d aristocratic England from forcing
war upon us, she prevented the French Emperor, Napoleon III, from
recognizing the Southern Confederacy. We shall come to this in its turn.
Our Civil War set up in England a huge vibration, subjected England to
a searching test of herself. Nothing describes this better than a letter
of Henry Ward Beecher's, written during the War, after his return from
addressing the people of England.

"My own feelings and judgment underwent a great change while I was in
England... I was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards the North
which I everywhere met, and the sympathetic prejudices in favor of
the South. And yet everybody was alike condemning slavery and praising
liberty!"

How could England do this, how with the same breath blow cold and hot,
how be against the North that was fighting the extension of slavery and
yet be against slavery too? Confusing at the time, it is clear to-day.
Imbedded in Lincoln's first inaugural address lies the clew: he said,
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right
to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who elected me
did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar
declarations, and had never recanted them." Thus Lincoln, March 4, 1861.
Six weeks later, when we went-to war, we went, not "to interfere
with the institution of slavery," but (again in Lincoln's words) "to
preserve, protect, and defend" the Union. This was our slogan, this our
fight, this was repeated again and again by our soldiers and civilians,
by our public men and our private citizens. Can you see the position of
those Englishmen who condemned slavery and praised liberty? We ourselves
said we were not out to abolish slavery, we disclaimed any such object,
by our own words we cut the ground away from them.

Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect upon January 1,
1863, did Lincoln proclaim emancipation--thus doing what he had said
twenty-two months before "I believe I have no lawful right to do."

That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly he
had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation
of the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped
together as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he
known this from the start, known that the North's bottom cause, the
ending of slavery, rest