Visit to England in 1863—The Need of Rest—Condition of Affairs at Home—Arrival at Liverpool—Refusal to Speak—Visit to the Continent—Reception by the King of Belgium—Civil War Discussed—News of Victories—Return to England.

The spring of 1863 found Mr. Beecher thoroughly exhausted and greatly in need of both mental and physical rest. The past twelve years had been a season of unremitting care and toil. In addition to the regular duties of his new and growing church, and the active revival work carried on at this period, which were quite enough to task the energies of any one less fortunately endowed with mental and vital energy, he had taken a very active part in the anti-slavery agitation, and from the pulpit, the lecture platform, and the columns of the Independent kept up a constant fire upon this national evil. In 1856, as we have seen, he had thrown himself heart and soul into the Fremont campaign, well-nigh destroying his health. From 1860 he had been laboring, without rest, to uphold the government, to rouse and maintain the patriotic confidence of the North, and through all of this time was a contributor to the New York Independent, and since 1861 its editor-in-chief. Fagged out and despondent from exhaustion, rest was imperative.

His church, with that generous love which has always characterized it, voted him a four months’ leave of absence with expenses paid.

In company with Dr. John Raymond, then the president of Vassar College, a warm personal friend, he set sail early in June for a holiday, making his second trip across the water.

Fortunately we are able to give almost wholly in his own words the history of this trip:

“I left New York in June, 1863, for a tour through Europe during the summer vacation. I was not requested, either by President Lincoln nor by any member of the Cabinet, to act in behalf of this government; it was purely a personal arrangement. The government took no stock in me at that time. Seward was in the ascendency, and, as I had been pounding Lincoln during the early years of the war, I don’t believe there was a man in Washington, excepting perhaps Mr. Chase, who would have trusted me with anything; at any rate, I went on my own responsibility, with no one behind me except my church. They told me they would pay my expenses and sent me off. I went away wholly for the sake of rest and recuperation. I went simply as a private citizen, and I went with a determination not to speak in Great Britain.

“It was perhaps the dreariest period in the whole war. One after another of our generals had been sent to school in the field to learn the art of generalship. The task was too large for most of them, and they took a secondary rank. At that time, up to the date of my departure, we had made a stand and maintained it, but had gained but very little. The most defensible country, perhaps, on earth is our own in its southern portion; and the line that ran two thousand miles of active warfare through our middle had been so fortified, and was defended with such skill and unquestionable bravery, that our forces had not been able to push back the line of rebellion much, and there had been nothing to encourage the hearts of our people beyond their faith—for we lived by faith and not by sight in those days.

“I had not, except in times of sickness, when the whole tone of my nervous system was lowered, had an hour of doubt. I was sure of victory. There were some sick hours in which I remember distinctly thinking, ‘One nation is ground to make soil for another, and it may be that this nation will be ground up in order that another one may grow up on its ruins’; but ordinarily I was full of courage and hope, not unfounded I think now in review; and it stood me in good stead abroad.

“At that time Grant had not emerged. McClellan had, and had retired again. Burnside had briefly shown that he was too modest and not strong enough to take McClellan’s place. Hooker, who had lost his head in the great battle which he fought, was at the head of affairs, and we were on the eve of one more change—a change which has surrounded the name of Meade with lustre. Grant was at the time besieging Vicksburg. Lee had not yet ventured into Pennsylvania, out of which he never ought to have been permitted to go.

“It was at about that stage of things that I left. The political condition of the country, and also its civic and secular condition, will justify a word or two. There was a great party of the Union, made up of men indifferently from all foregoing parties. Old lines were effaced, old questions sank to the bottom, and the one question that united the strangest elements, discordant in every other respect, was the wise determination to maintain intact the union of this whole country. That formed the band and belt that gave unity to the party of war. The great Democratic party was divided into three ranks. The largest part, and the noblest, joined themselves to the party of the Union; and better men never came from any party than those that formed under our banner, bearing briefly and for a time the name of Republicans, but very largely going back again, after the war was over, to the Democratic party. There was a second division of lukewarm Unionists in the Democratic party, that were always hoping the war would be compromised—men of great patriotism, who could not forbear to ask: ‘What will be my position politically when we shall have secured peace again?’ They were for compromise and for easy adjustment.

“Now, war is good for nothing if it is not intense and cruel. It means organized force; and it is nonsense to go into the field with anything else except guns in your hands and swords at your side. The attempt so to fight, as in the earlier periods of our struggle, as not to hurt anybody, is most disastrous, whether in prudence or in civil successes. The South never did make war except to hurt somebody; and in the earlier day the vehemence, the courage, and the convictions which they brought into the field, made them more than a match for our Northern soldiers. Very largely our generals had anticipations of Congress, or the Presidency, or what not, before them; and such political anticipations never whet anybody’s sword.

“There was a third section, and that was the least—those that were directly in league with the Southern and slavery element. Of them it is not necessary that anything should be said. They are wiped out, and that is fulfilled in regard to them which the Scriptures hath spoken: ‘The name of the wicked shall rot.’

“In that divided state Lincoln was under great discouragements, yet maintaining invincible his purpose, without compromise, to destroy all oppositions to this Union. Meanwhile we were maintaining a blockade of about three thousand miles—an unexampled blockade. We had to extemporize a navy, as we shall again if we have any war. We are always wise afterward. For the sake of economy we are the most wasteful of all nations, without foresight in such matters; too confiding. There is not a ship in the American navy to-day that could not be blown out of the water in a ten minutes’ conflict with the best-armored ships of Europe; and Congress, that has no end of money for votes, through pensions and various other channels of distributing, cannot be persuaded to do anything for stability and inexorable defence against foreign invasion and warfare.

“We had at that time converted almost every sea-going craft into a man-of-war; and this extended blockade was in the main well served. Europe stood watching as a vulture does to see the sick lamb or kine stagger to fall, and from her dried branch of observation she was ready to plunge down. Napoleon did. He already had sent French armies into Mexico. That was a mere preface. Mexico was not his final object. The recovering again of territory that once had belonged to France lay in the achievements or the expectations of this weak and wicked potentate in the future.

“In this condition of things we were hovering on the very edge of intervention. It was well known to those acquainted with the condition of affairs in other lands that Napoleon was disposed by every art and intrigue to persuade the government of Great Britain to interpose, to break the blockade, and to give its moral support to the rebellion of the South.

“I found in England the utmost scepticism prevailing as to our success, and an exaggerated conception of the endurance and courage of the South; and no sentence was more frequently uttered in my hearing than this, ‘You will never subdue the South’; to which I invariably replied, ‘We shall subdue the South.’

“I found that, with a few noble exceptions—Mr. John Bright, Richard Cobden, Mr. Forster, and such like—that the statesmen of Great Britain were either lukewarm or in avowed sympathy with the South. The middle-class and laboring people of Great Britain were in sympathy, on the whole, with the North; but they had no votes. As a general thing, the officeholders under the government, the rich families, the manufacturing interests, the educated and professional men of Great Britain, believed that our Union had been or would soon be dissolved. Some one said to me at that time, ‘All men who ride in first-class cars, and put up at first-class hotels, and live upon intellectual professions, together with most of the clergymen, even of the dissenting bodies of England, are adverse to the Northern cause.’

“The conduct of the laboring classes in Great Britain was admirable. While they were on the verge of starvation in the cotton districts, they patiently endured their sufferings without retracting their sympathy for the Northern cause. As a body, the Quakers, whose testimony against slavery had been continuous and unswerving, were in sympathy with the North. The Congregational churches of Great Britain, with few exceptions, were adverse to the North. The Congregational churches of Wales were almost wholly in sympathy with the North.

“All the world looked upon America as about to be split asunder. Here and there was a faithful witness and a faithful friend. The civilized nations of Europe looked with varying emotions upon our conflict, but agreed generally that it was an impossible task that the North had undertaken; and everywhere I felt the numbness that that produced.

“It was at just that period that I left our shores and was in Great Britain.”

From his letters home we have gathered something of an outline of his experience and first impressions:

“I reached the mouth of the Mersey, seven miles from Liverpool, on Wednesday night. The tide would not let us across till five the next morning.... Duncan was on the tug when we reached the city—for there are no wharves at Liverpool, and we lay in the middle of the stream and landed passengers by means of a little steam-tug.... Before leaving the boat a Mr. Estcourt, of Manchester, was at hand to invite me to have a reception and speech at Manchester. The same happened for Liverpool within a few hours, and letters from London, from two committees, came within a day, soliciting the same. I declined them all and declared my intention not to speak anywhere at present, and until I had had time to form some judgment of things. I find that all our American friends at Liverpool approve highly of my decision. And even those who most solicited speeches admit that they think my decision the wiser one. I will not trouble you with any description of the state of the English mind toward our country. We have nothing to hope from it when it might be of use to us, and we shall not by and by care a pin whether they think ill or well.” After a week’s run in the country he returned to Liverpool and “went to meet some friends at the parlor of a store. The great stores here have parlors, in which the heads of departments dine every day. Gave them a plain talk about America. At the end, as we got familiar, they confessed that America had sufficient reason for her complaints against Great Britain.”

Writing from London a week later:

“Every man I meet who is on our side commends my determination to keep quiet for the present. I do not mean in preaching, but public addresses and public receptions. There is but little favor for the North. Whatever may be said, a narrow but intense jealousy is felt, and fear of future rivalry....

”London, July 7.—On Monday of this week (yesterday) I met a circle of temperance men at a breakfast. It was private in this, that no reports were to be made or published. I gave them a good talk on our affairs.... To-day a like meeting with a section of anti-slavery men.”

He attended the meeting. Of course he was expected to make some remarks, and he did. He says, speaking of this incident: “Several speeches had been made when I was called upon, and made a statement expressing my indignation at the position of the Congregational clergy of England in view of this war. They were men who were seeking to know the signs of the times, and had as a whole body gone wrong and had virtually arrayed themselves on the side of slavery and against liberty. I put my best leg foremost, and, although I succeeded in making a favorable impression, I saw that I was likely to be regarded as an enthusiast, and so determined that I should clinch the arguments I had advanced with a speech from a calm-minded man, and accordingly when I had concluded I said: ‘Gentlemen, Dr. John Raymond, president of Vassar College, is present and will add a few views of his own.’ He was a cool man and not easily excited, but his sympathies were with the Union, and when he had kindled up to his work I sat and looked at him in perfect amazement. He went at them like a hundred earthquakes, with a whirlwind thrown in. He made a magnificent speech, of such towering indignation as I never have heard before or since.”

The expectation that the speeches would not be reported was misplaced; there appears to have been “a chiel amang us takin’ notes,” and the substance of the speeches was quite fully reported the next day.

Almost immediately thereafter he crossed over to the Continent, and did not return to England until the following September.

He remained strongly disinclined to make any formal addresses, though he had been urged to speak in London, Liverpool, and Manchester on his return.

Writing from Switzerland, July 28, to Mrs. Stowe, he refers to the two meetings in London, and his views regarding his return in the fall:

“My time in London, where I spent ten days, was, for the last six or eight, spent in meeting private circles of gentlemen, and talking to them like a father. I breakfasted with almost a hundred from the Temperance Alliance, with seventy-five of the Congregational Liberty Association, with forty or fifty at a soirÉe at Mr. Evans’s, president of the Emancipation League, where Baptist Noel was the questioner, and I responded for two hours. I hear since that great good was done, and at the time there was elicited a great deal of confession from many that they had been both ignorant and wrong. There was a universal and vehement desire that I should arrange to speak in London, and elsewhere, when I return to England in the autumn. If I see the way clear to do so, these conferences will have opened the door effectually. Meanwhile I shall wait and watch the development of things.... But let me tell you that the root of all the conduct of England is simple and absolute fear. I do not mean fear of a narrow and technical kind. But the shadow that the future of our nation already casts is so vast that they foresee they are falling into the second rank—that the will of the Republic is to be the law of the world. There is no disguising of this among Englishmen.

“I was told by Rev. Henry Allen, of London, eminent among the Congregationalists, that they had long felt that a time must come when England would have to take hold of us and curb our power, and that, now that we were divided against ourselves, they rejoice to see their work done for them. The Duke of Argyle distinctly recognized this feeling, not in himself but in others. Roebuck openly avowed it in the House of Commons. The papers on all hands abused him for it. But, in fact, it was because he spoke the truth, which they were ashamed to have spoken so boldly and openly. I met at Yungfrau a young Irishman, friendly, who gave the same view of English feeling. Indeed, I have searched into it and am thoroughly satisfied that it is mainly and deeply the dread of our gigantic national development in the future, that has been coiled up as the main-spring under all the other reasons, excuses, and pretendings, and that has, consciously or unconsciously, moved the whole mind of England. Against this what will reasoning or exposition avail? Is there any explanation that will make England ready to stand second? Is there any way of stating our gigantic power that would lead her to rejoice in it? I do not propose to pull wool over their eyes, nor to play the sheep in any way. For I distinctly see the difficulty. I know it to be unremovable, and all that can be done is to appeal to the higher feelings of the Christian part of England, that the elect few, in both countries, may hold fast the golden cords of love till God in His own way shall have settled the future.”

As late as August 27 we find him still in doubt as to what he will do in England; at that date he writes:

“When you read this, therefore, I shall probably be in London. I cannot yet decide anything about my course in England. From a distance I do not see any occasion or necessity for my squandering time there in speaking....”

On his way back to England he passed through Brussels; while there he paid his respects to the United States minister, Mr. Sandford. We give his experience in his own words:

“In drawing near to England I went to Brussels, and at a dinner by our American minister there, found him very much wavering as to our final success. I expressed such sentiments, and expressed them so firmly, as to lead him to wish that I should see King Leopold of Belgium, who was considered the wisest sovereign in Europe, and to whom Queen Victoria and others were accustomed to refer many questions for judgment or arbitration.

“For the first and only time in my life I prepared myself for the ordeal. But oh! consider it, ye that dwell at home, ye that sit at ease among flowers and all pleasant things—consider my sufferings in a fashionable hat, a white cravat, and a pair of white gloves! Yes, it was even so! I reluctated, but Sandford plead; and as it was more for his sake than my own that I consented to the interview at all, and also because the king was very influential with all the sovereigns of Europe, and especially with Victoria, and was pleased with attentions from Americans, I took to myself a hat, cravat, and gloves, and in an open barouche with two white horses, and Mr. Simmonds sitting by the side of the driver, large as life, and most happy to be the courier of a party called on in all the capitals by American ministers and consuls, and now going actually to see the king! Happy, happy Simmonds! The crowd stared; the people gave way right and left; the royal guard at the Governor’s House opened; we dismounted just at eleven (hat, cravat, gloves, and all). A golden-laced official received us at the lower door and jabbered French in our faces, which we answered by making for the stairs beyond him. At the top two officers, much dressed, bowed and seemed to be expecting us, showing us toward a pair of folding-doors which, opening into the ante-room, revealed to us an aide-de-camp in waiting, who took my card, walked softly to the next door, communed with some one within, returned, and said that in a moment the king would receive us.

“In a moment the door opened, a servant beckoned us, and we entered. A tall man in full military uniform, blue, with eleven orders, crosses, etc., on his left breast, with hair black (not his own), of a face quite reverend, long, thin, somewhat corrugated, came towards us graciously and paternally, bowed gently, and began a conversation of our travels, of Europe, of America a little. Well, it was my duty, of course, always to address him as ‘Sire,’ but I generally managed to call him ‘Sir’ with a hasty correction to ‘Sire.’

“After some conversation, in which he plainly intimated to me that he would rejoice in bringing us to terms and peace again, all the while intimating that the South could not be overcome, and that it would be very wise for us to make a compromise, and that he would be entirely willing to render service in that direction, I said to him: ‘Your majesty’—I got it out once or twice right—‘if there were any ruling sovereign in Europe to whom more than to another we should be glad to refer this question, it would be to the king of Belgium, a judge among nations and adviser among kings; but we do not propose to refer it to any one. We are going to fight it out ourselves; the strongest will win in our conflict, and so it must be settled.’

“Turning from that, he asked me what I thought of sending Maximilian to Mexico—for at that time he had not been sent to be the emperor of this new nation the Latins had established there; and, without suitable diplomacy, I said to him: ‘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.’

“This very soon brought our conversation to a close. He bowed, we bowed. He stepped back a step, we two, and, repeating the operation, we were soon at the door and out of it.”

The next day finds Mr. Beecher at London. But a short time before, and while in Paris, an event occurred that had a marked effect upon his subsequent course in England and the results which he achieved. The news came to him of the fall of Vicksburg and the repulse of Lee at Gettysburg:

“Such a revulsion of feeling as I experienced myself, and such a revulsion and intoning as all patriotic Americans experienced (for all Americans were not patriotic; very largely they were commercial cowards), from those tidings, one can scarcely imagine who was not there to see. At this time I was staying in Paris at the Grand Hotel. It was on a radiant Sunday, as I wended my way from the hotel to the church, that the news came of the surrender of Vicksburg. No words can tell the buoyancy, the awful sense of gladness that I had. I went into the house of God and sat down in the pew of our minister to France, Mr. Dayton. By my side sat his daughter. In a pause in the service I turned to Miss Dayton and asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’ ‘No,’ said she, looking earnestly at me. ‘Vicksburg has fallen!’ ‘Is it true?’ ‘Yes, be sure.’ She answered me not a word, but turning to her companion, another young lady, she whispered it to her, and both sat still as statues. The hymn was given out, the music sounded, and she began to sing; but no sooner had she opened her lips than, in a flood of tears, she buried her face in her hands and wept for gladness and triumph. It overwhelmed her, and it overwhelmed me too. And before the sun went down, yea, before the sun was at noon, the other tidings came of the victory at Gettysburg; and then my cup ran over. No man can tell how victoriously I walked. In the ample court of the Grand Hotel there usually gathered a very large company of Southern men, to whom my name was not savory; and day after day, as I went out, they were wont to collect in one corner, and with sneers and undisguised attempts at insult they met me as I came in and went out, even sending contemptible messages to me by the servants (which I never received, being intercepted at the office, although I heard of them afterwards). But on that day when I heard that Lee had been driven out of Pennsylvania and that Vicksburg had surrendered to Grant, I put on my best coat, walked down-stairs and out into that court to see how it fared with my brethren of the South; but, alas! they were not there, not one of them. They, too, had heard something!

“The effect which these tidings produced throughout Great Britain was immense. Before this no avowed friend of the North could go through the Exchange in Liverpool without being looked at and watched, largely as one would look at a bear escaped from a menagerie. My friend Charles Duncan had scarcely been able to transact business without being insulted at every step; when the good news came he went down into the Exchange to look into the faces of these men that had been so insulting, but there was not a man in the whole Exchange who had not been on our side from the very beginning, and who had not always believed in us, in our cause, and in our final victory! How wonderful are the workings of Providence!

“On returning to England representations were made to me which compelled me to consent to a series of public speeches. Our friends said: ‘We have sacrificed ourselves in your behalf, and have been counted as the offscouring, because we had championed the cause of the North; and now if you go home without making a recognition of our efforts we will be overwhelmed.’ Aside from other considerations, I found that a movement was on foot to induce Parliament to declare for the Southern Confederacy. This they were very willing to do, but did not dare to without the approval of the unvoting English, who held great power. Steps had been taken by friends of the Southern cause to have orators go through the manufacturing districts for the purpose of enlisting the sympathies of the laboring classes.

“By projecting a series of meetings on the other side it was hoped that this mischievous course might be baffled and forestalled. At first there was thought of but a single speech, and that at Manchester. So soon as it was known that there was to be such a meeting applications were made from Glasgow, from Edinburgh, from Liverpool and London, for like meetings in these places.”