phold the best republic ever realized;--who would have dreamed that
'brave, free, honest Old England' would have regarded us coldly, sneered
at our victories, grinned over our defeats? But more than this. Though
not avowed as an aim, and though secondary to our first great
object,--the reestablishment of the Union and a constitutional
government,--we _all_ know, and so does every Englishman, that the
emancipation of the slave, to a greater or less degree, _must_
inevitably follow our success. Here comes the test of that English
abolition of the blackest and fiercest stamp which has for years been
avowed in Great Britain, and which has done as much as aught else
towards stirring up this foul rebellion. Where be your gibes _now_, O
Britannia? Where be your bitter jeers against the 'lying Constitution,'
against the 'stars for the white man and the stripes for the negro,'
against everything American, because America was the land of the slave?
We are fighting--dying--to directly uphold ourselves, and indirectly to
effect this very emancipation for which you clamored; we are losing
cotton and suffering everything;--but _you_, when it comes to the pinch,
will endure nothing for your boasted abolition, but slide off at once
towards aiding the inception of the foulest, blackest, vilest
slaveocracy ever instituted on earth! Disguise, quibble, lie, let them
that will--these are _facts_. Because we, in our need, have instituted a
protective tariff, which was absolutely necessary to keep us from utter
ruin, and on the flimsy pretext that we are not fighting directly for
emancipation, proud, free, and honest Old England, as publicly
represented, eats all her old words, and, worse than withholding all
sympathy from us, shows in a thousand ill-disguised ways an itching
impatience to aid the South! Men of England, _we_ are suffering for a
principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us?
Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find
wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your
cotton-spinners? Feed them?--why we would, for a little aid in our dire
need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,--one
brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have
trampled down secession, and sent cotton to your marts, even to
superfluity. Or, were you so minded, and could 'worry through' a single
year, you might raise in your own colonies cotton enough, and