Vacation Rambles

by Thomas Hughes

I propose then, to-night, to state the case of my country so far as regards her conduct while your great rebellion was raging. In a fight for life, and for principles dearer than life, no men can be fair to those who are outside. The time comes when they can weigh both sides of the case impartially. I trust that that time has now arrived, and that I can safely appeal to the calm judgment of a great people.

It is absolutely necessary, in order to appreciate what took place in England during your great struggle, to bear in mind, in the first place, that it agitated our social and political life almost as deeply as it did yours. I am scarcely old enough to remember the fierce collisions of party during the first Reform agitation, but I have taken a deep interest, and during the last twenty years an active part, in every great struggle since that time; and I say without hesitation, that not even in the crisis of the Free-trade movement were English people more deeply stirred than by that grapple between freedom and law on the one hand, and slavery and privilege on the other, which was so sternly battled through, and brought to so glorious and triumphant a decision, in your great rebellion. There can be, I repeat, no greater mistake than to suppose that there was anything like indifference on our side of the water, and no one can understand the question who makes it. There was plenty of ignorance, plenty of fierce partisanship, plenty of bewildered hesitation and vacillation amongst great masses of honest, well-meaning people, who could find no steady ground on the shifting sand of statement and counter-statement with which they were deluged by those who did know their own minds, and felt by instinct from the first that here was a battle for life or death; but there was, I repeat again, no indifference. Our political struggles do not, as a rule, affect our social life, but during your war the antagonism between your friends and the friends of the rebel States often grew into personal hostility. I know old friendships which were sorely tried by it, to put it no higher. I heard, over and over again, men refuse to meet those who were conspicuous on the other side. Any of you who had time to glance at our papers will not need to be told how fiercely the battle was fought in our press.

It is a mistake, also, to suppose that any section of our people were on one side or the other. Let me say a few words in explanation of this part of the subject. And first, of our aristocracy. I do not mean for a moment to deny that a great majority of them took sides with the Confederates, and desired to see them successful, and the great Republic broken up into two jealous and hostile nations. What else could you expect? Could you fairly look for sympathy in that quarter? Your whole history has been a determined protest against privilege, and in favour of equal rights for all men; and you have never been careful, in speech or conduct, to conciliate your adversaries. For years your papers and the speeches of your public men had rung with denunciations (many of them very unfair) of them and their caste. They are not much in the habit of allowing their sentiments to find public expression, but they know what is going on in the world, and have long memories. It would be well if many of us Liberals at home, as well as you on this side, would remember that in this matter they cannot help themselves. A man in England may be born a Howard, or a Cavendish, or a Cecil, without any fault of his own, and is apt to “rear up,” as you say, when this accident is spoken of as though it were an act of voluntary malignity on his part, and to resent the doctrine that his class is a nuisance that should be summarily abated. So, as a rule, they sided with the rebellion; but that rule has notable exceptions.

There were no warmer or wiser friends of the Union than the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carlisle, and others; and it should be remembered that although the class made no secret of their leanings, and many of them, I believe, subscribed largely to the Confederate loan, no motion hostile to the Union was ever even discussed in the House of Lords. They have lost their money and seen the defeat of the cause which they favoured—a defeat so thorough, I trust, that that cause will never again be able to raise its head on this continent. I believe they have learnt much from the lesson, and that partly from the teaching of your war, partly from other causes to which I have no time to refer, they are far more in sympathy at this time with the nation than they have ever yet been.

Of course, those who hang round and depend upon the aristocracy went with them—far too large a class, I am sorry to say, in our country, and one whose voice is too apt to be heard in clubs and society. But Pall Mall and Mayfair, and the journals and periodicals which echo the voices of Pall Mall, do not mean much in England, though they are apt to talk as though they did, and are sometimes taken at their word.

The great mercantile world comes next in order, and here, too, there was a decided preponderance against you. The natural hatred of disturbances, which dominates those whose main object in life is making money, probably swayed the better men amongst them, who forgot altogether that for that disturbance you were not responsible. The worse were carried away by the hopes of gain, to be made out of the sore need of the States in rebellion, and in defiance of the laws of their own country. But amongst the most eminent, as well as in the rank and file of this class, you had many warm friends, such as T. Baring and Kirkman Hodgson; and the Union and Emancipation Societies, of which I shall speak presently, found a number of their staunch supporters in their ranks. The manufacturers of England were far more generous in their sympathies, as my friend Mr. Mundella, who is present here to-night and was himself a staunch friend, can witness. Cobden, Bright, and Forster were their representatives, as well as the representatives of the great bulk of our nation. I have no need to speak of them, for their names are honoured here as they are at home.

Now, before I speak of your friends, let me first remind you that it is precisely with that portion of the English nation of which I have been speaking that your people come in contact when they are in our country. An American generally has introductions which bring him into relations more or less intimate with some sections of that society to which our aristocracy gives its tone; or he is amongst us for business purposes, and comes chiefly across our mercantile classes. I cannot but believe that this fact goes far to explain the (to me) extraordinary prevalence of the belief here, that the English nation was on the side of the rebellion. That belief has, I hope and believe, changed considerably since the waves of your mighty storm have begun to calm down, and I am not without hopes that I may be able to change it yet somewhat more, with some at least of those who have the patience and kindness to listen to me this evening.

And now let me turn to those who were the staunch friends of the North from the very outset. They were gathered from all ranks and all parts of the kingdom. They were brought in by all sorts of motives. Some few had studied your history, and knew that these Southern men had been the only real enemies of their country on American soil since the War of Independence. Many followed their old anti-slavery traditions faithfully, and cast their lot at once against the slave-owners, careless of the reiterated assertions, both on your side of the Atlantic and ours, that the Union and not abolition was the issue. Many came because they had learned to look upon your land as the great home for the poor of all nations, and to love her institutions and rejoice in her greatness as though they in some sort belonged to themselves. All felt the tremendous significance of the struggle, and that the future of their own country was almost as deeply involved as the future of America. To all of them the noble words of one of your greatest poets and staunchest patriots, which rang out in the darkest moments of the first year of the war, struck a chord very deep in their hearts, and expressed in undying words that which they were trying to utter:—

O strange New World, thet yit wast never young,

Whose youth from thee by gripin’ need was wrung,