CH. XXII.]

SYMPATHY WITH THE NORTH

351

than had been known for any movement since the uprising for the abolition of the duties on corn. A deputation from the Emancipation Society waited on the American Minister to offer to President Lincoln their warmest congratulations; Rev. Newman Hall, one of the speakers, asserting that "the leading newspapers really did not represent the feelings of the masses."1 On a Sunday Spurgeon thus prayed before his congregation of many thousands: "Now, O God! we turn our thoughts across the sea to the terrible conflict of which we knew not what to say; but now the voice of freedom shows where is right. We pray Thee, give success to this glorious proclamation of liberty which comes to us from across the waters. We much feared our brethren were not in earnest, and would not come to this. Bondage and the lash can claim no sympathy from us. God bless and strengthen the North; give victory to their arms!" The immense congregation responded to this invocation in the midst of the prayer with a fervent amen.2 The address, eight years before, of half a million English women, which spoke of the "frightful results" of negro slavery, and implored that something might be done for the amelioration of the sad condition of the slaves, received at this time a reply from Harriet Beecher Stowe. Now that we had really grappled with the evil, she prayed for the sympathy of her sisters in England. Public meetings were constantly occurring. The Duke of Argyll and Milner Gibson, both cabinet ministers, made speeches, indicating "greater confidence in the treatment of the American question and its relations to slavery." There was even a reaction at Liverpool, which had seen with joy the departure of the Alabama. Bristol, the last port in Great Britain to relinquish the slave

1 Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 57.

2 Adams to Seward, Jan. 22, ibid., p. 80.

3 Published in the Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1863; Life of Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Fields, p. 263; Life by C. E. Stowe, p. 374; letters of John Bright and Hawthorne, ibid., pp. 389, 394, of Abp. Whately, Times, Jan. 16; see, also, the Spectator, Jan. 10.

4 ↑ Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 81.

trade, addressed the President with "respectful sympathy."1 January 29 Exeter Hall was the scene of a more earnest demonstration of public opinion than had been known in London since the days of the Anti-Corn-Law League. So vast was the crowd that an overflow meeting was held in a lower room, and another in the open air. In the great hall the mention of Jefferson Davis brought out manifestations of dislike, while the name of Abraham Lincoln was greeted with a burst of enthusiasm, the audience rising, cheering, and waving hats and handkerchiefs. The resolutions adopted showed intelligence as well as fellow-feeling. On the same night a public meeting at Bradford, Yorkshire, declared "that any intervention, physical or moral, on behalf of the slave power would be disgraceful," and closed its proceedings with three hearty cheers for President Lincoln. A large antislavery meeting in Gloucestershire, in a sympathetic address to the President, deplored "any apparent complicity [of Englishmen] with the Southern States in the clandestine equipment of war-ships." "Everybody now that I meet,” declared John Bright, "says to me, 'public opinion seems to have undergone a considerable change.'

The month of February witnessed similar large meetings, which adopted like resolutions. There were gatherings at Leeds, Bath, Edinburgh, Paisley, Carlisle, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Merthyr Tydvil, and many other places. A concourse of citizens in Glasgow said to the Presi

1 Spectator, Jan 24, 31; Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. pp. 88, 104.

2 Daily News, Jan. 30; the Spectator, Jan. 31; Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 97; Speeches of John Bright, vol. i. p. 240; Vacation Rambles, Thomas Hughes, p. 395. Bright wrote Sumner, Jan. 30: "You will see what meetings are being held here in favor of your emancipation policy and of the North in general. I think in every town in the kingdom a public meeting would go, by an overwhelming majority, in favor of President Lincoln and of the North. I hope what is doing may have an effect on our Cabinet and on Parliament, which meets on the 5th of February." - Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

3 Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 100 et seq.; Daily News, Jan. 30; Spectator Jan. 31.

4 Speech of Feb. 3, Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 241.

CH. XXII.]

66

PUBLIC MEETING OF LABORERS

353

dent in their address, "We honor you and we congratulate you."1 March 26, at a meeting of skilled laborers, held in London at the call of the Trades-Unions, John Bright took the chair, and made an eloquent speech, in which he expressed the meaning of the assemblage and the spirit of their address to Abraham Lincoln. "Privilege has shuddered," he said, at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should succeed. But you, the workers-you, striving after a better time-you, struggling upwards towards the light with slow and painful steps-you have no cause to look with jealousy upon a country which, menaced by the great nations of the globe, is that one where labor has met with the highest honor, and where it has reaped its greatest reward.” This fearful struggle, he went on, is between one section where "labor is honored more than elsewhere in the world," and another section where labor "is degraded and the laborer is made a chattel." He closed his speech with prophetic words: "Impartial history will tell that, when your statesmen were hostile or coldly neutral, when many of your rich men were corrupt, when your press-which ought to have instructed and defended was mainly written to betray, the fate of a continent and its vast population being in peril, you clung to freedom with an unfaltering trust that God in His infinite mercy will yet make it the heritage of all His children."2

1 Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 104 et seq.; Daily News and Spectator, Feb. 21. Adams wrote Seward, Feb. 19: "The current of popular sentiment flows with little abatement of strength, as was made manifest last night at another great assemblage at St. James's Hall in this town. I have taken no part whatever in promoting these movements, having become well convinced that the smallest suspicion of my agency would do more harm than good." -Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 117.

2 Bright's Speeches, vol. i. pp. 248, 253; Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. pp. 162, 244; Spectator, March 28. Bright wrote Sumner, April 4: "It was a great meeting, and means much for those present, who are the choice men of the London workmen and artisan class. I endeavored in my speech to widen your great question, and to show its transcendent importance to labor all over the world. The speeches of the workingmen were logical and good, and I am sure the effect of the meeting must be great."-Pierce-Sumner

It is interesting to look, with the eyes of Adams, upon these expressions of a noble public opinion. Thus he wrote in his diary: "January 17. It is quite clear that the current is now setting very strongly with us among the body of the people. This may be quite useful on the approach of the session of Parliament. . . . January 30. Things are improving here. The manifestation made at Exeter Hall last night is reported as one of the most extraordinary ever made in London, and proves, pretty conclusively, the spirit of the middle classes here as well as elsewhere. It will not change the temper of the higher classes, but it will do something to moderate the manifestation of it. February 3. I think there can be but little doubt that the tendency of the popular current now sets in our favor," and, speaking of a large and respectable delegation of the British and Foreign Antislavery Society, he wrote: "They left me with hearty shakes of the hand that marked the existence of active feeling at bottom. It was not the lukewarmness and indifference of the aristocracy, but the genuine English heartiness of goodwill." February 11 he said: "I am still overrun with reports of public meetings, to the notices of which I am obliged to give an answer;" and February 26, "The current is still setting strongly with us among the people.”

These demonstrations show what potent arguments for the Northern side were the Emancipation Proclamation and the organized anti-slavery agitation. The English who had espoused the cause of the South now became, by the logic of the situation, apologists for slavery. The Times presented the Biblical argument for the justification of it, and told the story of Paul and Onesimus in the language and temper of men on Southern plantations. Slavery, it argued further, is no more at variance with the spirit of the gospel than "sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen;" and it said of

Papers, MS. On the sentiment generally, see Mill to Motley, Jan. 26, Bright to Motley, March 9, Motley to his mother, March 3, Motley's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 111, 118, 119; Cobden to Sumner, Feb. 13, Am. Hist. Rev., Jan. 1897, p. 308; Bright to C. W. Field, Harper's Magazine, May, 1896, p. 846.

CH. XXII.]

SENTIMENT OF THE HIGHER CLASSES

355

the Proclamation that was arousing the enthusiasm of the masses, President Lincoln "calls to his aid the execrable expedient of a servile insurrection. Egypt is destroyed, but his heart is hardened, and he will not let the people go."1 The Saturday Review urged that the laws dictated from on high, as recorded in the Old Testament, sanctioned and protected property in slaves. But "the American law-giver not only confiscates his neighbor's slaves, but orders the slaves to cut their masters' throats. Nor," it went on to say, "is the matter left to the remote guidance of Old Testament precedent.... St. Paul sent Onesimus, the fugitive slave of that time, back to his master, Philemon; so that without the master's consent it was not competent, even in an Apostle, to release a slave. But what St. Paul might not do Abraham Lincoln may. "2 Later, it spoke of the movement which was ennobling the common people of England as "a carnival of cantarousing agitation on behalf of the divine right of insurrection and massacre." 8 The Times and Saturday Review, according to the Spectator, represented "the higher intelligence of England," and their ground of reasoning displays well the bond of sympathy between the two landed aristocracies separated by the sea. The Southern lords, by their system of labor, were relieved from the minute cares of making money, were enabled to maintain an open and generous hospitality, and were afforded leisure for devotion to society and politics, thus reaching a communion in conditions, tastes, and aims with the English noblemen, who, in turn, had taken a leaf out of the book of their Southern brethren, for, having begun by looking kindly upon the South

1 Jan. 6, 15.

2 Jan. 3. Cf. these arguments with the Southern arguments. See vol. 1. p. 370.

3 Jan. 24.

4 Jan 10. The Spectator is filled with "profound consternation. We could not have believed for a moment a year ago that the Times and Saturday Review would both in the same week devote their ablest pens to an apology, not merely for slavery itself but for the Christian character of that institution."