Tirades against England, with menace of slaughter,
Never yet have your Sumners, and such, ceased to pour,
Your bards talk of blowing us out of the water,
And threaten to "punish John Bull at his door."
Now this isn't the way
To make Englishmen pray
That the Yankees may finish by gaining the day.
An afterthought only is "Justice to Niggers;"
'Tis a cry which those Yankees raised not till they found
That they for a long time had been pulling triggers,
At their slaveholding brothers, and gained little ground.
First Abe Lincoln gave out
That he'd fain bring about,
The Re-union with slavery too, or without.
So don't waste your words in attempts at persuasion,
Which impose on no Britain alive but a fool,
But husband your breath for another occasion,
That is, Beecher, keep it your porridge to cool.
"Strictly neutral will I
Still remain standing by."
Says Britannia: "D'ye see any green in my eye?"
Later, Punch published this:
ADIEU TO MR. BEECHER
Mr. Beecher has left us; he has sailed for America, where he can tell his congregation just what he likes, but where he will, we are sure, tell Messrs. Lincoln and Seward the exact truth, namely that large numbers of the uneducated classes crowded to hear a celebrated orator, and that the press has been very good-natured to him. Also, we hope he will say, because he knows it, that the educated classes are at the present date just as Neutral in the matter of the American quarrel as they were before the reverend gentleman's arrival. Having duly stated these facts to the President and the Minister, Mr. Beecher may put them in any form he pleases before the delightful congregation, whose members pay £40 a-year, each, for pews. And to show that we part with him in all good nature, we immortalise his witty allusion to ourselves in his farewell speech:—
"I know my friend Punch thinks I have been serving out 'soothing syrup' to the British Lion. (Laughter.) Very properly the picture represents me as putting a spoon into the lion's ear instead of his mouth; and I don't wonder that the great brute turns away very sternly from that plan of feeding." (Renewed Laughter.)
A gentler criticism upon us could not be, and we scorn to retort that, having a respect for anatomy, we did not make the lion's ear large enough to hold the other spoon depicted in that magnificent engraving. For the Reverend Beecher is not a spoon, whatever we may think of his audiences in England. And so we wish him good-bye, and plenty of greenbacks and green believers.
The re-election of Abraham Lincoln, in November, 1864, called forth a grotesque and unpleasant caricature of Lincoln as the "Federal Phœnix." It was accompanied by these verses: