Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[134] is confident, and he is very dashing. If he accomplishes what is expected, the whole card-castle of slavery may tumble. But whatever may be the result here or elsewhere, our purpose is fixed. The slave-mongers shall not build their government at our side; nor will we consent to their coining into the family of nations. I am almost a Quaker, not by extraction, but by sentiment; but I believe that if ever it was justifiable to take the sword, it is to prevent the establishment of such a piracy.

Let me say frankly and most kindly where I think England has erred. It is twice. First, she declared neutrality between the two parties,—fatal mistake, from which Lord Russell's speech¹ is the beginning of extrication. There can be no just neutrality between the two parties. You will not accept this view; but I ask you to think of it. Such a government, founded on such a pretension, seeking admission into the fellowship of Christian States, should have been told at the beginning that there was no place for it. To this England will yet come, unless the “Alabama” carries her completely into the embrace of the slave-mongers, so that her cause and theirs will be one. The next mistake of England is that having declared neutrality, she has not been true to it. I do not allude now to the slips, though to us that case is flagrant; but I allude to the declarations of at least two of her ministers,² made long ago, that separation was inevitable. The direct tendency of their declarations was twofold: first, to encourage the slave-mongers, and to give hope and confidence to slavery wherever it was; and, secondly, by an infirmity of human nature, to bind these ministers, who had thus made themselves prophets, to desire the verification of their prophecy. And all this was more noteworthy when it was considered that the same ministers, while thus assuming the triumph of the slave-mongers, had not one word of regret for this terrible defeat of civilization itself. “La neutralite n'existe plus des qu'elle n'est pas parfaite.” I doubt if old Count Bernstorff, who made this remark, would have called such a neutrality “perfect;” and not being “perfect,” according to him it is nothing.³

And now pardon me,—I write freely, that you may see how one who does not view England unkindly is constrained to judge recent events. Lord Russell's speech⁴ is in the right direction; but why was it not uttered a year ago? Those words would have gone far then to cut off hope from the slavemongers, and so doing, would have hastened the doom of slavery, and saved bloodshed incalculable. It is hard, very hard, to know that without English assistance slavery could never have stood forth in its present armor. You will think me unreasonable, and that I only see one side. I am charged here with seeing always the English side; but from the beginning there has been but one side to this terrible conflict. I will not borrow divine words, and say all who are not for us are against us; but I do say that from the beginning— and now since the President's Proclamation more than ever—we were entitled