Mr. Beecher, on his return to England, was again solicited to speak in public, and again declined. So immutable was his idea that this was a battle that Americans must fight out, and which could not be talked out.

He was at last, however, made to see his duty to that small staunch liberal party who had been maintaining the cause of America against heavy odds in England, and he felt that if they wished him to speak, he owed himself to them; that they were brave defenders hard beset; and that their cause and ours was one. Such men as Baptist Noel, Newman Hall, Francis Newman and others of that class, were applicants not to be resisted.

He therefore prepared himself for what he always has felt to have been the greatest effort and severest labor of his life, to plead the cause of his country at the bar of the civilized world. A series of engagements was formed for him to speak in the principal cities of England and Scotland.

He opened Friday, October 9th, in the Free Trade Hall, in Manchester, to a crowded audience of 6,000 people. The emissaries of the South had made every preparation to excite popular tumult, to drown his voice and prevent his being heard. Here he treated the subject on its merits, as being the great question of the rights of working men, and brought out and exposed the nature of the Southern confederacy as founded in the right of the superior to oppress the inferior race. Notwithstanding the roar and fury and interruptions he persevered and said his say, and the London Times next day, printed it all with a column or two of abuse by way of condiment.

October 13th, he spoke in the city hall at Glasgow, discussing slavery and free labor as comparative systems. The next day, October 14th, he spoke in Edinburgh in a great public meeting in the Free Church Assembly Hall, where he discussed the existing American conflict from the historical point of view.

This was by far the most quiet and uninterrupted meeting of any. But the greatest struggle of all was of course at Liverpool. At Liverpool, where Clarkson was mobbed, and came near being thrown off the wharf and drowned, there was still an abundance of that brutal noisy population which slavery always finds it useful to stir up to bay and bark when she is attacked.

Mr. Beecher has a firmly knit vigorous physical frame, come down from back generations of yeomen, renowned for strength, and it stood him in good service now. In giving an account afterwards, he said, "I had to speak extempore on subjects the most delicate and difficult as between our two nations, where even the shading of my words was of importance, and yet I had to outscream a mob and drown the roar of a multitude. It was like driving a team of runaway horses and making love to a lady at the same time."

The printed record of this speech, as it came from England, has constant parentheses of wild uproars, hootings, howls, cat calls, clamorous denials and interruptions; but by cheerfulness, perfect fearless good humor, intense perseverance, and a powerful voice, Mr. Beecher said all he had to say in spite of the uproar.

Two letters, written about this time, show the state of his mind during this emergency:

Sunday, Oct. 18, 1863. London.

My Dear Friend:

You know why I have not written you from England. I have been so full of work that I could not. God has been with me and prospered me. I have had health, and strength, and courage, and what is of unspeakably more importance, I have had the sweetest experience of love to God and to man, of all my life. I have been enabled to love our enemies. All the needless ignorance, the party perversions, the wilful misrepresentations of many newspapers, the arrogance and obstinacy too often experienced, and yet more the coolness of brethren of our faith and order, and the poisoned prejudices that have been arrayed against me by the propagation of untruths or distorted reports, have not prevented my having a love for old England, an appreciation of the good that is here, and a hearty desire for her whole welfare. This I count a great blessing. God awakened in my breast a desire to be a full and true Christian towards England, the moment I put my foot on her shores, and he has answered the prayers which he inspired. I have spoken at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Liverpool, and am now in London, preparing for Exeter Hall, Tuesday next. I have been buoyant and happy. The streets of Manchester and Liverpool have been filled with placards, in black and white letters, full of all lies and bitterness, but they have seemed to me only the tracery of dreams. For hours I have striven to speak amid interruptions of every kind—yellings, hootings, cat calls, derisive yells, impertinent and insulting questions, and every conceivable annoyance—some personal violence. But God has kept me in perfect peace. I stood in Liverpool and looked on the demoniac scene, almost without a thought that it was me that was present. It seemed rather like a storm raging in the trees of the forests, that roared and impeded my progress, but yet had matters personal or wilful in it, against me. You know, dear friend, how, when we are lifted by the inspiration of a great subject, and by the almost visible presence and vivid sympathy with Christ, the mind forgets the sediment and dregs of trouble, and sails serenely in an upper realm of peace, as untouched by the noise below, as is a bird that flies across a battlefield. Just so I had at Liverpool and Glasgow, as sweet an inward peace as ever I did in the loving meetings of dear old Plymouth Church. And again and again, when the uproar raged, and I could not speak, my heart seemed to be taking of the infinite fullness of the Saviour's pity, and breathing it out upon those poor, troubled men. I never had so much the spirit of continuing and unconscious prayer, or rather, of communion with Christ. I felt that I was his dear child, and that his arms were about me continually, and at times that peace that passeth all understanding has descended upon me that I could not keep tears of gratitude from falling for so much tender goodness of my God. For what are outward prosperities compared with these interior intimacies of God? It is not the path to the temple, but the interior of the temple that shows the goodness and glory of God. And I have been able to commit all to him, myself, my family, my friends, and in an especial manner the cause of my country. Oh, my friend, I have felt an inexpressible wonder that God should give it to me to do something for the dear land. When sometimes the idea of being clothed with power to stand up in this great kingdom, against an inconceivable violence of prejudice and mistake, and clear the name of my dishonored country, and let her brow shine forth, crowned with liberty, glowing with love to man, O, I have seemed unable to live, almost. It almost took my breath away!

"I have not in a single instance gone to the speaking halls without all the way breathing to God unutterable desires for inspiration, guidance, success; and I have had no disturbance of personality. I have been willing, yea, with eagerness, to be myself contemptible in men's sight if only my disgrace might be to the honor of that cause which is entrusted to our own thrice dear country. I have asked of God nothing but this—and this with uninterrupted heart-flow of yearning request—"Make me worthy to speak for God and man." I never felt my ignorance so painfully, nor the great want of moral purity and nobility of soul, as when approaching my tasks of defending liberty in this her hour of trial. I have an ideal of what a man should be that labors for such a cause, that constantly rebukes my real condition, and makes me feel painfully how little I am. Yet that is hardly painful. There passes before me a view of God's glory, so pure, so serene, uplifted, filling the ages, and more and more to be revealed, that I almost wish to lose my own identity, to be like a drop of dew that falls into the sea, and becomes a part of the sublime whole that glows under every line of latitude, and sounds on every shore! 'That God may be all in all,'—that is not a prayer only, but a personal experience. And in all this time I have not had one unkind feeling toward a single human being. Even those who are opposers, I have pitied with undying compassion, and enemies around me have seemed harmless, and objects of charity rather than potent foes to be destroyed. God be thanked, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

"My dear friend, when I sat down to write, I did it under this impulse—that I wanted somebody to know the secret of my life. I am in a noisy spectacle, and seem to thousands as one employing merely worldly implements, and acting under secular motives. But should I die, on sea or land, I wanted to say to you, who have been so near and dear to me, that as God's own very truth, 'the life that I have lived in the flesh, I have lived by faith of the Son of God.' I wanted to leave it with some one to say for me that it was not in natural gifts, nor in great opportunities, nor in personal ambition, that I have been able to endure and labor, but that the secret and spring of my outward life has been an inward, complete, and all-possessing faith of God's truth, and God's own self working in me to will and to do of his own good pleasure!

"There, now I feel better!

"Monday, 19th. I do not know as you will understand the feeling which led to the above outburst. I had spoken four times in seven days to immense audiences, under great excitement, and with every effort of Southern sympathizers, the newspapers, street placards, and in every other way to prevent my being heard. I thought I had been through furnaces before, but this ordeal surpassed all others. I was quite alone in England. I had no one to consult with. I felt the burden of having to stand for my country, in a half hostile land; and yet I never flinched for a moment, nor lost heart. But after resting twenty weeks, to begin so suddenly such a tremendous strain upon my voice, has very much affected it. To-day I am somewhat fearful I shall be unable to speak to-morrow night in Exeter Hall. I want to speak there, if the Lord will only let me. I shall be willing to give up all the other openings in the kingdom. I cannot stop to give you any sort of insight into affairs here. One more good victory, and England will be immovable. The best thinkers of England will be at any rate.

"I hope my people will feel that I have done my duty. I know that I have tried. I should be glad to feel that my countrymen approved, but above all others I should prize the knowledge that the people of Plymouth Church were satisfied with me.

"I am as ever, yours,
H. W. Beecher."