itude and love. From that
hour Stanton asked for his friendship, and was weekly and even daily in
correspondence. He promised Beecher that immediately upon the receipt of
any news from the battle-field he would send him a telegram. Indeed, the
first news that the country had from Stanton of one of the great
victories came to Beecher's pulpit and was read over his desk. Other
great men, the President, secretaries, the generals, the statesmen,
editors, lecturers, preachers, did their part, but high among co-workers
ranks Henry Ward Beecher. God gave him a great task, and armed him for
the battle. He loved the poor, he broke the shackles from the slave, he
discovered to the world the love of God, and dying he flung his helmet
into the thick of the enemy. It is for us and our children to fight our
way forward to that helmet, and fling our own at last into some new
fight for the emancipation of the mind and heart of earth's troubled
millions.

It must be confessed that the aristocracy of England and her upper
middle class, in the main, still sympathized with the South, while the
English cabinet tried to maintain neutrality. Four-fifths of the House
of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, and most of the
House of Commons voted in sympathy with the South."

But the attitude of the "classes" of England was only the reflection of
her scholars. Carlyle, whose early books had no sale in England, and who
wrote Emerson that he had received his first money to keep him from
starvation from Boston and New York, "when not a penny had been realized
in England," had no sympathy with liberty and the North. As soon as his
own physical wants were supplied by the American check which Emerson
sent him, Carlyle began to call the war "a smoky chimney that had taken
fire." "No war ever waged in my time was to me more profoundly foolish
looking." (Slovenly English, contradictory thinking, and poor morals!)
"Neutral I am to a degree." Then Carlyle tried to sum up his view of the
situation: "Now speaks the Northern Peter to the Southern Paul: 'Paul,
you unaccountable scoundrel! I find you hire your servants for life, not
by the month or year as I do. You are going straight to hell.' Paul:
'Good words, Peter; the risk is my own. Hire you your servants by the
month or day, and go straight to heaven. Leave me to my own method.'
Peter: 'No, I won't. I will beat your brains out.' And he's trying
dreadfully ever since, but cannot quite manag