Lx.
The opinion of
Europe concerning
Mr. Sumner was all one way. There, his high character and public services were fully understood.
There was no Pro-Slavery party in
Europe, outside of
Spain; nor throughout the whole civilized world, beyond the limits of the
United States, did
Mr. Brooks find an apologist.
No act in the barbarous record of Slavery, nor all of them put together, had done so much to alienate mankind from it and its brazen champions.
And when at last the
Southern States seceded, and the
Confederacy turned its eyes abroad for recognition and sympathy, it met with disdain and contempt from every nation and every class in the Old World, except the
Cotton Kings and the Aristocracy of
Great Britain.
The ruling classes of
England, to some extent, did sympathize with the
Southern Rebellion, as they had from the hour of the
Declaration of Independence greeted with friendly recognition every harbinger of evil to the rising Republic of the
West.
These classes had built the
Alabama and her sister corsairs—they had equipped the fleet that sailed out of British ports to sweep American commerce from the ocean; and these pirates had swarmed over all the seas on their fiendish mission.
But beyond that narrow sphere, the
Southern Rebellion received no aid or comfort.
Its leaders were regarded as parricides and traitors; whilst the down-trodden masses of men in every part of the world looked upon the threatened
[
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overthrow of the American Union as the greatest disaster that could befall the human race.
