Wellnigh exhausted by my unremitted attention to the duties of my profession, and to the several great reforms that have signalized the last fifty years, I was persuaded to go to Europe for recreation and the recovery of my health. I spent six months of the year 1859 on the Continent, and three months in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Numerous as are the interesting places and persons to be seen in each of these last-named countries, I must confess that my greatest attraction to them was the expectation of seeing many of the friends of liberty, who had co-operated so generously with us for the abolition of slavery. And in this respect I was not disappointed. I lectured by request to large audiences in several of the chief cities of the kingdom. But, what was much better, I had meetings for conversation with the prominent Abolitionists, especially in London, Glasgow, and Dublin. These were numerously attended, and the intelligent questions put to me, by those who were so well informed and so deeply interested in the cause of my enslaved countrymen, saved me from misspending a minute on the commonplaces of the subject, and led me to give our friends the most recent information of the kinds they craved.
I remember particularly the conversations that I had in Glasgow and Dublin. The former was held in the ample, well-stored library room of Professor Nichol of the University of that city. His wife was, a few years before, Miss Elizabeth Pease, one of the earliest, best-informed, and most liberal of our English fellow-laborers. He promptly concurred with her in cordially inviting me to his home. And on my second or third visit, he had gathered there to meet me the prominent Abolitionists of the city and immediate neighborhood. He presided at the meeting, and introduced me in a most comprehensive and impressive speech on human freedom,—the paramount right of man,—of all men,—demanding protection wherever it was denied or endangered from all who can give it aid, without consideration of distance or nationality. That well-spent evening I shall never forget, especially his and his wife’s contributions of wise thought and elevated sentiment. But my too brief personal acquaintance with them is kept more sacred in my memory by his death, which happened soon after, and an intensely interesting incident connected with it.
At Dublin and its vicinity I spent a fortnight,—too short a time. But I had the happiness, while there, of seeing face to face several of our warm-hearted sympathizers and active co-laborers, especially James Haughton, Esq., and Richard D. Webb. The former I found to be more engaged in the cause of Peace, and much more of Temperance, than in the antislavery cause. Indeed, in the cause of Temperance he had done then, and has done since, more than any other man in Ireland, excepting Father Matthew. Still, he had always been, and was then, heartily in earnest for the abolition of slavery everywhere.
But Richard D. Webb could hardly have taken a more active part with American Abolitionists, or have rendered us much more valuable services, if he had been a countryman of ours, and living in our midst. The readers of The Liberator cannot have forgotten how often communications from his pen appeared in its columns, nor how thorough an acquaintance they evinced with whatever pertained to our conflict with “the peculiar institution,” that great anomaly in our democracy. Mr. Webb was afterwards the author of an excellent memoir of John Brown, whose “soul is still marching on,”—the spirit of whose hatred of oppression, and sympathy with the down-trodden, is spreading wider and descending deeper into the hearts of our people, and will continue so to spread, until every vestige of slavery shall be effaced from our land, and all the inhabitants thereof shall enjoy equal rights and privileges on the same conditions. Mr. Webb’s memoir shows how justly he appreciated and how heartily he admired the intentions of John Brown, whatever he thought of the expediency of his plan of operations. For a week I enjoyed the hospitality of Mrs. Edmundson, and at her house met one evening many of the moral élite of Dublin, for conversation respecting the conflict with slavery in our country. Their inquiries showed them to be very well informed on the subject, and alive to whatever then seemed likely to affect the issue favorably or unfavorably.
Lord Morpeth, who was at that time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, graciously invited me to lunch with him. He had visited our country a few years before, and had manifested while here the deepest interest in the principles and purposes of the Abolitionists. I was delighted to find that he and his sister, Lady Howard, continued to be as much concerned as ever for our success.
On my return from Europe, early in November, 1859, the steamer stopped as usual at Halifax. There we first received the tidings of John Brown’s raid, and the failure of his enterprise. I felt at once that it was “the beginning of the end” of our conflict with slavery. There were several Southern gentlemen and ladies among our fellow-passengers, and Northern sympathizers with them, as well as others of opposite opinions. During our short passage from Halifax to Boston there was evidently a deep excitement in many bosoms. Occasionally words of bitter execration escaped the lips of one and another of the proslavery party. But there was no dispute or general conversation upon the subject. The event, of which we had just heard, was a portent of too much magnitude to be hastily estimated, and the consequences thereof flippantly foretold.
On my arrival in Boston, and the next day in Syracuse, I found the public in a state of high excitement; and for two or three months the case of John Brown was the subject of continual debate in private circles as well as public meetings. The murmurs and threats that came daily from the South, intimated plainly enough that the slaveholding oligarchy were preparing for something harsher than a war of words. They were gathering themselves to rule or ruin our Republic. Under the imbecile administration of Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, could do as he saw fit in his department. It was observed that the arms and ammunition of the nation, with the greater part of the small army needed in times of peace, were removed and disposed of in such places as would make them most available to the Southerners, if the emergency for which they were preparing should come. They awaited only the issue of the next presidential contest. The first ten months of the year 1860 were given to that contest. All the strength of the two political parties was put in requisition, drawn out, and fully tested and compared. And when victory crowned the friends of freedom and human rights,—when the election of Mr. Lincoln was proclaimed,—then came forth from the South the fierce cry of disunion, and the standard of a new Confederacy was set up. It is not my intention to enter upon the period of our Civil War. These Recollections will close with occurrences before the fall of Fort Sumter.
In pursuance of a plan adopted several years before, by the American Antislavery Society, arrangements were made early in December, 1860, to hold our annual conventions during the months of January and February, in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and in a dozen other of the principal cities and villages between the two extremes. We who had devoted ourselves so assiduously for a quarter of a century or more to the subversion of the slavery in our land, of course had many thoughts and feelings upon the subject at that time, which pressed for utterance. We were the last persons who could be indifferent to the state of our country in 1860, or be silent in view of it. Nor had we any reason then to suppose that our counsels and admonitions would be particularly unacceptable to the people, as we were then frequently assured that the public sentiment of New York, as well as New England, had become quite antislavery.
We were not a little surprised, therefore, at the new outbreak of violent opposition in Boston, and afterwards in Buffalo and other places. About the middle of January I attended the convention at Rochester, where we were rudely treated and grossly insulted. I could no longer doubt that there was a concerted plan, among the Democrats everywhere, to evince a revival of their zeal in behalf of their Southern partisans by breaking up our meetings. And it appeared that the Republicans were afraid to take the responsibility, and incur the new odium of protecting our conventions in their constitutional rights. Still I hoped better things of Syracuse.