their liberty. [No, No, hisses, Yes, applause and interruptions.] Four millions of them are asking for their liberty. [Continued interruptions and renewed applause.] Eight millions are banded together to prevent it. [No, No, hisses, and applause.] That is what they ask the world to recognize as a strike for independence. [Hear, Hear, and laughter.] Eight million white men fighting to prevent the liberty of four million black men, challenging the world. [Uproar, hisses, applause, and continued interruptions.] You cannot get over the fact; there it is, like iron, you cannot stir it. [Uproar.] They went out of the Union because slave-property was not recognized in it."

1

To the remark that England could not help sympathizing with the gallant people who were the weaker party in the American struggle, he said: "Nothing could be more generous, when a weak party stands for its own legitimate rights against imperious pride and power than to sympathize with the weak; but who ever yet sympathized with a weak thief because three constables had got hold of him?

. . I could wish so much bravery had had a better cause,and that so much self-denial had been less deluded; that that poisonous and venomous doctrine of State sovereignty might have been kept aloof; that so many gallant spirits, such as Stonewall Jackson, might still have lived. [Great applause and loud cheers, again and again renewed.] The force of these facts, historical and incontrovertible, cannot be broken except through diverting attention by an at

1 "Patriotic Addresses," pp. 529, 530.

tack on the North. It is stated that the North is fighting for the Union, and not for Emancipation. The North is fighting for Union, for that insures Emancipation."'

And so the fight went on. The opposition did not wear out, the uproar, interruptions, and hubbub, were indescribable. It was often but a short sentence at a time that he could interject into the mélée. Again and again the Chairman came to his help. At one time an individual was lifted up and carried from the room amid cheering and hisses. When the mob endeavored to prevent his reading something Mr. Lincoln had said, he cried out: "Well, you can hear it or not; it will be printed whether you hear it or hear it not." Then came loud cries of "Read, read."

When, after more than two hours of desperate fighting Mr. Beecher resumed his seat, it was the signal for an outburst of every conceivable expression of approval and disapproval. The vote of thanks, however, was carried with loud and long cheering, the Chairman declaring that he expected that the vote would be joined in by all the representatives of American slave-holders present, from the fact that they had had more instruction that night than they had apparently received during all the previous part of their lives.

Unquestionably this was one of the greatest oratorical achievements on record. The Rev. Dr. A. H. Bradford, recalls a remark made by the famous ex-pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, of New York City, the Rev. Dr. Wm. M. Taylor, who, after describ.

"Patriotic Addresses," pp. 532, 533.

ing Mr. Beecher's speeches in England during the war, and of this great tussle which he had with the mob, said, with his peculiar emphasis, "I tell you I believe there has not been such eloquence in the world since Demosthenes." 1

Liverpool was doubtless the strategic point in Mr. Beecher's English campaign. His enemies felt this, and his life was seriously threatened, not only before his entrance into the hall, but afterwards. He reports that there were men in the galleries and boxes who came armed, and that some of the bold men, who were friends of the North, went up in to those boxes, and drawing their bowie-knives and pistols, said to these young bloods: "The first man that fires here will rue it." He reports that nearly all the members of the Congregational Association of England and Wales were present on the platform at this memorable meeting, and doubtless Mr. Beecher's fame as an orator was enhanced by the reports of these clerical auditors.

It had taken him an hour and a half to get partial control of the meeting, and nearly three hours' use of his voice, at its utmost strength, to get through with his speech. "I sometimes felt like a shipmaster attempting to preach on board of a ship, through a speaking trumpet, with a tornado on the sea, and mutiny among the men.

The Rev. Dr. Campbell, who had heard some of the best speeches of Daniel O'Connell, believed that none of them was equal to Mr. Beecher's effort at the memorable Liverpool meeting. Doubtless his effec

"Life," p. 352. "Life," p. 177.

tiveness came in part from the hostility of so large a portion of his audience. Dr. Holmes thought that since Mr. Beecher's quick spirit needed to be roused by a few sharp questions, "he could almost afford to carry with him his picadores to sting him with sarcasms."

Dr. R. S. Storrs has said: "When Mr. Beecher was in England they made volcanoes around him on no small scale at Liverpool, at Manchester, and other places. But that fluent thought within, and that fluent eloquence of the lips, put out the volcanoes; or if they did not put them out, they made the fire shoot the other way, till the ground became too hot for the English Government to stand on if it would permit its evident sympathy for the Southern Confederacy to be formulated into law."'

"Plymouth Church Silver Wedding," p. 81.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE AMERICAN DEMOSTHENES TRIUMPHS.

If the climax of Mr. Beecher's struggle in England was reached on the 16th of October in the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, the climax of his triumph occurred in Exeter Hall, London, on the 20th of October, where, under the auspices of the Emancipation Society and London Committee of Correspondence on American Affairs, he addressed a meeting which densely packed that famous Hall, and where he was welcomed with long and reiterated cheers.

Mr. Benjamin Scott, the Chamberlain of the City of London, was the Chairman of this great meeting, and when in 1886 Mr. Beecher spoke in Exeter Hall again, Mr. Scott, who was still Chamberlain of the city, was asked by Mr. Beecher to occupy once more the same position. In his address, in 1863, he said of Mr. Beecher: "I honor and respect him for his manliness; he is every inch a man; he is a standard by which humanity may well measure itself."

Mr. Beecher by this time was famous. His four speeches, which had been reported in all the leading journals of the United Kingdom, had made him the talk of the clubs. As one indication, perhaps characteristically English, of his added fame, he mentions