From the very outburst of this great convulsion, I have had but one hope and one faith, and it is this—that the result of this stupendous strife may be to make freedom the heritage for ever of a whole continent, and that the grandeur and the prosperity of the American Union may never be impaired.
* * * * *
AMERICA.
IV.
THE STRUGGLE IN AMERICA. ST. JAMES'S HALL, MARCH 26, 1863.
[The meeting at which this speech was delivered was convened by the Trades' Unions of London to enable the working men to express their sentiments on the war in the United States. Mr. Bright was Chairman of the meeting.]
When the Committee did me the honour to ask me to attend this meeting to-night and to take the Chair, I felt that I was not at liberty to refuse, for I considered that there was something remarkable in the character of this meeting; and I need not tell you that the cause which we are assembled to discuss is one which excites my warmest sympathies. This meeting is remarkable, inasmuch as it is not what is commonly called a public meeting, but it is a meeting, as you have seen from the announcements and advertisements by which it has been called—it is a meeting of members of Trades' Unions and Trades' Societies in London. The members of these Societies have not usually stepped out from their ordinary business to take part in meetings of this kind on public questions.
The subject which we have met to discuss is one of surpassing interest— which excites at this moment, and has excited for two years past, the attention and the astonishment of the civilized world. We see a country which for many years—during the lifetime of the oldest amongst us—has been the most peaceful, and prosperous, and the most free amongst the great nations of the earth—we see it plunged at once into the midst of a sanguinary revolution, whose proportions are so gigantic as to dwarf all other revolutionary records and events of which we have any knowledge. But I do not wonder at this revolution. No man can read the history of the United States from the time when they ceased to be dependent colonies of England, without discovering that at the birth of that great Republic there was sown the seed, if not of its dissolution, at least of its extreme peril; and the infant giant in its cradle may be said to have been rocked under the shadow of the cypress, which is the symbol of mortality and of the tomb.
Colonial weakness, when face to face with British strength, made it impossible to put an end to slavery, or to establish a republic free from slavery. To meet England, it was necessary to be united, and to be united it was necessary to tolerate slavery; and from that hour to this— at least, to a period within the last two or three years—the love of the Union and the patriotism of the American people have induced them constantly to make concessions to slavery, because they knew that when they ceased to make concessions they ran the peril of that disruption which has now arrived; and they dreaded the destruction of their country even more than they hated the evil of slavery. But these concessions failed, as I believe concessions to evil always do fail. These concessions failed to secure safety in that Union. There were principles at war which were wholly irreconcilable. The South, as you know, has been engaged for fifty years in building fresh ramparts by which it may defend its institutions. The North has been growing yearly greater in freedom; and though the conflict might be postponed, it was obviously inevitable.
In our day, then, that which the statesmen of America have hoped permanently to postpone has arrived. The great trial is now going on in the sight of the world, and the verdict upon this great question must at last be rendered. But how much is at stake? Some men of this country, some writers, treat it as if, after all, it was no great matter that had caused this contest in the United States. I say that a whole continent is at stake. It is not a question of boundary; it is not a question of tariff; it is not a question of supremacy of party, or even of the condition of four millions of negroes. It is more than that. It is a question of a whole continent, with its teeming millions, and what shall be their present and their future fate. It is for these millions freedom or slavery, education or ignorance, light or darkness, Christian morality ever widening and all-blessing in its influence, or an overshadowing and all-blasting guilt.