ust be
destroyed, and that liberty must be established on the American
continent; that the victory of democracy and liberty in the North would
mean their victory over the North and South American continent, and that
if the day ever should come when the old flag should wave again over
every state in the South, and the atrocious crime of slavery should be
destroyed, there should be liberty for the press, and liberty for the
poor in the schoolhouse; if plantations should be broken up and
distributed among the poor farmers, and the privileges of civil liberty
be won, that it would be worth all the blood and tears and woe.

When he said that Great Britain had frowned upon the North, but hastened
to fling her arms around the neck of the imperious South, one
Englishman waved his arms and shouted: "She doesn't!" and the six
thousand people began to cheer the disclaimer of England's being Romeo.
To which Beecher answered: "I have only to say that she has been caught
in very suspicious circumstances."

Beecher's unshakable good humour, his witty, lightning-like answers to
their questions and contradictions, his solid sense and--when he got the
chance--his flaming eloquence, finally quelled and captured them. Then
he traversed the entire history of slavery in its relation to the
Colonies, the States, and the different forms of legislation up to the
Kansas and Nebraska Bill. When he concluded his speech, and the
sentiment of the audience was called for, to the astonishment of his
friends, men lifted up their voices with a sound like the sound of many
waters, and lined up for the North and liberty. The enthusiasm was
overwhelming. Within three hours January's frost had turned to the bloom
of June, and the moment was radiant with hope. The London _Times_
contained four columns of this speech, and the address became the topic
of the hour in every club in England. And either of these facts in
those days meant that Henry Ward Beecher was famous in England.

His speeches in Glasgow and Edinburgh took up the second and third steps
in the development of slavery and liberty on the American continent. He
told these ship-builders in Glasgow how the providence of God seemed to
be exhibiting to all the peoples of the world the reflex influence of
slavery upon the strongest people and the richest resources, and how
slavery cursed whatever it touched. That the lesson might be the clearer
He gave liberty an unfriendly clime, and gave slavery a r