The Battle of Principles / A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict

by Newell Dwight Hillis

The only power and the whole power behind Beecher was that of Plymouth Church, that gave him the money for all of his expenses, and took from him a pledge that if he spoke at all he was to speak at their expense, but under no circumstances to either preach or lecture until he had recovered his strength. He was ill during the entire voyage, and was not able to appear on deck until the vessel entered the Mersey. The news of Beecher's coming had preceded him, and on opening the papers he found even church leaders antagonistic. They deplored his coming, lest he increase the excitement. The nobility was in favour of the South, as were the ship-builders, the mill-owners, the bankers and all who had investments or loans in the cotton industry of England and of the South.

One hundred and fifty Congregational ministers greeted Beecher with a breakfast in London. They asked him to preach and speak on religious topics, but to avoid all reference to slavery on account of the inflamed condition of the English mind. The man who introduced him deplored the war, and described the patience of God in permitting the North to go on. When Beecher arose to speak he was in a towering rage. He told them that he would neither preach nor lecture nor speak in a mother land that was openly hostile to her own daughter, and unfriendly to every principle of liberty that was dear to England and embedded in English tradition and history.

In substance, he said: "Your conscience here in England is very sensitive on the subject of war, providing some one else is fighting the war, but England has no conscience at all as to war when she is prosecuting the campaign." At that very hour England was fighting a war in Japan, and a war in China, and a war in New Zealand for territory. Three wars being quite proper, if England fought them, but oh, the patience of God in permitting the North to exist even for one moment, while fighting for liberty, the Union and the emancipation of slaves! He told them that they thought it was a crime for the North to have a war for emancipation, but quite proper for England to threaten a war over two men named Mason and Slidell! Beecher understood Old England. No nation in history ever conducted so many wars. No other nation's statesmen ever had such skill to invent moral excuses for seizing territory, in Africa, Egypt, India, Thibet, Australia, New Zealand and all the islands of the sea. He best described it in his final speech in London, when returned from the Continent: "On what shore has not the prow of your ships dashed? What land is there with a name and a people where your banner has not led your soldiers? And when the great reveillé shall sound, it will muster British soldiers from every clime and people under the whole heaven." What? "Speak in England on religion and keep still on slavery, and the North and the South?" When an engine is full of steam, it is a bad thing to sit on its safety-valve. Figuratively speaking, the chairman and the hundred and fifty ministers, who were trying to get Beecher to speak on religion and keep still on slavery, sat passively and serenely on the safety-valve for about five minutes, but finally the engine blew up. Mr. Beecher was not the man to stifle his convictions in the name of peace, for he knew that in an evil world a good man has no right to dwell at peace with the devil and his minions. So he declared his hostility, turned his back on England, and went to the Continent; and thus ended the first chapter in the European trip.

Looking backward, it is easy to discover the explanation of England's attitude towards slavery and the Southern leaders. During the early forties England had herself passed through an industrial revolution. Because she had little agricultural land, and thirty millions of people, the cost of living was high. When the cry of the people for bread became bitter, Cobden, Bright and their associates inaugurated and carried through the Free Corn Movement. With the incoming of free raw materials England became the great manufacturing centre. What her farmers lost through free trade in selling grain they gained in the lowered price on which they bought. Within ten years after the victory of free trade England became a hive of industry, filled with clustering cities, while the whole land resounded with the stroke of engines. Abundance succeeded to poverty and work trod closely upon the heels of want. So prosperous had England become that by 1860 she was importing two million bales of cotton from Southern States. The shipyards of Glasgow built ships to carry cotton, the bankers in London made loans to Southern planters, the mill-owners in Manchester bought shares in the Southern cotton fields. The rich men of the South were constant guests of the mill-owners in Central England and of the bankers in London. Little by little England was drawn in through financial channels, and cast her lot in with the production of cotton,—and slavery.

Then came the Civil War. The planters went to the front with Lee's army; the slaves freed from overseers would not work. The production of cotton was halved. The Northern navy blockaded the exit of cotton ships from the Southern ports. English ships hung around the Southern shores trying in vain to find access, hoping to run the gauntlet and obtain a cargo of cotton. One by one the great English mills shut down for want of raw material, and when two winters had passed, and the autumn of 1863 had come, and the English working people fronted a third winter, the spectacle became pathetic and terrible. Gaunt Famine stalked the land. The skeleton Want stood in the shadow of the poor man's house. But the courage and fidelity of the English cotton spinners held out for two years. The poor always love the poor. The classes have always been wrong, the masses have always been right. Luxury puts wax into the ears of the aristocrats, but want makes the hearing of the poor very sensitive to a sob of pain. The sympathy of the cotton spinner was with the Northern working man. An English working man did not want to be put in the same class with a Southern slave. He saw that any law that riveted fetters on black slaves in the South helped forge a manacle for the cotton spinner's wrist in the mother land. These poor English folk believed in the dignity of labour, in the right to a good wage, and in the necessity for all working people standing together.

But the mill-owner wanted raw cotton. The banker wanted the mill-owner to have his cotton that his loans might be paid. The ship-builders wanted Southern cotton that their industry might thrive. Investors who for two years had had no interest on their Southern loans sympathized with the South; the politicians, controlled by their financial interests, wanted the South to succeed. In that hour of temptation Avarice drew near and choked Justice. Greed offered bribes to Conscience. Old England's ruling classes, with the full sympathy of men like Gladstone and hundreds of others, favoured the speedy recognition of the Southern Confederacy in the hope that that would end the war and restore England's prosperity.

In a word, the situation was this: The North had to fight the South, and England with her influence as well. For here was the North, struggling for the principles of the Pilgrim Fathers, for liberty, for democracy and for the slaves, and just in the darkest hour of the struggle, when she was burying her dead and the whole North was hung with funeral crape, England, with ships on every sea, England, strong and powerful, taking advantage of the capture of two Southern emissaries—Mason and Slidell—from the British ship Trent on the high seas, declared she would send an army to Canada and ships to batter down our Northern cities. Even Gladstone bought Southern bonds, but later Gladstone deeply lamented his sympathy with slavery and the South, and asked the world to forgive and forget it. Yet if the North has long ago forgiven England, it must be a hard thing for England to forgive herself that she gave to slavery every ounce of influence she had, her threats, her frowns, her diplomacy and her ships. Long afterwards a court of arbitration in Geneva punished England with an enormous fine for the American shipping that she helped destroy in her effort to help break down the North and defeat liberty in a war that her own statesman, John Bright, has characterized as one of the few wars not only justifiable but glorious in all history.

Now this was the attitude of England. Her upper classes and financial interests were all on the side of slavery and the South. Her great middle class were largely in favour of liberty. Her working people were naturally on the side of free labour and the North, but they were weakened by starvation till their endurance and fortitude were almost gone. And then it was that Beecher entered the scene, returning from the Continent to England. Recognition of the Confederacy and other unfriendly official acts were trembling in the balance; yet there was hesitation, on account of the common people, who sympathized with the North. In telling of this afterwards, Mr. Beecher said: "To my amazement I found that the unvoting English possessed great power in England; a great deal more power, in fact, than if they had a vote. The aristocracy and the government felt, 'These men know they have no political privileges, and we must administer with the strictest regard to their feelings or there will be a revolution.'" There were many noble exceptions among the higher classes, and the Queen, doubtless under the influence of the Prince Consort Albert, who died in 1861, and had been a firm friend of America, was also friendly to the North; but her Government was not.

The argument finally used to persuade Beecher to speak was that the English Anti-Slavery Society was already discredited, unpopular, and frowned upon by the nobility and the upper classes, and that if Beecher would not recognize them by at least one speech their cause and ours would be still further weakened.

He began his work with a speech at Manchester, the very centre of the cotton spinning industry. For weeks the streets had been placarded against him. On his way to the Free Trade Hall he found, not a multitude, but a mob, filling the streets. The meeting had been packed in advance. Within five minutes after his introduction the storm let loose its fury. There were two or three centres of conflict that became veritable whirlpools of excitement. All the rest of the audience climbed on their chairs to see what was going on in the tumultuous centres. Everybody seemed to be yelling, some for order, and others with the purpose of breaking up the meeting. Mr. Beecher saw that many were determined that he should not speak, and he realized that if they broke him down, other cities would withdraw their invitation, and it would appear that all England was unalterably opposed to the North, so that the recognition of the Confederacy might follow. When his enemies began to wear themselves out and the tumult to subside, Mr. Beecher shot a few sentences into the noise. "I have registered a vow that I will not leave your country until I have spoken in your great cities. I am going to be heard, and my country shall be vindicated."