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interference can do more than make the contest more bloody and bitter.
It can have but one end, sooner or later.
But these reports from Europe make us feel that you are determined to make us suffer more, to spend more money, and to sacrifice more lives.
If your foreign office were truly inspired, it would send the slave-mongers packing; that would be the greatest act of Lord Russell's career.
Let him do this, and his name will be linked forever with the final extinction of slavery and the pacification of a continent.
Our treasury is now in good condition.
Mr. Chase told me yesterday that he had paid everything, and had five millions surplus, with money coming in daily.
If it be said gold is at a premium, so it was in England in 1812.
To
John Curwen,
London, July 6:—
I accept with pleasure the position with which you honor me in your association for the help of freedmen.1 I am glad to see the name of Buxton in the place which it ought never for a moment to have abandoned.
I have liked Mr. Charles Buxton much.
He seemed true, earnest, and intelligent when I had the good fortune to talk with him. But I have not been able to comprehend him of late,—except that so many others have backslided too; ay, and the fast-anchored isle itself has slipped from its moorings.
It is sad to reflect on the relations of England to this terrible war. When its history comes to be written, there will be pages which all true Englishmen would wish to blot out with their tears.
Strange that Mr. Charles Buxton2 did not see that he yielded to the very argument which the slave-mongers brought against his noble father.
Let him have faith in the cause; and, above all, do not let him for a moment sanction the idea of a slave-breeding, slave-trading government to flaunt in the face of civilization.
And, pray, save England that I have loved from the unutterable degradation of any further coquetry with this intolerable, Heaven-defying iniquity!
The month of July, 1863, marks a turning point in the
Civil War. The American people on their national anniversary were gladdened with the tidings of the capitulation of
Vicksburg and of
Lee's retreat from
Gettysburg.
Great battles were yet to be fought, and reverses as well as victories were in store; but the tide had at last turned.
Government and people were inspired with confidence; the most intelligent of the
Confederates, though still hoping for the best, saw that the chances were against them; foreign cabinets and statesmen were from that time cautious in the exhibition of unfriendliness.
Our cause was now identified with the noblest aspirations of mankind.
It had become the cause not only of union, but of liberty also; and not the cause of one nation only, but of civilization.
