260 



LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND. [Chap. VI. 



I saw in the South, in order to deepen the abhorrence of 

 slavery, and urge on my audiences not to allow themselves to 

 feel sympathy with the South. 



" But then, how can we, as an Anti-slavery people, show 

 any sympathy with your Government? In peace times you 

 always told us you could not interfere with slavery in the 

 Sovereign States of the South; though we saw how, step 

 by step, you became the servants of the Slave Power. But 

 in war times, every one allows your right to free blacks as 

 well as kill whites. Yet now, you not only show no willing- 

 ness ; but actually remove the only general who took one little 

 step for emancipation : and instruct your officers to allow 

 fugitive slaves to be reclaimed. You assert that this war is 

 not to abolish slavery, but to maintain the Union. You there- 

 fore show to all Europe that you care more for the maintenance 

 of your political power, than for simple justice to four millions 

 of the most oppressed people on the face of the earth. 



"Take one step for emancipation, and all England will 

 encourage you. Withhold it, and neither ask nor expect our 

 sympathy. I appeal to you, sir, in behalf of the oppressed 

 Americans of colour, because you first used those noble words 

 of the ' irrepressible conflict/ Yet I heard your sad speech in 

 the last Congress of the undivided Union, of which Garrison 

 said, ' Governor Seward, it is far better to be true to human 

 freedom, than to be President of the United States.' 



" Sir, as a man and a Christian, I earnestly appeal to you, 

 and through you to your Government, to do nothing to provoke 

 England to depart from her neutrality, and plunge the two 

 nations in the most horrid of wars. We shall do all we can to 

 allay the excitement here; do you do the same in your 

 country. " 



He often felt, during the past year, " nearly disheartened 

 with hard work and anxiety. Working sixteen hours a day and 

 seven days to the week, and not being able to make a plain 

 living out of it, is rather discouraging ; " and he was glad, when 

 freed from his ministerial charge, in the following January, to 



