"The women of the South," reads the address, "have been insulted, imprisoned, flogged, violated, and outraged in a most inhuman and savage manner. Their homes and goods have been destroyed, their houses forcibly entered, the helpless and unresisting inmates murdered, the fleeing overtaken and cut down in cold blood by the savage soldiery of the North.... They are now glutting their hellish rage against the people they seek to destroy in inflicting every kind of torture, punishment, and misery that their fruitful minds can invent upon those that they would fain call fellow-citizens.... The atrocities, cruelties, crimes, and outrages committed against the South in this war are without a parallel in the history of the world....
"In the name of suffering Lancashire, civilization, justice, peace, liberty, humanity, Christianity, and a candid world; and by the highest considerations that can call men into action, we beg you to come forward to aid, contribute, and support a brave and valiant people that are fighting for their homes, firesides, birthright, lives, independence, sacred honor, and all that is dear to mankind. By all the sorrows, deprivations, bereavements, losses, hardships, and suffering that now ingulf the Confederate people, we appeal to you to arouse, and rush to their aid with your pence, shillings, and pounds; give them your sympathy, countenance, and influence, to hurl the tyrants from their country, and obtain the greatest boon to man,—self-government. Fairest and best of earth, for the sake of violated innocence, insulted virtue, and the honor of your sex,—come in woman's majesty and omnipotence, and give strength to a cause that has for its object the highest human aims, the amelioration and exaltation of humanity."
The address was issued by Englishmen, had a wide circulation, and undoubtedly was accepted as a true representation of affairs.
Then Whittier sent his stinging words, "To Englishmen," across the Atlantic:—
"But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms, for conscience' sake;
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With 'walloping the nigger'!
* * * * *
"And is it Christian England cheers
The bruiser, not the bruised?
And must she run, despite the tears
And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
A-muck in Slavery's crusade?
"O black disgrace! O shame and loss
Too deep for tongue to phrase on!
Tear from your flag its holy cross,
And in your van of battle toss
The pirate's skull-bone blazon!"
The Trent affair had inflamed the British public, and Rebel sympathizers were fierce for war, that the South might reap the advantage; but Mason and Slidell had been given up by President Lincoln, and Mr. Mason stood hat in hand at the gate of St. James. But Earl Russell could not conveniently see him just then. Lancashire had spoken. Men upon whose humble hearths no fire warmed the wintry air, in whose homes poverty was ever a guest, around whose doors the wolf of want was always prowling,—the bone and muscle of England, with whom the instinct of Liberty was stronger to persuade than distress and famine to subdue,—they, the hardy workers of England, were with the North.
At home, in the valley of the Shenandoah, Mr. Mason had been a Virginia lord. It was his nature to be proud, imperious, and haughty. He lived in the greatness of an ancient family name. He expected ready admittance at St. James; but though he rang the bell early and often, and sent in his card, Earl Russell was not "at home" to him.