After helping to fit out two regiments, Mr. Beecher took upon himself the entire equipping of a new one, called "The Long Island Volunteers," afterwards the Sixty-seventh New York.
Plymouth Church parlors became a workshop, where, under Mrs. Beecher's direction, women made articles for the soldiers at the front. By personal solicitation large sums were raised from families and merchants. Mr. Beecher told his wife to use all his salary except the smallest amount necessary for family expenses. He made patriotic addresses which were read and talked about the country over. "It is probable," said the well-known journalist, Frederick Hudson, "that there is not another man in the United States who is as much heard and read as Henry Ward Beecher, unless the other man is Wendell Phillips."
The first anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter, Henry Ward Beecher said, "We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child that we have, and our own selves; we will bring all that we are and all that we have, and offer them up freely—but this country shall be one and undivided. We will have one Constitution and one liberty, and that universal. The Atlantic shall sound it, and the Pacific shall echo it back, deep answering to deep, and it shall reverberate from the Lakes on the North to the unfrozen Gulf on the South—'One nation, one constitution, one starry banner!' Hear it, England!—one country, and indivisible; one hope; one baptism; one constitution; one government; one nation; one country; one people—cost what it may, we will have it!"
He urged immediate and universal emancipation, with all the fire and eloquence of his nature. He became the warm friend of President Lincoln, with whom he had many confidential conferences. When the immortal Emancipation Proclamation was issued, declaring that after Jan. 1, 1863, the slaves "shall be thenceforward and forever free," Beecher said in his lecture-room talk, Dec. 31: "As for myself, let come what will come, I care not. God may peel me and bark me and strip me of my leaves, and do as he chooses with my earthly estate. I have lived long enough.... I have uttered some words that will not die, because they are incorporated into the lives of men that will not die."
In June, 1863, worn out with continuous speaking, Mr. Beecher went to Europe with Dr. John Raymond, then president of Vassar College. He had been over before, in 1850, thirteen years previously. He travelled in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, and at the request of the United States Minister, talked with King Leopold of Belgium, a wise and able man, about American affairs.
The king, asking Mr. Beecher what he thought of sending Maximilian to Mexico, he replied, "Your Majesty, any man that wants to sit upon a throne in Mexico, I would advise to try Vesuvius first; if he can sit there for a while, then he might go and try it in Mexico." His words proved true for the unfortunate Maximilian and Carlotta.
Henry Ward Beecher found in England much sympathy with the slave-holding South, and a disbelief in the ultimate success of the North, and continuance of the Union. Going to Europe for rest, he did not intend to speak, but was finally persuaded that it was his duty to win friends for the North, so that England should not declare for the Southern Confederacy.
The first meeting was held at Manchester, Oct. 9, 1863. The streets were placarded with huge posters in red ink, and threats were heard on every side that the speaker should never leave Free Trade Hall alive.
As soon as Beecher began to speak, there were hisses and yells by the mob, so that not a word could be heard. Standing erect before the howling crowd, he said, "My friends, we will have a whole night's session, but we will be heard." When not a word could reach the people, he leaned over to the reporters present, and said: "Gentlemen, be kind enough to take down what I say. It will be in sections, but I will have it connected by and by."