From St. John's, Newfoundland, I went to Boston, by way of St. Johns, New Brunswick, stopping at Portland, Maine, for a brief visit. At Portland I was met by B. F. Guild on behalf of Curtis Guild, owner of the Boston Commercial Bulletin, which had just been established. Guild published my Union speeches, and must have spent $1,000 a week—the Bulletin was a weekly paper—in advertising them and my other writings. I published my History of Newfoundland in his paper, receiving for it $10 a column, the only pay I have ever received from a newspaper or other periodical for my work. I saw recently a notice of the death of B. F. Guild, at the age of eighty-nine. I had no idea he was so old.
I found that I had returned to my country the most popular American in public life. I was greeted everywhere by vast concourses of people, who cheered me and demanded speeches about the situation in England and my experiences there. At Boston I was met by a tremendous gathering, and it looked like a procession as we went up State Street to the Revere House. I was placed in the rooms that had been occupied by the Prince of Wales, now King Edward, on his visit to Boston two years before.
I was not long in Boston before I got into trouble by trying to enlighten the people with regard to the war. There was a great assemblage in Faneuil Hall, where Sumner was to speak, and I went there to see what was going on. Sumner was not a very effective speaker before mixed audiences, and could not have stood up for twenty minutes in the halls of London, where the greatest freedom of debate is indulged in, and where every speaker must be prepared to answer quickly and to the point any question that may be hurled at him, or to reply with sharpness and point to any retort that may come from the crowd that faces him.
I was very much astonished, therefore, to hear Sumner challenge any one in the audience to confute his arguments. I knew, of course, that the gantlet thus lightly thrown down was a mere oratorical figure, but in England it would have been taken up at once, and Sumner would have been routed. The temptation was too much for me. I rose, to the apparent astonishment and embarrassment of the orator and of the committee on the platform, and said: "Mr. Sumner, when you have finished, I should like to speak a word." The cheering that greeted my acceptance of the gaily-flung challenge was cordial.
As soon as Sumner had finished I climbed to the platform. There I had the greatest difficulty with the committee, which seemed determined to suppress any attempt to reply to the hero and god of the upper classes in Boston. The moment I began to talk the committee signaled to the band, and the music drowned my voice. When the band stopped I started again, but the committee endeavored to stop me. I acted as my own policeman and cleared the platform, when another rush was made upon me, and all went tumbling from the stage. I was then arrested and taken to the City Hall. The crowd seemed decidedly with me, although the utmost it knew as to my sentiments was that I was opposed to making instant abolition of slavery a condition precedent to putting an end to the war (that is, on Lincoln's platform, Union, with or without slavery).
In a few minutes there was a crowd of some thousands of people about the City Hall demanding loudly that I be set at liberty. I quieted the people by sending word to them that I was preparing a proclamation to the American people. This proclamation, entitled "God Save the People," was published by Guild in the Bulletin—and I should like to get a copy of it, as I have lost my own. This arrest did not interfere with me very much.
I made a contract with Guild to lecture in the North and West, and my first lecture was given in the Academy of Music, New York. The general subject was the abolition question, as it related to the war between the States. At this meeting Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was made chairman, but the audience did not like that, and a big cabbage was thrown to the stage from the gallery. I then took charge of the meeting myself, and walking to the edge of the stage, said: "I see that you do not like Mr. Clay; but he should have a fair chance. If Mr. Guild will arrange for a meeting at Cooper Institute to-morrow night, I will debate with Mr. Clay, and you can then fire at me cabbages or gold dollars, as you like. I propose the following subject for the discussion: American Slavery as a Stepping-stone from African Barbarism to Christian Civilization; hence, it is a Divine Institution." Mr. Clay accepted.
The next evening, at Cooper Institute, there was a large audience that packed the hall from door to stage; $1,300 were taken at the box-office. The papers on the following morning gave from two to four columns of the discussion, and the London Times considered it sufficiently important, even to Englishmen, to give a long account and editorial comments. It said that the honors of the debate had been with me, and gave a specimen of my repartee, which, it said, had swept Mr. Clay off his feet.
Mr. Clay had referred in his speech to an interview he had had with President Lincoln, who was then hesitating as to issuing the Proclamation of Emancipation. Mr. Clay said, "I told the President that I would not flesh my sword in the defense of Washington unless he issued a proclamation freeing the slaves." My reply was: "It is fair to assume that, in order to make Major-General Cassius M. Clay flesh his sword, the President will issue the proclamation." There was loud laughter at this. The President did issue his proclamation three months after this.
I received a postal card the other day from Clay, who is now a nonagenarian, in his armed castle in Kentucky.