ear

with a sound like that of a falling torrent. The uproar was maintained

so long that the chairman, Mr. Robertson, determined not to await the

abatement of the storm, but to try to subdue it by a few judicious

words. He was only partly successful until he appealed to the audience

as Englishmen to stand up for fair play and not to withhold justice from

a stranger.

“Mr. Beecher’s introduction surprised though it did not disconcert that

gentleman. He was evidently prepared for some opposition; but he could

hardly have expected that his appearance at the front of the platform,

would rouse one portion of the audience to a high state of enthusiasm,

and cause the other portion to approach almost a state of frenzy. For

some time it was doubtful whether the celebrated Abolitionist would be

allowed to speak; but those who sat near the reverend gentleman, and

observed his firmly-compressed lips and imperturbable demeanor, saw at

once that it would require something more than noise and spasmodic

hisses to cause Mr. Beecher to lose heart. He stood calmly at the edge

of the platform, a representation of ‘patience smiling at grief,’ and a

simile of sincerity, battling tacitly but successfully with opposition.

One of the two must sooner or later give way, and no one who scrutinized

Mr. Beecher’s features could imagine that he would be the first to

become tired. At last there was a lull; clergymen and ladies ceased to

wave their umbrellas and handkerchiefs, the torrent of hisses became

less perceptible, and the chairman made another appeal to the meeting

for fair play to Mr. Beecher. His assurance that an opportunity would be

offered, after Mr. Beecher had concluded his address, to persons who

wished to ask the reverend gentleman questions, was not very favorably

received, and a series of disturbances ensued. Cries of ‘Turn him out!’

were heard in various parts of the hall, and efforts were made to eject

some members of the unruly party. When the scuffling had partly

subsided, the chairman expressed his determination to preserve order by

calling in, if necessary, the aid of the police. This announcement

produced something like order, and Mr. Beecher took up the advantage and

commenced his address. The interruptions were incessant, while a scene

prevailed the equal of which has seldom been witnessed in Liverpool.

‘Three cheers for Jeff. Davis!’ was a proposal which once more met with

a hearty response from a portion of the audience; and as the admirers of

the Confederate President were loath to cease their expressions of

approval, Mr. Beecher composedly sat down on the low parapet of the

platform and awaited a calm, at the same time apologizing to the

reporters for causing them to be so long detained. At one time, about a

score of persons were speaking in various parts of the hall, and Mr.

Beecher, as a last resource, said that if the meeting would not hear him

he would address the reporters. From the gallery were suspended placards

on which the words, ‘Who is Henry Ward Beecher?’ were conspicuous; and,

taken all in all, the scene was one of complete disorder. Mr. Beecher

repeatedly declared that it was not new to him; but he admitted that his

struggle for an hour and a half against the prevailing disorder had

caused his voice to fail. So far, indeed, had his voice suffered that he

was compelled, in concluding, to declare that he could not answer any

questions unless perfect order prevailed. He did reply, in comparative

peace, to one or two written interrogatories; but, the disturbance being

renewed, Mr. Beecher sat down.”

A few quotations from this speech will not only give an idea of the line

of Mr. Beecher’s argument, but, by retaining the interruptions as

indicated by the reports in the next day’s papers, will also to some

extent show the conditions under which the speech was delivered.

“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.