Chapter XX…

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]

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Footnote 7:

These speeches have been reprinted in full in “Patriotic Addresses,” by Messrs. Ford, Howard & Hulburt, of New York.

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“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.

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Chapter XXI

Close of the War—Distrust of the Administration—Kindlier Feelings after Mr. Beecher’s Return from England—Growing Confidence—Intimacy with Secretary Stanton—Fort Sumter—Lee’s Surrender—Lincoln’s Death.

On his return home from England, Mr. Beecher found that there was a marked change in the feelings of the Administration towards him. It was the popular verdict, in which Washington concurred, that the series of speeches just delivered, in conjunction with the successes of our armies in the field, had switched the English government off from the track leading to intervention and probably war, and had started it in the direction of friendliness and peace. Before that time he had succeeded in creating in the minds of the President and his cabinet a feeling which, if not hostile, was at least not friendly. With many things that had occurred or failed to occur during 1861-2 and early in 1863 he had felt great impatience. He had had no sympathy with the feeling, that prevailed so generally during the first few months of the war, that it would be an affair of but a few months, that 75,000 men would be more than enough to end the rebellion. He felt that the proper policy was for the government to crush the rebellion by the power of an enormous army, and that it was but poor economy to send forward troops by driblets. Nor did he at all believe in the distinction that existed between the United States regulars and the State troops. He thought that they ought to be all United States troops. What he felt he was not slow to say. On June 10, 1861, he wrote to the President, urging the government to accept a regiment raised by Colonel Stockton:

“Ought not such a man as the one whom I send to you, Colonel T. B. W. Stockton, of Michigan, a West Point graduate, a colonel in the Mexican war, to have a chance in this great war, with a thousand men at his back?

“Do we not need men that have seen fire?

“I am exceedingly desirous, anxious even, that a large demonstration of power should be made, as a matter of economy, of humanity, and of expedition.

“Are we not in danger of being injured by a Northern misconstruction of State rights, which shall prevent government from taking troops where it pleases, without being obliged to come to the people through the machinery of State governments?

”It is the people’s war. The people must be allowed to have a fair chance for the exertion of their will.”

And later, when political expediency was permitted to play so prominent a part in the selection and action of our generals, his indignation was intense and outspoken. While he felt great admiration for President Lincoln and great confidence in him, still he felt that he was making serious mistakes. As we have seen, Mr. Beecher was then the editor-in-chief of the New York Independent, and through its editorials he sought to rouse both the President and public sentiment. Speaking of this time, he says:

“In 1862 the great delay, the want of any success, the masterly inactivity of our leading generals, roused my indignation, and I wrote a series of editorials addressed to the President” [to which we have referred and from which we have largely quoted in a previous chapter], “and as near as I can recollect they were in the nature of a mowing-machine—they cut at every revolution—and I was told one day that the President had received them and read them through with very serious countenance, and that his only criticism was: ‘Is thy servant a dog?’ They bore down on him very hard.”

Not unnaturally, neither the President nor his cabinet felt especially pleased at this. They looked upon it as a hostile attack, and did not regard him with any over-friendly feeling.

But in November, 1863, we find all this changed. The Administration now could see in past criticism, not personal hostility, but an anxious desire, through love of country, to prevent mistakes and secure the best course of action. A far more kindly and confidential relation was established, which continued through that Administration. When, in 1864, there was so much talk about compromise, Mr. Beecher went direct to the President and had a confidential talk with him, which he describes in a brief sketch (of Lincoln):

“There was some talk early in 1864 of a sort of compromise with the South. Blair had told the President that he was satisfied, if he could be put in communication with some of the leading men of the South in some way or other, that some benefit would accrue. Lincoln had sent a delegation to meet Alexander Stephens, and that was all the North knew. We were all very much excited over that. The war lasted so long that I was afraid Lincoln would be so anxious for peace, and I was afraid he would accept something that would be of advantage to the South, so I went to Washington and called upon him. We were alone in his receiving-room. His hair was ‘every way for Sunday.’ It looked as though it was an abandoned stubble-field. He had on slippers, and his vest was what was called ‘going free.’ He looked wearied, and, when he sat down in a chair, looked as though every limb wanted to drop off his body. And I said to him: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I come to you to know whether the public interest will permit you to explain to me what this Southern commission means?’ Well, he listened very patiently, and looked up to the ceiling for a few moments, and said: ‘Well, I am almost of a mind to show you all the documents.’

“‘Well, Mr. Lincoln, I should like to see them if it is proper.’ He went to his little secretary, and came out and handed me a little card as long as my finger and an inch wide, and on that was written—

“‘You will pass the bearer through the lines’ (or something to that effect).

‘A. LINCOLN.’

“‘There,’ he said, ‘is all there is of it. Now, Blair thinks something can be done, but I don’t, but I have no objection to have him try his hand. He has no authority whatever, but to go and see what he can do.’

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘you have lifted a great burden off my mind.’”

During the last year of the President’s life they became very intimate, and the respect and admiration which Mr. Beecher shared, in common with the general feeling of the North, deepened into a strong personal love. In one of his Friday night prayer-meetings, shortly after Mr. Lincoln’s death, he refers to their intimacy:

“I am sure no one more than I, can feel the personal affliction, outside of those that were immediately associated with President Lincoln. I need not say to you how my public relations have brought me, not only to the most constant study of his course and of his character, but into some personal relations with him that have given me more knowledge of him than otherwise I should have had. I was reading to-night, before I came here, the last letter that I received from him. It had reference to an interview which I had had with him on a particular subject. It is a precious letter to me. During the time that I was with him (it was between eleven and twelve o’clock at night, in Washington) his great kindness, his great simplicity, and his great frankness opened him to me, and I saw him more fully than ever before, as very wise, as shrewd as well as wise, as far-reaching and sagacious as well as shrewd, and, above all, as faithful to the great interests that were committed to him. That interview has come up to me over and over and over again. It seemed as though it was but yesterday. And when the tidings that he was gone came to me, I know not how I shall describe the sense that I had of a strange personal loss.”

During this period Mr. Beecher formed the acquaintance of Stanton, which speedily ripened into a very strong friendship, largely through an impulsive act of sympathy by Mr. Beecher:

“I came up Wall Street one day and met a friend, who said: ‘I have just come back from Washington. Stanton is breaking down; he won’t hold out much longer.’

“Well, it just struck me all into a heap. I walked into an office in Wall Street and said, ‘Will you allow me pen and ink?’ and wrote to him just what I had heard—that he was sick and broken down and desponding. I wrote that he need not despond, that the country was saved, and, if he did not do another thing, he had done enough. I sent the letter, and in the course of a few days I got back a letter, and if it had been a woman writing in answer to a proposal it could not have been more tender. And when I went to Washington he treated me with great tenderness, as if I had been his son.”

From this letter of Secretary Stanton, which is before us, we quote:

“How deeply your kind note has affected me is beyond my power to tell.... The approbation, confidence, and sympathy of any man was never more highly prized than yours is by me. Your friendly words are a cordial that strengthens me, and your kind sympathy will serve to dispel the gloom and despondency that, as you rightly judged, does sometimes, in moments of physical weariness, gather upon my brain and press heavily upon my heart. Let me tell you that often and often, in dark hours, you have come before me, and I have longed to hear your voice, feeling that above all other men you could cheer, strengthen, guide, and uphold me in this great battle, where, by God’s Providence, it has fallen upon me to hold a post and perform a duty beyond my own strength. But, being a stranger, I had no right to claim your confidence or ask for help, and so have been forced to struggle on patiently as I might from day to day, supported only by fervent faith in our sacred cause, and the consciousness that prayers were being offered up by good people for aid. Now, my dear sir, your voice has reached me, and your hand is stretched forth as to a friend, and henceforth I shall look to you and lean upon you with a sure and abiding trust. Already my heart feels renewed strength and is inspired with fresh hope. There are some points involved in, or developed by, this present contest, on which I wish to commune with you before long.”

Early in 1865, and shortly after the surrender of Charleston, in reply to a letter received from Mr. Beecher making some suggestions, the Secretary wrote:

“It will not be in my power to go to Charleston just now, but I would be glad to send you, and as many school-teachers as will go.... Your idea of raising the flag over a colored school and making our banner the banner of civilization is indeed a noble one, and heartily my feelings respond to the suggestion. Soon after the 4th of March I may be able to go to South Carolina and do what may be done in that direction.... We received this morning the news of the capture of Wilmington yesterday. Surely the end cannot be afar off. The battle of physical force is nearly won, and now we must fight for civilization, including therein legal protection to the rights of all, and universal education. What of strength, heart, and hope is left to me I am willing to spend with you in that cause. Please let me know if you will go to Charleston without waiting for me. The sooner you go the better.”

Shortly after this it was decided to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter (April 14) by an imposing military and naval demonstration, and by raising again the old flag over its parapet, and the project of sending to Charleston a delegation headed by Mr. Beecher was abandoned.

As soon as the general plan of the Fort Sumter celebration had been decided upon, the President invited Mr. Beecher to be present and deliver the address.

On March 27, 1865, the following general order was issued:

“GENERAL ORDERS, } WAR DEPARTMENT, No. 50. } ADJUTANT-GENERAL’S OFFICE, } WASHINGTON, March 27, 1865.

“ORDERED—

”First. That at the hour of noon, on the 14th day of April, 1865, Brevet Major-General Anderson will raise and plant upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, the same United States flag which floated over the battlements of that fort during the rebel assault, and which was lowered and saluted by him and the small force of his command when the works were evacuated on the 14th day of April, 1861.

“Second. That the flag, when raised, be saluted by one hundred guns from Fort Sumter, and by a national salute from every fort and rebel battery that fired upon Fort Sumter.

”Third. That suitable ceremonies be had upon the occasion, under the direction of Major-General William T. Sherman, whose military operations compelled the rebels to evacuate Charleston, or, in his absence, under the charge of Major-General Q. A. Gillmore, commanding the Department. Among the ceremonies will be the delivery of a public address by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher.

“Fourth. That the naval forces at Charleston, and their commander on that station, be invited to participate in the ceremonies of the occasion.

“By order of the President of the United States.

”EDWIN M. STANTON, “Secretary of War.”

The steamer Arago was sent by the government to New York to transport the invited guests to Charleston. As soon as the formal invitations to the guests of the government had been issued and accepted, Secretary Stanton telegraphed Mr. Beecher:

“A list of the persons who have accepted invitations on the Arago has been forwarded to General Van Vliet. I do not exactly understand the extent of the accommodations on the Arago, but think there may perhaps be room for a few more; if you will see him and find that more can be accommodated, you are authorized to fill up the number with such persons as you may wish to accompany you. On presentation of this telegram he will give them free transportation and subsistence as if this were a formal order....

“EDWIN M. STANTON, “Secretary of War.”

During this spring the Secretary was in constant telegraphic communication with Mr. Beecher, keeping him informed of each victory or successful move of our army as it occurred.

This led to a thrilling incident in Plymouth Church. During the month of March of this year it became very plain that the war was surely drawing to a close. Lee, hemmed in by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, obviously could not hold out very much longer.

The whole country watched and waited with almost breathless interest as slowly but surely the end drew on, the intensity of feeling growing stronger as the end seemed nearer. It was in this condition of the public mind, and on Sunday, April 2, that, just after Mr. Beecher had finished his sermon and had given out a hymn, a telegram was handed up to him on the platform.

Catching the feeling in the air that something of importance had happened, every eye was turned to the platform and a silence like death fell upon the three thousand gathered there. Eagerly the telegram was opened, and as the flash of joy lit up Mr. Beecher’s face a thrill ran through the congregation, instantly hushed as he said:

“The congregation will turn to ‘America’ while I read the following telegram:

“‘WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, “‘April 2, 1865.

“‘TO REV. H. W. BEECHER, Brooklyn:

“‘A despatch just received from General Grant’s adjutant-general at City Point announces the triumphant success of our armies after three days of hard fighting, during which the forces on both sides exhibited unsurpassed valor:

“‘CITY POINT, VA., April 2, 1865, “‘5.30 A.M.

“‘A despatch from General Grant states that General Sheridan, commanding cavalry and infantry, has carried everything before him. He captured three brigades of infantry, a wagon-train, and several batteries of artillery. The prisoners captured will amount to several thousand.

“‘(Signed) T. S. BOWERS, A. A. G.

“‘EDWIN M. STANTON, “‘Secretary of War.’”

As he ceased speaking the great throng rose and, as one man, with streaming eyes joined in the triumphant anthem,

“My country, ’tis of thee!”

The organist drew the trumpet stops, and turned the full power of the great organ into the hymn, but it was drowned by the voices raised in solemn thanksgiving. Not a voice was silent, not an eye was dry. As the last notes of the hymn died out many a strong man dropped into his seat and sobbed with thankfulness. The beginning of the end had come.

* * * * *

On the 8th of April the Arago sailed from New York for Charleston. The day after she sailed came the surrender of Lee’s army.

Of course no word of the news was received aboard the Arago until she arrived off Charleston Harbor.

“It was when I was tossing upon the sea,” said Mr. Beecher, “off the harbor of Charleston, that we were spoken, and the tidings were communicated to us from another ship, ‘Lee has surrendered!’ And the wild outcry, the strange caprices and exultations of that moment, they never will forget who were present. We were far off from the scene of war; we saw no signs nor tokens; it was as if the heaven had imparted it to us; but oh! what gladness, what ecstasy there was in that news no man can know but those who have suffered as we had suffered.”

Of his speech at the raising of the flag we can only quote a few brief extracts:

“On this solemn and joyful day we again lift to the breeze our fathers’ flag, now again the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God will crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children with all the blessings of civilization, liberty, and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace! Happily no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun or the stars endure may it wave over a nation neither enslaved, nor enslaving. Once, and but once, has treason dishonored it. In that insane hour, when the guiltiest and bloodiest rebellion of time hurled its fires upon this fort, you, sir [turning to General Anderson], and a small heroic band, stood within these now crumbled walls, and did gallant and just battle for the honor and defence of the nation’s banner....

“After a vain resistance, with trembling hand and sad heart you withdrew the banner from its height, closed its wings, and bore it far away to sleep amid the tumults of rebellion and the thunder of battle....

“To-day you are returned again. The heavens over you are the same; the same shores are here; morning and evening come as they did. All else how changed! What grim batteries crowd the burdened shores! What scenes have filled this air and disturbed these waters! These shattered heaps of shapeless stone are all that is left of Fort Sumter. Desolation broods in yonder sad city; solemn retribution hath avenged our dishonored banner. You, who departed hence four years ago, leaving the air sultry with fanaticism, have come back with honor. The surging crowds that rolled up their frenzied shouts, as the flag came down, are dead, or scattered, or silent, and their habitations are desolate. Ruin sits in the cradle of treason. Rebellion has perished. But there flies the same flag that was insulted. With starry eyes it looks all over this bay for that banner that supplanted it, and sees it not. You that then, for the day, were humbled, are here again, to triumph once and for ever. In the storm of that assault this glorious ensign was often struck; but, memorable fact, not one of its stars was torn out by shot or shell. It was a prophecy. It said, ‘Not one State shall be struck from this nation by treason.’ The fulfilment is at hand. Lifted to the air to-day, it proclaims that, after four years of war, ‘not a State is blotted out!’...

“Wherefore have we come hither, pilgrims from distant places? Are we come to exult that Northern hands are stronger than Southern? No; but to rejoice that the hands of those who defend a just and beneficent government are mightier than the hands that assaulted it! Do we exult over fallen cities? We exult that a nation has not fallen. We sorrow with the sorrowful. We sympathize with the desolate. We look upon this shattered fort and yonder dilapidated city, with sad eyes, grieved that men should have committed such treason, and glad that God hath set such a mark upon treason that all ages shall dread and abhor it.

“We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a sentiment victorious; not for temper, but for conscience; not, as we devoutly believe, that our will is done, but that God’s will hath been done! We should be unworthy of that liberty entrusted to our care if, on such a day as this, we sullied our hearts by feelings of aimless vengeance; and equally unworthy if we did not devoutly thank Him who hath said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,’ that He hath set a mark upon arrogant Rebellion, ineffaceable while time lasts!...

“That long night is ended! And for this returning day we have come from afar, to rejoice and give thanks. No more war. No more accursed secession! No more slavery, that spawned them both!

“Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag! It says, ‘Government hath returned hither.’ It proclaims, in the name of vindicated government, peace and protection to loyalty, humiliation and pains to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The nation, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to authority, this flag commands, not supplicates.

“There may be pardon, but no concession. There may be amnesty and oblivion, but no honeyed compromises. The nation to-day has peace for the peaceful, and war for the turbulent. The only condition of submission, is, to submit! There is the Constitution, there are the laws, there is the government. They rise up like mountains of strength that shall not be moved. They are the conditions of peace.

”One nation, under one government, without slavery, has been ordained and shall stand. There can be peace on no other basis. On this basis reconstruction is easy, and needs neither architect nor engineer. Without this basis no engineer or architect shall ever reconstruct these rebellious States....

“I charge the whole guilt of this war upon the ambitious, educated, plotting political leaders of the South. They have shed this ocean of blood. They have desolated the South. They have poured poverty through all her towns and cities. They have bewildered the imagination of the people with phantasms, and led them to believe that they were fighting for their homes and liberty, whose homes were unthreatened, and whose liberty was in no jeopardy....

”But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted and driven into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity remain. The moment their willing hand drops the musket and they return to their allegiance, then stretch out your own honest right hand to greet them. Recall to them the old days of kindness. Our hearts wait for their redemption. All the resources of a renovated nation shall be applied to rebuild their prosperity and smooth down the furrows of war.”

After the ceremonies of the 14th Mr. Beecher and his party spent two days in visiting the various historic points in the city and harbor of Charleston, then went to Hilton Head, where the steamer Sua Nada was placed at his disposal by the government.

From Hilton Head Mr. Beecher and his party went on an excursion visit to Beaufort. The day, which opened so bright and beautiful, was to close in the gloom which overshadowed the nation. The near points of interest about Beaufort had all been seen, and the party, full of the joyous brightness of the day, were sauntering back to the boat which was to take them to Hilton Head, when a telegram was handed to Senator Wilson that drove the smile from every lip. Lincoln had fallen, struck down by an assassin! Dazed and bewildered, for a few moments all stood silent; then Mr. Beecher exclaimed, “It’s time all good men were at home,” and in mournful silence they hastened back to Hilton Head. The Sua Nada was ordered to get under weigh at once. In sadness and gloom the party, that but a few days before had left New York with hearts filled with joy and thankfulness, now hastened back through dreary rain-storms—nature’s sympathetic mourning.

We can best describe that awful sorrow by quoting from Mr. Beecher’s sermon preached in memory of the martyr:

“Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was stanched, and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth—these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days, all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe.

“In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, dishevelling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy: it was the uttermost of sorrow—noon and midnight, without a space between.

“The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, ‘Am I awake, or do I dream?’ There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to some one in chief: this belonged to all. It was each and every man’s. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its first-born were gone. Men were bereaved, and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions and write his name above their lintels; but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish.”

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Chapter XXII

Reconstruction—Mr. Beecher favors speedy Readmission—Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Convention at Cleveland—The “Cleveland Letters” cause great Excitement.

With President Lincoln’s death the Rebellion died. A few fitful flames and a few smouldering coals here and there were all that was left of the great conflagration, but the Rebellion was broken and dead. In its death-struggles it struck one wicked, random blow, and left the victors mourning in the very hour of victory—never was so great a victory so sad and joyless.

But the nation soon roused itself and turned to the solution of those new problems which confronted it. Through four harsh and bitter years, years of suffering, this peace-loving nation had been trained to war. Energetic fighting men had been pushed forward, by the necessities of the times, to the front, and put in command of national affairs. A vast army, trained for fighting, was at hand. When suddenly the war was at an end, and he who with patient wisdom had stood at the helm, and guided the nation through such troubled seas, was stricken down. A new and untried man was, by virtue of his office, called to the head of the government. Armies were to be disbanded. The credit of the nation was to be sustained, and steps taken to meet the vast debt rolled up by the war. The problem was changed: instead of war was peace, disarmament, and reconstruction. Most serious of all was this question of reconstruction—what to do with the conquered States and conquered people. Having rebelled and led armies against the national government, the leaders had been guilty of high treason. What should be done to them? Should they be punished, and, if so, how? What should be done with the States? It had been determined that they should not depart from the Union. They were not in, and how should they be received back?

They had submitted, offered anew their loyalty to the government of the Nation, and asked to be taken back again. The passions of a four-years strife, and such a strife, were slow to subside; boiling blood cools but slowly. At first a strong feeling of resentment set in, and it was earnestly proposed to hang out of hand the leading rebels. Then they proposed to hang Jefferson Davis as a symbol of defeated treason, and so vicariously punish the South. In time even that feeling passed away. But on the question of reconstruction and readmission the feelings of the Republican party leaders ran high.

President Johnson, himself a loyal Southerner, was strongly in favor of readmitting the Southern States to a participation in the government (upon such terms as might be just), and receiving Senators and Congressmen from the readmitted States. To this plan Congress, which was overwhelmingly Republican, was bitterly opposed, and the result was the executive and legislative branches of the government divided one over against the other, waging a fierce and disgraceful fight—disgraceful alike to each. As in all other matters that affected the welfare of the government, Mr. Beecher was deeply interested in this, and lost no opportunity to express his views from the pulpit and the platform.

He was strongly opposed to any vindictive course, and when it was proposed to make an example of Jeff Davis he declared:

“The war is itself the most terrific warning that could be set up, and to attempt, by erecting against this lurid background the petty figure of a gallows with a man dangling at it, to heighten the effect, would be like lighting tapers when God’s lightnings are flashing across the heavens to add to the grandeur of the storm.”

On the 20th of February, 1866, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in answer to Wendell Phillips’s lecture entitled “The South Victorious,” given a short time previous, Mr. Beecher delivered a speech which he called “The North Victorious.” In this he took a pronounced stand on the question of reconstruction:

“Each day will develop the prosperity of the South moving upon the new basis, and each day will make it plainer and plainer to them that nationality is necessary for their prosperity. Old aspirations must die. The war passion must cease. It is a new South we are talking about. It has a new political economy. It has a new future. God has said by the side of the sepulchre, ‘South, come forth!’ and the South has come, though bound hand and foot. Methinks I hear the Saviour say, ‘Loose her and let her go.’

“On the other hand, look for one moment at the effects of a prolonged exclusion of the Southern States. It is weaning the citizens of those States more and more from the national government. For five years they have not thought of Washington except to curse her. They have not felt the need of it. They have not felt any blood running through them that came from the national heart. It is proposed to make them live five years more out of the Union. Is that the way to make them love it? Is that the way to make them feel their need of the government?

“The utmost evil in admitting them that can result will be that we shall be obliged to take a longer time to do some things which now we mean to do by legislation. Many of the things which we seek to accomplish by laws we shall be obliged to accomplish by moral means. I have seen this anxiety to do everything by legislation, legislation, legislation, waiting for it, and I have seen the power of great moral causes. Although there is a wisdom in legislation which I would be far from invalidating, the forms of wholesome legislation, still I would balance that by the other consideration that it may take too long a time, and we may rely too much upon legislation. I rely upon reason and conscience. Churches are my congresses, and school-houses are my legislators. Kindness, equal, reciprocal, or identical interests—these are renovating influences; and I would not wait too long for laws, which at best are but as mills which must run by some external power. What is a windmill without wind, or a water-mill without a stream of water? Why put a mill upon the hill-top with a water-wheel, or in a valley if made with a sail? What are laws without public sentiment? They are water-mills without water, wind-mills without wind. We must fall back upon moral force. It may take a little more time, but we shall do the work more thoroughly; and I believe we shall yet see the day when, throughout the South, they will show an enthusiasm for liberty, and schools, and churches, and colleges, such as we have never seen even in the North; when every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, blessed and blessing.”

Shortly after the assassination of President Lincoln he said, referring to its effect upon the South:

“I know not how this may turn, so far as the South is concerned; I know not but that the cords will be drawn tighter than they would have been if Mr. Lincoln had been spared; yet I am not without hope that those men who have for four years learned almost nothing but to curse the name of our beloved and now martyred President, with the beginning of better thoughts and feelings may, by sorrow and by grief, be led back again toward a national feeling. The North has been unified by a sorrow of one kind; and I would fain hope that God, in His providence, will make use of this great affliction to produce the beginnings of compunction and the return of national feeling throughout the South. And so the death of Mr. Lincoln may be blessed to them as well as to us.

“But, brethren, my heart goes out toward my whole country. I mourn for those outcast States. The bitterness of their destruction; the wrath that has come upon them; their desolation—you know nothing of these. The sublimest monument that has ever been reared in this world to testify God’s abhorrence of cruelty and rebellion has its base as broad as fifteen States. No pyramid was ever lifted up in such awful majesty as is the pyramidal overthrow of these fifteen States. And I pray God that this last, cruelest, wickedest offspring of the Rebellion may be an expiation through which they shall be redeemed. Christ, when He died, prayed for those that crucified Him, and instead of asking vengeance on them, said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”

Just before going to Fort Sumter in April, 1865, he said from his pulpit:

“I would be no man’s servant to go to add additional sorrows to those that already press and weigh down the South.... I go to say to them, ‘Sound government has come back; beneficent government has come back; the day has dawned; and, as brethren to brethren, I come to bring you good tidings of great joy’”—a feeling that was more fully expressed in his speech at the fort.

Shortly after Johnson had been called to the presidential chair, and before the open rupture with Congress and his subsequent extravagant follies, Mr. Beecher wrote him:

“The two points that have lain most at my heart are:

“1. That the government should not allow itself, by any temptation, to invade the true State rights. The temptation is strong. But the precedent established might by and by plunge us again into great trials, and even conflicts.

“2. The other point is, the necessity of securing for freedmen the kindness and good-will of Southern white men. Their fate will largely depend upon their neighbors’ dispositions toward them. Northern people nor the government can hold them up long if all the State populations around them are inimical.

“In both these respects, as in others, I perceive that your sentiments are enlightened and statesmanlike.

“May it please Almighty God to endue you with health and strength to complete the work which you have so auspiciously begun!”

By the autumn of 1866 there had grown up in the Republican party quite a minority, called “Conservative Republicans,” who were opposed to the policy of exclusion; and an effort was made that fall to elect Congressmen who would be in favor of admitting the Southern States again under such terms and restrictions as might be deemed necessary. This feeling was quite marked among the soldiers themselves, who, with the chivalry natural to bravery, were opposed to humiliating a conquered enemy. In September a National Convention of Soldiers and Sailors was called to be held on the 17th in Cleveland, Ohio, to give expression to this feeling. The preparatory committee sent to Mr. Beecher an invitation to serve as chaplain to the convention, saying in it:

“Your name has been selected by the Executive Committee from sincere admiration of your character, and as the only tribute within their power to pay in acknowledgment of your noble devotion to the cause of the Union, and your earnest and unceasing efforts in behalf of our soldiers and sailors during the recent war.

“The Executive Committee also find in your course since the termination of the struggle substantial harmony with the views to which they desire to give effect in the convention—your eloquence and the just weight of your name being employed to enforce upon the country a generous and magnanimous policy toward the people of the lately rebellious States, and a prompt reconstruction of the Union under the Constitution as the best means of regaining the national tranquillity which the country so much needs, and readjusting the rights of all sections, under the new order of things, on a basis of law, order, Christian brotherhood, and justice.

“In the call for the convention, which the undersigned have the honor to transmit herewith, you will see fully set forth the motives which actuate the military and naval defenders of the Union in their present unusual course of taking part in a political movement; and it is our hope—as we have always looked to you in the darkest days of the war for inspiration, aid, and the cheering sympathy of a noble heart, never failing to find them—that you will consent to invoke the Divine Blessing upon the Convention of the Soldiers and Sailors of the United States who served during the late Rebellion, and who approve the restoration policy of President Johnson and the principles announced by the recent national convention of Philadelphia—the first convention since 1860 in which all the States of our beloved Union were represented.”

As the convention was called for a time when he was prostrated by his annual “hay cold,” he was obliged to decline, but wrote to them what has since become famous as his first Cleveland letter.

This invitation, which seems so proper and natural to-day, and the letter in reply recapitulating the views which, as we have seen, had been expressed again and again in public, to the intense astonishment of Mr. Beecher produced a perfect tornado, and for a few days he was in the centre of a wild and furious whirlwind that threatened to destroy his influence in public affairs—then very great—and even to rend his church asunder. It seems impossible, as we look back twenty years, to believe that such results could have followed such a cause.

It would seem, as we follow the exposition of his views almost daily on this subject, as though the public, and certainly his friends, would have become fully accustomed to them, and would have recognized the object for which he strove; and the sudden, almost blind outburst of anger, indignation, and grief that followed the Cleveland letter, can only be explained on the theory that the course of President Johnson had so exasperated the Northern feelings, that the people, fairly beside themselves with anger, indignation, and suspicion, could see nothing right in what he did or advised, and would not permit any one to speak a kind word either for him or any of the views that he advocated.

Eighteen years later, looking back upon the accomplishment of that which he had so strenuously advocated, and seeing men commending as wisdom that which they had then condemned as folly, he recalls this incident in his life, which, like many others before and since, awaked the mournful prophecies of timid friends. From his Thanksgiving sermon, November 27, 1884, we quote:

“But one thing more was needed, and that was to chase the scowl from the Southern brow; to revive the old friendship; to clasp hands again in a vow of loving and patriotic zeal. It was given to us last, because it is the greatest of God’s gifts. There never has been such a scene since the earth was born; there never has been such a rupture, never such a conflict, never such a victory, never such a reconstruction, never such restoration of integrity in business, never such a reconciliation and gladness between good men on both sides, as come to us to-day. As yet the eyes of many are holden, and they cannot see how great a blessing God has brought to our unbelieving eyes and timid hands. From the bottom of my soul I believe in the honor and integrity of thoughtful Southern men; and when I get from them such letters as I do, and hear from their lips such declarations as I hear, that they feel at last that they are in and of the Union, as much as we, and point to the flag, declaring, with tears, ‘That is now my flag,’ I believe it; I should be faithless to God and to Providence if I did not. I believe it with an enthusiasm of faith, and with a longing heart of love; for I think they are above hypocrisy or insincerity, and that, if we choose, the last cloud will rise from between us and then pass away for ever.

“Moses, after forty years of toil, was allowed to see the promised land from afar off only. Less worthy, yet more blessed, I am spared to go over with the rejoicing tribes into the land flowing with milk and honey. What am I, or my father’s house, that to me should be given the privilege of laboring in all this drama, and seeing it end nobly thus? The discipline is complete, and to the end of time this great epic of liberty, our struggle with slavery, will shine like the sun.

“Not the least joyful element in this reconciliation is the assured safety and benefit which will accrue to the colored race. That has come to pass which was their only safety. Just as soon as the Southern statesmen accept the perfect restoration of themselves to the great body politic, and find that there is no division, as between Northern men and Southern men, in any of the honors of government; just as soon as they are in and a part of every administration—as, thank God! they will be—just so soon of necessity that will take place which has taken place everywhere, in every community: there will be the party of administration, the ‘ins,’ and the party opposed to them, the opposition, the ‘outs.’ The moment you have these two parties, each party has a sentinel watching it. In the South that will take place which is the salvation of the colored race. As long as they were a fringe upon a Northern party the South was condensed and solidified against it. As soon as they are divided at home between the administrational party and the opposition party, they will be guarded and taken care of. The administration party will not allow its voters to be injured; the opposition party will not allow its voters to be injured. They will be distributed as they should be, and the strength of each party in the South will be the safeguard of the intermediate voters. I regard this now, with schools and academies and various seminaries spread among them, as the final step of emancipation.

“It is in these views that I have acted; and in the calmest retrospect I now rejoice that I was able to act so.

“The greatest mistake of my life has happened twice, as I have been informed.

“I was in 1866 invited to act as chaplain to the convention called at the city of Cleveland, Ohio, of the soldiers and sailors of our army and navy. The object of that convention was to so shape our Northern politics as to bring the Southern States back immediately, or as soon as possible; and in that general tendency I sympathized.

“The question of reconstruction of the seceding States was under discussion, and feeling ran high, not alone on account of the nature of the work to be done, but also by reason of the disturbed relations between President Johnson and Congress.

“President Lincoln had been assassinated, and Johnson had assumed his place. The statesmen whose vigor and courage had carried the country through the civil war were less adapted to the delicate task of restoring the discordant States to peace and unity than they had been to the sudden duties of war.

“In a general way there were two parties: one counselling a speedy readjustment, and the other a longer probation.

“President Lincoln and Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, in the last conversations which I had with them, inclined to the policy of immediate restoration; and their views had great weight with me. It was in the interest of such a policy that the Cleveland convention was called.

“My first letter was in reply to the invitation from the convention:

“‘PEEKSKILL, N. Y., August 30, 1866.

“‘CHAS. G. HALPINE, Brevet Brig.-Gen.; H. W. SLOCUM, Major-Gen.; GORDON GRANGER, Major-Gen., Committee:

“‘GENTLEMEN: I am obliged to you for the invitation which you have made to me to act as chaplain to the Convention of Sailors and Soldiers about to convene at Cleveland. I cannot attend it, but I heartily wish it and all other conventions, of what party soever, success, whose object is the restoration of all the States late in rebellion to their federal relations.

“‘Our theory of government has no place for a State except in the Union. It is justly taken for granted that the duties and responsibilities of a State in federal relations tend to its political health and to that of the whole nation. Even Territories are hastily brought in, often before the prescribed conditions are fulfilled, as if it were dangerous to leave a community outside of the great body politic.

“‘Had the loyal senators and representatives of Tennessee been admitted at once on the assembling of Congress, and, in moderate succession, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, the public mind of the South would have been far more healthy than it is, and those States which lingered on probation to the last would have been under a more salutary influence to good conduct than if a dozen armies had watched over them.

“‘Every month that we delay this healthful step complicates the case. The excluded population, enough unsettled before, grows more irritable; the army becomes indispensable to local government and supersedes it; the government at Washington is called to interfere in one and another difficulty, and this will be done inaptly, and sometimes with great injustice; for our government, wisely adapted to its own proper functions, is utterly devoid of those habits, and unequipped with the instruments, which fit a centralized government to exercise authority in remote States over local affairs. Every attempt to perform such duties has resulted in mistakes which have excited the nation. But whatever imprudence there may be in the method, the real criticism should be against the requisition of such duties of the general government.

“‘The federal government is unfit to exercise minor police and local government, and will inevitably blunder when it attempts it. To keep a half-score of States under federal authority, but without national ties and responsibilities; to oblige the central authority to govern half of the territory of the Union by federal civil officers and by the army, is a policy not only uncongenial to our ideas and principles, but pre-eminently dangerous to the spirit of our government. However humane the ends sought and the motive, it is, in fact, a course of instruction preparing our government to be despotic, and familiarizing the people to a stretch of authority which can never be other than dangerous to liberty.

“‘I am aware that good men are withheld from advocating the prompt and successive admission of the exiled States by the fear, chiefly, of its effect upon the freedmen.

“‘It is said that, if admitted to Congress, the Southern senators and representatives will coalesce with Northern Democrats and rule the country. Is this nation, then, to remain dismembered to serve the ends of parties? Have we learned no wisdom by the history of the past ten years, in which just this course of sacrificing the nation to the exigencies of parties plunged us into rebellion and war?

“‘Even admit that the power would pass into the hands of a party made up of Southern men and the hitherto dishonored and misled Democracy of the North, that power could not be used just as they pleased. The war has changed, not alone institutions, but ideas. The whole country has advanced. Public sentiment is exalted far beyond what it has been at any former period. A new party would, like a river, be obliged to seek out its channels in the already existing slopes and forms of the continent....

“‘I hear with wonder, and shame, and scorn the fear of a few that the South, once more in adjustment with the federal government, will rule this nation! The North is rich, never so rich; the South is poor, never before so poor. The population of the North is nearly double that of the South. The industry of the North, in diversity, in forwardness and productiveness, in all the machinery and education required for manufacturing, is half a century in advance of the South. Churches in the North crown every hill, and schools swarm in every neighborhood; while the South has but scattered lights, at long distances, like light-houses twinkling along the edge of a continent of darkness. In the presence of such a contrast how mean and craven is the fear that the South will rule the policy of the land! That it will have an influence, that it will contribute, in time, most important influences or restraints, we are glad to believe. But if it rises at once to the control of the government it will be because the North, demoralized by prosperity and besotted by grovelling interests, refuses to discharge its share of political duty. In such a case the South not only will control the government, but ought to do it.

“‘It is feared, with more reason, that the restoration of the South to her full independence will be detrimental to the freedmen. The sooner we dismiss from our minds the idea that the freedmen can be classified and separated from the white population, and nursed and defended by themselves, the better it will be for them and us. The negro is part and parcel of Southern society. He cannot be prosperous while it is unprospered. Its evils will rebound upon him. Its happiness and reinvigoration cannot be kept from his participation. The restoration of the South to amicable relations with the North, the reorganization of its industry, the reinspiration of its enterprise and thrift, will all redound to the freedman’s benefit. Nothing is so dangerous to the freedman as an unsettled state of society in the South. On him comes all the spite, and anger, and caprice, and revenge. He will be made the scapegoat of lawless and heartless men. Unless we turn the government into a vast military machine, there cannot be armies enough to protect the freedmen while Southern society remains insurrectionary. If Southern society is calmed, settled, and occupied, and soothed with new hopes and prosperous industries, no armies will be needed. Riots will subside, lawless hangers-on will be driven off or better governed, and a way will be gradually opened to the freedmen, through education and industry, to full citizenship with all its honors and duties.

“‘Civilization is a growth. None can escape that forty years in the wilderness who travel from the Egypt of ignorance to the promised land of civilization. The freedmen must take their march. I have full faith in the results. If they have the stamina to undergo the hardships which every uncivilized people has undergone in its upward progress, they will in due time take their place among us. That place cannot be bought, nor bequeathed, nor gained by sleight of hand. It will come to sobriety, virtue, industry, and frugality. As the nation cannot be sound until the South is prosperous, so, on the other extreme, a healthy condition of civil society in the South is indispensable to the welfare of the freedmen.

“‘Refusing to admit loyal senators and representatives from the South to Congress will not help the freedmen. It will not secure for them the vote. It will not protect them. It will not secure any amendment of our Constitution, however just and wise. It will only increase the dangers and complicate the difficulties. Whether we regard the whole nation or any section of it or class in it, the first demand of our time is entire reunion!

“‘Once united, we can, by schools, churches, a free press, and increasing free speech, attack every evil and secure every good. Meanwhile, the great chasm which rebellion has made is not filled up. It grows deeper and stretches wider! Out of it rise dread spectres and threatening sounds. Let that gulf be closed, and bury in it slavery, sectional animosity, and all strifes and hatreds!

“‘It is fit that the brave men who, on sea and land, faced death to save this nation, should now, by their voice and vote, consummate what their swords rendered possible.

“‘For the sake of the freedmen, for the sake of the South and its millions of our fellow-countrymen, for our own sake, and for the great cause of freedom and civilization, I urge the immediate reunion of all the parts of this Union which rebellion and war have shattered.

I am, truly yours, “‘HENRY WARD BEECHER.’”

This letter was published by the convention in the hope that it would make an impression on the public mind. It did. Their most sanguine expectations were more than realized in that respect. But it was a step in advance of the prevailing public sentiment, and, like such steps, was largely misunderstood or misrepresented.

The partisan Republican press at once assailed Mr. Beecher, some bitterly, some indignantly, and some compassionately. Read hastily, it was construed as a declaration against the Republican party and in favor of President Johnson, who by this time had come in violent collision with Congress and the general sentiment of the North. The President’s course was regarded as treacherous, and a feeling of hatred was spreading through the North, so intense that it was only necessary for him to advocate any measure to have it looked upon with suspicion and be bitterly opposed. Many of Mr. Beecher’s personal friends were alarmed and distressed, fearing that he was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. He was overwhelmed with letters full of fear—fear for the country, fear for the Republican party, fear for him and his future usefulness. Some who had been among his intimate friends attacked him openly and fiercely in the public prints. The Independent, whose editorship he had but recently resigned, and to which he was still a regular contributor, in its leading editorial, from the pen of Theodore Tilton, attacked him with intense and persistent bitterness. Writing shortly afterwards to a friend, he said:

“The rage and abuse of excited men I have too long been used to, now to be surprised or daunted.... I stood almost alone, my church, in my absence, full of excitement; all my ministerial brethren, with a few honorable exceptions, either aloof or in clamor against me; well-nigh the whole religious press denouncing me, and the political press furious.”

On the other hand, many thoughtful, earnest men agreed with the letter and commended it most earnestly. We quote from a letter received from Dr. Stephen H. Tyng as a type of this class:

“I have just read your admirable letter in the Times of to-day. My eyes are wet with tears of sympathy and thanksgiving. You have expressed in terms and with beauty peculiar to yourself precisely what I have in my humble way thought and felt.... The recognition and establishment of our Union on the basis of undisputed loyalty to the national government, unlimited liberty to the people, universal fidelity in payment of our responsibility, and generous reciprocation and acknowledgment of mutual kindness and confidence among all portions of our territory and all classes of our people, is to me the one great immediate end for us to strive for. I have not a doubt that all our interests and hopes, social, moral, and economical, are far safer in the union of our States and the complete acknowledgment of them all, than they can be in its refusal—nay, that they are safe in no other course. I cannot justify the partisan and acrimonious action which resists and impedes this immediate union.... The country has been much indebted to you for faithful and powerful defence, but it has never had more occasion to honor you than for the letter which I have read this morning....”

The reply to Dr. Tyng, written some days before the second letter, is valuable as showing how little his critics understood Mr. Beecher’s position, and with what unreasonable and passion-blinded haste they jumped to the conclusion that he had abandoned the Republican party, become a Johnson man, Copperhead, etc.:

“PEEKSKILL, Sept. 6, 1866.

”MY DEAR DR. TYNG:

“Your kind letter surprised and delighted me, and has been a great comfort withal. You perhaps are aware by this time that my letter has been excessively distasteful to the great body of men with whom I have acted, and to my own congregation. Nothing but a deep sense of public danger, to which the eyes of our best men seem blind, induced me to write it. The sentiments contained in it I had, in speeches and lectures, openly declared in all the principal cities of the East during the whole winter and spring, and I was therefore not a little surprised at the wonder and excitement with which they have now been received.

“I attribute it to the sharp issue made by Mr. Johnson and Congress, and to the exasperation of the public mind with the President, especially his most unwise speeches made during his present tour. I am far from being a Johnson man. I am an advocate of the principles of speedy readjustment, without waiting for a greater but at present unattainable good. I am, however, constrained to say that Mr. Johnson just now and for some time past has been the greatest obstacle in the way of his own views. The mere fact that he holds them is their condemnation with a public utterly exasperated with his rudeness and violence. The TRUTH is, however, just as important as if it had a wiser advocate.

“Things may go so far that no choice will be left but between a Copperhead Johnson party and a radical Republican, and I cannot for a moment hesitate on which side I shall be, or rather already am.

“The moral sentiment of justice, liberty, and Christian progress is with the Republican side. There are the men whom I most esteem, and with whom I have always acted, and for whom first and last I have wished success.

“For that very reason I have desired and labored assiduously to secure to them more practical views than those at first peculiar to a few extreme men, but which, partly by the President’s indiscretions, partly by the inflammation of the public mind and the adroitness with which things have been managed by a few, seem likely to become the enthusiastic belief of the whole community, or of a large majority. I must submit to things which I cannot control. Should things turn out better than my fears I shall be glad to find myself a false prophet. But I confess that the cause of the freedmen, which lies near my heart, looks gloomy in the future. With a very Southern South and a very Northern North I do not see but they will be ground to powder. But God rules—that is my unfailing comfort. His cause gains as well by disaster as by success. Good and evil both serve Him....”

On the 7th of September Mr. Beecher received a letter from Dr. R. S. Storrs, then an intimate friend, which expressed the feelings of not a few of his friends. In this he urged Mr. Beecher to make a fuller and more explicit statement of his position, and to show plainly that he was not in sympathy with Johnson, Seward, etc., in their general attitude. “A vast number of people who have loved and honored you for years are really beginning to believe that you have gone over bodily; of course all those who know you as I do, know this to be an utter misapprehension of your position.”

Many of the members of Plymouth Church shared the common misapprehension, while many saw plainly what Mr. Beecher was seeking, and sympathized with him. As a consequence the church was deeply stirred and in commotion.

To quote again from Mr. Beecher:

“Not many days after, President Johnson began that ill-favored journey, known as ‘swinging around the circle,’ during the progress of which his temper, attitude, and injudicious speeches thoroughly alarmed the community.

“It was believed that he was betraying the country, and that all that had been gained by the war was about to be lost by the treachery of the President. The public mind was greatly inflamed, and my Cleveland letter was received with violent protests. Many personal friends and members of Plymouth Church were greatly exercised.

“There was a great pother made about that. My own friends were very hot. Some dove into the newspapers, some into letters. They flew thick and fast all around about me. Neighboring ministers thought that I was unseated and disrupted for ever. In the midst of it all I knew I was right, and that if I had patience others would know that I was right. And they did, though they still talk about that greatest blunder of my life, ‘the Cleveland letter.’ I am going to send down that document to my children as one of the most glorious things that I ever did in my life. But such was the excitement and clamor that I thought it wise to alleviate the fear and trouble of my people by giving a fuller view of the ground of my first letter and to confute the idea that I had abandoned the Republican party, so I wrote the second letter to a friend to read to the church, assuming the same position, but with explanatory reasoning.” This was the second so-called “Cleveland Letter”:

We give a few extracts from this letter, which was a very long one, covering nearly the same ground as the first, only giving his reasons more fully:

“PEEKSKILL, Saturday, Sept. 8, 1866.

”MY DEAR ———:

“I am obliged to you for your letter. I am sorry that my friends and my congregation are grieved by my Cleveland letter.

“This feeling, however, has no just grounds, whatever may be the seeming. I have not left, and do not propose to leave, or to be put out of, the Republican party. I am in sympathy with its aims, its great principles, and its army of noble men. But I took the liberty of criticising its policy in a single respect, and to do what I could to secure what I believed, and still believe, to be a better one.

“I am, and from the first have been, fully of opinion that the amendment of the Constitution proposed by Congress, equalizing representation in Northern and Southern States, was intrinsically just and reasonable, and that it should be sought by a wholesome and persistent moral agitation.

“But, from the present condition of the public mind and from the President’s attitude, I deemed such a change to be practically impossible, in any near period, by political action. And a plan of reconstruction based upon that seems to me far more like a plan of adjourning reconstruction for years, at least, with all the liabilities of mischief which are always to be expected in the fluctuations of politics in a free nation.

“It is not the North that chiefly needs the restoration of government to its normal sphere and regular action. Either the advantages of Union are fallacious, or the continuous exclusion of the South from it will breed disorder, make the future reunion more difficult, and especially subject the freedmen to the very worst conditions of society that can well exist. No army, no government, and no earthly power can compel the South to treat four million men justly, if the inhabitants (whether rightly or wrongly) regard these men as the cause, or even the occasion, of their unhappiness and disfranchisement. But no army, or government, or power will be required when Southern society is restored, occupied, and prospering in the renewed Union. Then the negro will be felt to be a necessity to Southern industry, and interest will join with conscience and kindness in securing for him favorable treatment from his fellow-citizens....

“Neither am I a ‘Johnson man’ in any received meaning of that term. I accept that part of the policy which he favors, but with modification. I have never thought that it would be wise to bring back all the States in a body, and at once, any more than it would be to keep them all out together. One by one, in due succession, under a special judgment rather than by a wholesale theoretic rule, I would have them readmitted. I still think a middle course between the President’s and that of Congress would be wiser than either. But with this my agreement with the President ends.

“And now allow me to express some surprise at the turn which the public mind has taken on my letter. If I had never before spoken my sentiments, I could see how friends might now misapprehend my position. But for a year past I have been advocating the very principles of the Cleveland letter in all the chief Eastern cities—in Boston, Portland, Springfield, Albany, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn (at the Academy of Music last winter). These views were reported, discussed, agreed to or differed from, praised and blamed abundantly. But no one thought, or at least said, that I remember, that I had forsaken the Republican party or had turned my back upon the freedman. My recent letter but condenses those views which for twelve months I have been earnestly engaged in urging upon the attention of the community. I am not surprised that men dissent. But this sudden consternation and this late discovery of the nature of my opinions seem sufficiently surprising. I could not ask a better service than the reprinting of that sermon of last October, which first brought upon me the criticisms of the Tribune and Independent.

“I foresaw that, in the probable condition of parties and the country, we could not carry suffrage for the freedman by immediate political action. When the ablest and most radical Congress of our history came together they refused to give suffrage to negroes, even in the District of Columbia; and only in an indirect way, not as a political right but as the hoped-for result of political selfishness, did they provide for it by an amendment of the Constitution. What was prophecy with me, Congress has made history. Relinquishing political instruments for gaining the full enfranchisement of men, I instantly turned to moral means; and enunciating the broadest doctrine of manhood suffrage, I gave the widest latitude to that, advocating the rights of black and white, of men and women, to the vote. If any man has labored more openly, on a broader principle, and with more assiduity, I do not know him. More ability may have been shown, but not more directness of purpose or undeviating consistency....

“Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States as necessary to their own health, as indirectly the best policy for the freedmen, as peculiarly needful to the safety of our government, which, for the sake of accomplishing a good end, incautious men are in danger of perverting, I favored, and do still favor, the election to Congress of Republicans who will seek the early admission of the recusant States. Having urged it for a year past, I was more than ready to urge it again upon the representatives to Congress this fall. In this spirit and for this end I drew up my Cleveland letter. I deem its views sound; I am not sorry that I wrote it. I regret the misapprehension which it has caused, and yet more any sorrow which it may have needlessly imposed upon dear friends. As I look back upon my course, I see no deviation from the straight line which I have made, without wavering, for now thirty years in public life, in favor of justice, liberty, and the elevation of the poor and ignorant.

“The attempt to class me with men whose course I have opposed all my life long will utterly fail. I shall choose my own place, and shall not be moved from it. I have been from my youth a firm, unwavering, avowed, and active friend of all that were oppressed. I have done nothing to forfeit that good name which I have earned. I am not going weakly to turn away from my settled convictions of the public weal for fear that bad men may praise me or good men blame. There is a serious difference of judgment between men as to the best policy. We must all remit to the future the decision of the question. Facts will soon judge us.

“I feel now profoundly how imperfect my services have been to my country, compared with its desert of noble services. But I am conscious that I have given all that I had to give, without fear or favor. Above all earthly things is my country dear to me. The lips that taught me to say ‘Our Father’ taught me to say ‘Fatherland.’ I have aimed to conceive of that land in the light of Christianity. God is my witness that with singleness of heart I have given all my time, strength, and service to that which shall make our whole nation truly prosperous and glorious. Not by the lustre of arms, even in a just cause, would I seek her glory, but by a civilization that should carry its blessings down to the lowest classes, and nourish the very roots of society by her moral power and purity, by her public conscience, her political justice, and by her intelligent homes, filling up a continent and rearing a virtuous and noble citizenship.

“By night and by day this is the vision and dream of my life, and inspires me as no personal ambition ever could. I am not discouraged at the failure to do the good I meant, at the misapprehension of my course by my church, nor the severity of former friends. Just now those angry voices come to me as rude winds roar through the trees. The winds will die, the trees will live. As soon as my health is again restored I shall go right on in the very course I have hitherto pursued. Who will follow or accompany it is for others to decide. I shall labor for the education of the whole people; for the enfranchisement of men without regard to class, caste, or color; for full development, among all nations, of the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free. In doing this I will cheerfully work with others, with parties—any and all men that seek the same glorious ends. But I will not become a partisan. I will reserve my right to differ and dissent, and respect the same right in others. Seeking others’ full manhood and true personal liberty, I do not mean to forfeit my own.

“Better days are coming. These throes of our day are labor-pains. God will bring forth ere long great blessings. In some moments which it pleases God to give me I think I discern beyond the present troubles, and over the other side of the abyss in which the nation wallows, that fair form of Liberty—God’s dear child—whose whole beauty was never yet disclosed. I know her solemn face. That she is divine I know by her purity, by her sceptre of justice, and by that atmosphere of Love that, issuing from her, as light from a star, moves with her as a royal atmosphere. In this, too, I know her divinity, that she shall bless both friends and enemies, and yield the fullest fruition of liberty to those who would have slain her, as once her Master gave His life for the salvation of those who slew Him.

“I am, your true friend and pastor,

“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”

At the conclusion of his Thanksgiving sermon from which we have already quoted, after reviewing these letters, he summed up the subject:

“My dear friends, if I had written that for to-day I could not have written it better, and I do not think it needs to be written any better. I stand on that, and I have read it this morning not only because inspired by the parallelism, but because it has been represented that my Cleveland letter was the greatest blunder of the day; and then, worse than that, that I backed down from it and retracted it. And I have read, therefore, both of them, in parts, so far as bears more immediately on questions of to-day, that you may know that God gave me the light to do one of the best things I ever did when I wrote that letter; and that He gave me the grace to stand on it without turning back for one single moment; and that He has given me grace to lay my path, by sight, along those two letters—hindsight and foresight—from that day down to this; and that He has given me grace to withstand the impleadings of those that I love dearly, not only of my immediate household but of my blood and kindred; of those that are in the church, that are to me as my own life, and those that are of the political party with which I have labored thus far.

“Still seeing that luminous light, as God reveals it to me, I have walked in it and toward it, and abide in that same direction to-day; and, God helping me, so will I live to the end.”

To most of his friends the second letter gave great relief. The excitement in the church was quickly allayed, and, as it abated, the calm second-sight of his people began to see more and more in the letters in which they could agree.

After the second letter Dr. Storrs wrote again:

“BROOKLYN, Sept. 10, 1866.

”DEAR BEECHER:

“Your letter is admirable in all respects, and must make precisely the right impression of your position and views on every one who reads it. Now let the winds ‘crack their cheeks.’ All my solicitude is over, and Andy J. and Seward fully deserve what things they are going to get.

“Most affectionately, “R. S. STORRS, JR.”

In letters to prominent public men and journalists Mr. Beecher urged that the conservative Republicans should express themselves plainly and clearly for the speedy reunion of the loyal Southern States and restoration of a more kindly feeling, but that this should be done, not in opposition to the Republican party, but within it. He was emphatic that the work of reconstruction could not then be safely left to the Democratic party. As soon as the public began to understand, what one would think had been plainly apparent at the start, that it was not, and had not been, his intention to leave the Republican party, but to urge the party to take up speedy reconstruction as its line of policy, and that he was laboring to create a sentiment within the party in its favor, the general excitement began to abate, and soon the bitterness, except with a few extremists, passed away.

A few sparks which took their heat from this fierce excitement remained, however, smouldering unnoticed and unsuspected, to aid, a few years later, in creating the most terrible and fiery ordeal that ever a good man was called to undergo, since the time of Him who came on earth to give Himself a voluntary sacrifice, that through His death the world might live; whose tender kindness, patient forgiveness, and generous self-sacrifice were made the guide and rule of life, so far as human nature could, by him whose life we seek to portray.

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Chapter XXIII

The “Silver Wedding” of Plymouth Church—Children’s Day—Services in the Church—Reunion of old Members—Historical Reminiscences—Dr. Storrs’s Tribute.

As in nature violent storms are often succeeded by peaceful calms, and as the sun shines brightest and the air seems clearest and most purified after the thunder-storm has broken and passed away, so in Mr. Beecher’s life we find that the stormy trials that beset him, at different periods, were followed by calms, in which the sun of popular favor shone the brightest; by periods of peace, during which he seemed endowed with increased power for useful work.

It was his lot to be generally a few years ahead of the times, but it was his good fortune to live to see his views accepted, and to find his hottest critics standing on the very ground, that they had so fiercely assailed him for occupying, but just a short time before.

So, for some years after 1866, we find him working with increased power and usefulness in his church, from the lecture platform, and through the columns of the press. His church had never been more prosperous, his people never more active in all departments of good work; never had he had so wide a field in which to labor. His sermons, which at first had only been printed in certain papers, were now issued in book-form, and were read wherever the English tongue prevailed.

From his pulpit went forth words of cheer, of hope and love, that lifted up weary hearts, that infused new life in desponding souls, that shed a new light in upon spirits that had lived in the darkness of sin, throughout the civilized globe. His sermons were translated into German, French, Spanish, and Italian. No four walls, no State boundaries, nor the limits of any one nation, held his congregation.

In this period he undertook, in addition to his ordinary duties and labors, the principal literary work of his life, writing “Norwood,” completing the first volume of “The Life of Christ,” organizing and carrying on the Christian Union as its editor-in-chief.

Though the shadows of the coming trouble began, during the later part of this period, to fall across his path, at times darkening and oppressing his inner life, yet to the world, to the church, and to his friends it seemed as if a lasting season of peace and prosperity had settled down upon Plymouth Church, and its pastor, promising many years of uninterrupted and blessed usefulness.

October 10, 1872, completed the full quarter-century of Mr. Beecher’s pastorate at Plymouth Church. His people determined to celebrate in fitting manner this “Silver Wedding,” as it was called. It was decided to devote the week in which the anniversary occurred to the celebration of this jubilee.

In the minds of his people there might well have been some little feeling of pride and triumphant jubilation. They had seen Plymouth, from the little handful, twenty-one in all, whose organization had awakened prophecies of a speedy death, grow to the great church of over twenty-seven hundred, with its three large Sunday-schools—Plymouth, Bethel, and Mayflower—the nurseries of the church, where nearly three thousand scholars gathered every Sunday to learn the way of life. They had seen its influence extended throughout the entire nation, throughout the civilized globe, a power for good. They had seen churches by the score spring from its loins, and not a few had they seen, in periods of weakness when liable to fail, kept alive, nourished, and sustained by its strong hand until strong enough to stand alone.

Its history formed a part of the nation’s history in the dark days of slavery, in the struggle for national existence, and the exciting period of reconstruction, as has been well said: “For the better part of a generation Plymouth Church, under the influence of Mr. Beecher, has been a conspicuous light among the churches of the land. It has been the birthplace of countless good works which have blessed the whole community. It has been the nursery of noble impulses, of free thought, of patriotism, of generous and inspiriting actions. Its pupils have gone out into all parts of the country, carrying its fresh spirit with them, to infect other communities. Its influence is felt from Maine to the Pacific, and its memory is to-day affectionately cherished by thousands who were never within its walls and never saw its preacher.”

But in Mr. Beecher’s heart, while not forgetful of the glorious record of his church, the predominating feeling was one of profound gratitude to God.

In his Friday night prayer-meeting preceding the jubilee he expressed his feelings to his people:

“If I thought next week was to be a kind of historical glorification of this church; still worse, if I thought it was to be a sort of personal glorification, I should shrink from it with more than dislike—with positive loathing. It has pleased God to recognize the instrumentality of this church in the work it has done for the last quarter of a century; but, after all, the reason of its success, the absolute cause of its moral power, has been the presence of God, and the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, here during the last quarter of a century; and if we have a celebration, it ought to be a celebration of what the Lord has done among us. The feeling ought to be that of gratitude, and of the most profound recognition of the goodness and mercy and loving-kindness of our Lord and Saviour, who has walked in our households and in the midst of this artificial Christian family, and has not ceased to do us good, for the past twenty five years.

“So, that all the services of the week may be infused with a more reverent and loving sense of the Lord’s mercy to us, I hope you will give yourselves to prayer in your closets and in your homes. May it be a week, not for the laudation of men or of churches, but for a grateful recognition of God’s way with us, and of that dear name which should be dearer to us every day that we live, until we shall see Him in His glory for ever.”

Monday, October 7th, was the first day of the jubilee. This was “Children’s day,” the exercises being devoted principally to the Sunday-schools.

In the afternoon the three schools united in one column and marched past Mr. Beecher’s house; as they filed by, the schools gave their pastor, as he stood upon his doorstep, a marching salute. Each child as it passed cast a flower at his feet, until he stood literally embanked in flowers. The day was wondrously beautiful, sunny, clear, and crisp—as though glorious October, nature’s painter, catching the prevailing enthusiasm, was consciously contributing its share to make the occasion a success. Mr. Beecher was deeply touched. “We gave Monday to the children—and a beautiful day it was—and a sight brighter than which I shall not see until I look in the New Jerusalem, and see all the children who have left us for that better land.”

Tuesday, as “Teachers’ day,” was devoted to a reunion of the teachers and officers then serving or who had done duty in either of the three Sunday-schools.

Wednesday, as “Members’ day,” was like a great family reunion: it was the home day.

The church auditorium, the lecture-room and Sunday-school rooms, decorated with flowers, were thrown open to the members. We quote a description of the decorations: “What with the warbling of sweet-voiced birds, the profusion of leafy and floral decorations artistically arranged, the many beautiful paintings, the liquid, melodious strains from a band of musicians with stringed instruments stationed in the gallery, the picturesque though sober dresses of the lady-promenaders, but, above all, the vocal sound of animated, sparkling conversation, a kaleidoscopic picture was presented which awakened and gratified all the senses, and which, however, could only be appreciated by an eye-witness.”

The exercises were eminently social, a part of the evening being devoted to humorous reminiscences, by the older members, of the “early days.” Music and a lunch helped to increase the general enjoyment.

Thursday, “Historical day,” was, more perhaps than any other, a public day. As the name indicates, it was devoted to a review of the church, its growth in size, in works, and its ever-extending influence for good. From Mr. Beecher’s speech we give only the opening and closing paragraphs, which briefly review the beginning of his pastorate in Plymouth Church, his purpose in his work, and its continuance to that time:

“At my first coming I had no plans; I had marked out no future; I had no theories to establish, no system to found, no doctrines to demolish, no oppugnation of any kind. I remember distinctly that over and over again I held account with myself; and I came into this field simply and only to work for the awakening of men, for their conversion to Christ, and for their upbuilding in a Christian life. I had almost a species of indifference as to means and measures. I cared little, and perhaps too little, whether I had or had not a church-building. I thought of one thing—the love of Christ to men. This, to me, was a burning reality. Less clearly than now, perhaps, did I discern the whole circuit and orb of the nature of Christ; but with a burning intensity I realized the love of God in Jesus Christ. I believed it to be the one transcendent influence in this world by which men should be roused to a higher manhood, and should be translated into another and better kingdom. My purpose was to preach Christ to men for the sake of bringing them to a higher life. And though I preferred the polity and economy of the Congregational Church, yet I also felt that God was in all the other churches, and that it was no part of my ministry to build up sectarian walls; that it was no part of my ministry to bombard and pull down sectarian structures; but that the work of my ministry was to find the way to the hearts of men, and to labor with them for their awakening, and conversion, and sanctification.

“I have said that I had no theory; but I had a very strong impression on my mind that the first five years in the life of a church would determine the history of that church and give to it its position and genius; that if the earliest years of a church were controversial or barren it would take scores of years to right it, but that if a church were consecrated, and active, and energetic during the first five years of its life, it would probably go on through generations developing the same features. My supreme anxiety, therefore, in gathering a church, was to have all of its members united in a fervent, loving disposition; to have them all in sympathy with men; and to have all of them desirous of bringing to bear the glorious truths of the Gospel upon the hearts and consciences of those about them....”

“I bless God when I look back. I have lived my life, and no man can take it from me. The mistakes that I have made—and they are many—none know so well as I. My incapacity and insufficiency none can feel so profoundly as I.... And yet I have this witness: that for twenty-five years I have not withheld my strength, and have labored in simplicity and with sincerity of motive for the honor of my God, and for the love that I bear to you, and for the ineradicable love that I have for my country and for the world.

“My time is drawing near; but if I should fall to-morrow, I have lived. I have seen this land rise up from its drunkenness and its shame. I have seen the original principles of liberty, which had well-nigh been buried, come like Lazarus forth from the grave. What if, for the first few steps of the new life—bound hand and foot in grave-clothes, and with a napkin about his head, staggering somewhat—it knew not how to find the rightful path? Our country is free; and it has pleased God to give you and me some part in the work of enfranchisement and the settlement of this land on the old foundation of truth and justice and universal liberty.

“I have lived through a quarter of a century, and had a free platform; and you have sustained me in speaking just what I thought to be true. You have never servilely believed anything because I said it; for you have maintained opinions different from mine from the beginning to the end....

“I am admonished that the best of my years are past and that my sun will soon go down. Let it go down to-day, to-morrow, whenever it may please God. I will not ask for the lengthening out of one single day. I have lived a happy life. I have been a happy pastor. I have loved you and been beloved by you. I have seen your children come up and walk in the ways of life. I have gone down with hundreds to see the framework laid in the dust, believing that the spirit was above. We have come down together, without a quarrel, without a break, and without a shaking of confidence, to this blessed hour. And now, in these closing words which I address to you and to all who are present, join with me, not in self-gratulation, nor in the interchange of compliments, but in thanksgiving to Christ that has loved us, to the Spirit of God that has inspired us, and to the dear Father that has kept us together in the one household of faith, beloved and loving, thus far.”

Twenty-five years before Dr. Storrs gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Beecher at his installation, then to encourage him to future labor. Again he gives him the hand of fellowship, but now, in words tender and eloquent, to dwell on the work done, to congratulate him on the rich and abundant harvest he had garnered, and to testify his brotherly love and admiration. The scene was a solemnly touching one, as Dr. Storrs, in the words we quote, closed his glowing tribute to the man who, for twenty-five years, had stood by his side laboring for a common cause, and who had loved him as a brother:

“At any rate, we have stood side by side in all these years; and they have been wonderful and eventful years.

“‘Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, When He loosed the fateful lightnings of His terrible swift sword, And His truth went marching on!’

“We have differed many times, but two men so unlike never stood side by side with each other, for so long a time, in more perfect harmony, without a jealousy or a jar! Though we have differed in opinion, we have never differed in feeling. We have walked to the graves of friends in company. We have sat at the table of the Lord in company. He knows, as he has said, that when other voices were loud and fierce in hostility to him mine never joined them. When other pens wrote his name, dropping gall and venom as they wrote it, my pen never touched the paper except in honor and admiration of him. And I know that whenever I have wanted counsel or courage given me from others, he has always been ready, from the overflowing surplus of his surcharged mind, to give them to me.

“So we have stood side by side—blessed be God!—in no spirit but of fraternal love, for that long space of twenty-five years which began with the Right Hand of Fellowship then, and closes before you here to-night.

“I am not here, my friends, to repeat the service which then I performed. It would be superfluous. When I think of the great assemblies that have surged and thronged around this platform, when I think of the influences that have gone out from this pulpit into all the earth, I feel that less than almost any other man on earth does he need the assurance of fellowship from any but the Son of God! But I am here to-night for another and a different service! On behalf of you who tarry, and of those who have ascended from this congregation; on behalf of Christians of every name throughout our city, who have had such joy and pride in him, and the name of whose town has, by him, been made famous in the earth; on behalf of all our churches, now growing to be an army; on behalf of those in every part of our land who have never seen his face or heard his voice, but who have read and loved his sermons, and been quickened and blessed by them; on behalf of the great multitudes who have gone up from every land which his sermons have reached—never having touched his hand on earth, but waiting to greet him by and by—I am here to-night [taking Mr. Beecher by the hand] to give him the Right Hand of Congratulation, on the closing of this twenty-fifth year of his ministry, and to say: God be praised for all the work that you have done here! God be praised for the generous gifts which He has showered upon you, and the generous use which you have made of them, here and elsewhere, and everywhere in the land! God give you many happy and glorious years of work and joy still to come in your ministry on earth! May your soul, as the years go on, be whitened more and more in the radiance of God’s light, and in the sunshine of His love! And, when the end comes—as it will—may the gates of pearl swing inward for your entrance, before the hands of those who have gone up before you, and who now wait to welcome you thither; and then may there open to you that vast and bright Eternity—all vivid with God’s love—in which an instant vision shall be perfect joy, and an immortal labor shall be to you immortal rest!”

“This magnificent concluding passage,” said the Brooklyn Union of the next day, “was uttered with an eloquence that defies description. At its conclusion Mr. Beecher, with tears, and trembling from head to foot, arose, and, placing his hand on Dr. Storrs’s shoulder, kissed him upon the cheek. The congregation sat for a moment breathless and enraptured with this simple and beautiful action. Then there broke from them such a burst of applause as never before was heard in an ecclesiastical edifice. There was not a dry eye in the house.”

Friday, “Communion day,” ended the jubilee. After a brief season of prayer and remarks, the solemn service of the Lord’s Supper closed the meeting, over two thousand persons participating in the communion.

The week was a blessed one for pastor and people, making stronger the bonds of love, confidence, and mutual trust that united them into a single church, and, no doubt, helped and strengthened both in the crossing of that stormy sea of trouble, at the very shore of which they were then standing.

Little could the people of Plymouth Church foresee as they crowded around their pastor, striving, in loving emulation, to out-do each other in marks of affection and confidence, that the most infamous conspiracy of modern times was rapidly involving pastor and church in a network of wicked lies.

None would have believed in those happy days that the very men who owed most to their pastor, who had received at his hands aid and comfort when most needed, whom he had nurtured and strengthened by his love, were using the very power they had derived through him, to destroy their benefactor; with the malignant ingenuity of the fallen angel, were weaving webs of falsehood and misrepresentation about his feet, working on his feelings, ever sensitive to any neglect of duty upon his part, by false statements of injury done by his thoughtlessness or neglect; cunningly interweaving his exaggerated outbursts of self-accusing grief with their falsehoods, prepared by them, with cool deliberation, to fit his words. They sought by his very horror of evil to give the appearance of evil. Closing his mouth by a pledge they well knew his honor would observe, they, disregarding their pledges, by busy whisperings strove to fasten suspicion on him, who, they knew, would not speak in self-defence.

The warmth of that heart that loved all mankind, that bore malice to none, but sought by greater loving-kindness to overcome enmity, returning good for evil, fell upon a serpent’s nest, warming into life the malignant, venomous brood, the intensity of whose desire to injure seemed in the proportion that each had been benefited. The eggs had hatched, and the serpents were daily growing stronger and more dangerous.

But least of all did Plymouth Church suspect that those whose hands they had just grasped in fraternal love, who, by their own teachings and their calling, should have been slow to believe evil of their brethren, would in a few short weeks join hands with her bitterest enemies, lending to them the moral support of their own blameless lives and high reputations, giving them advice, aid, and comfort, opening their churches as an asylum to the discontented and treacherous in Plymouth Church; and, even while the words of brotherly love and deep, abiding confidence, just flown from their lips, were ringing with joy and comfort in the heart of their brother, would lend the ears of ready listeners, to the base tales of baser men—men whom they themselves knew to be tainted in honor and morals—holding their cloaks to screen the would-be assassins.

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