“My own feelings and judgment underwent a great change while I was in England... I was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards the North which I everywhere met, and the sympathetic prejudices in favor of the South. And yet everybody was alike condemning slavery and praising liberty!”
How could England do this, how with the same breath blow cold and hot, how be against the North that was fighting the extension of slavery and yet be against slavery too? Confusing at the time, it is clear to-day. Imbedded in Lincoln’s first inaugural address lies the clew: he said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them.” Thus Lincoln, March 4, 1861. Six weeks later, when we went-to war, we went, not “to interfere with the institution of slavery,” but (again in Lincoln’s words) “to preserve, protect, and defend” the Union. This was our slogan, this our fight, this was repeated again and again by our soldiers and civilians, by our public men and our private citizens. Can you see the position of those Englishmen who condemned slavery and praised liberty? We ourselves said we were not out to abolish slavery, we disclaimed any such object, by our own words we cut the ground away from them.
Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect upon January 1, 1863, did Lincoln proclaim emancipation—thus doing what he had said twenty-two months before “I believe I have no lawful right to do.”
That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly he had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped together as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he known this from the start, known that the North’s bottom cause, the ending of slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and must forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, he could have done nothing. “I believe I have no lawful right.” There were thousands in the North who also thus believed. It was only an extremist minority who disregarded the Constitution’s acquiescence in slavery and wanted emancipation proclaimed at once. Had Lincoln proclaimed it, the North would have split in pieces, the South would have won, the Union would have perished, and slavery would have remained. Lincoln had to wait until the season of anguish and meditation had unblinded thousands besides himself, and thus had placed behind him enough of the North to struggle on to that saving of the Union and that freeing of the slave which was consummated more than two years later by Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox.
But it was during that interim of anguish and meditation that England did us most of the harm which our memories vaguely but violently treasure. Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, official grounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influence over our English enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, that sympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longer say to it, “but Lincoln says himself that he doesn’t intend to abolish slavery.”
Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men of Manchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiastic message to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remain unemployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense of the slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: “I know nothing in my political experience so striking, an a display of spontaneous public action, as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall (in London), when, without one attraction in the form of a popular orator, the vast building, its minor rooms and passages, and the streets adjoining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience. That meeting has had a powerful effect on our newspapers and politicians. It has closed the mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South. And I now write to assure you that any unfriendly act on the part of our Government—no matter which of our aristocratic parties is in power—towards your cause is not to be apprehended. If an attempt were made by the Government in any way to commit us to the South, a spirit would be instantly aroused which would drive that Government from power.”
I lay emphasis at this point upon these instances (many more could be given) because it has been the habit of most Americans to say that England stopped being hostile to the North as soon as the North began to win. In January, 1863, the North had not visibly begun to win. It had suffered almost unvaried defeat so far; and the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, where the tide turned at last our way, were still six months ahead. It was from January 1, 1863, when Lincoln planted our cause firmly and openly on abolition ground, that the undercurrent of British sympathy surged to the top. The true wonder is, that this undercurrent should have been so strong all along, that those English sympathizers somehow in their hearts should have known what we were fighting for more clearly than we had been able to see it; ourselves. The key to this is given in Beecher’s letter—it is nowhere better given—and to it I must now return.
“I soon perceived that my first error was in supposing that Great Britain was an impartial spectator. In fact, she was morally an actor in the conflict. Such were the antagonistic influences at work in her own midst, and the division of parties, that, in judging American affairs she could not help lending sanction to one or the other side of her own internal conflicts. England was not, then, a judge, sitting calmly on the bench to decide without bias; the case brought before her was her own, in principle, and in interest. In taking sides with the North, the common people of Great Britain and the laboring class took sides with themselves in their struggle for reformation; while the wealthy and the privileged classes found a reason in their own political parties and philosophies why they should not be too eager for the legitimate government and nation of the United States.
“All classes who, at home, were seeking the elevation and political enfranchisement of the common people, were with us. All who studied the preservation of the state in its present unequal distribution of political privileges, sided with that section in America that were doing the same thing.
“We ought not to be surprised nor angry that men should maintain aristocratic doctrines which they believe in fully as sincerely, and more consistently, than we, or many amongst us do, in democratic doctrines.