ed echoed the sentiments of Mr. Dayton. One of them said
to me: "Earl Russell has no especial love for your Union, but he
abominates negro slavery, and is very reluctant to acknowledge a new
slave-owning government. Prince Albert and the Queen are friendly to
you, but you must emancipate the slaves."

My return passage from Liverpool was on board the _Asia_, and Captain
Anderson commanded her for that voyage. When we reached Boston, we heard
the distressing news of the second Battle of Bull Run, and our prospects
were black as midnight. Captain Anderson remarked to me, in a
compassionate tone: "Well, Mr. Cuyler, you Yankees had better give it up
now." "Never, never," I replied to him. "You will live to see the Union
restored and slavery extinguished." He laughed at me and bid me
"good-bye." A few years afterwards, I laughed back again when I met him
in New York.

On Sunday evening, September 7, I addressed a vast crowd in my own
Lafayette Avenue Church, and told them frankly, that our only hope was
in a proclamation for freedom by President Lincoln. Henry Ward Beecher
invited me to repeat my address on the next Sunday evening in Plymouth
Church. I did so and the house was packed clear out to the sidewalk. At
the end of my address Mr. Beecher leaned over and said: "The Lord helped
you to-night." When the meeting closed Mr. Henry C. Bowen said, "Will
you and Mr. Beecher not start for Washington to-morrow morning to urge
Mr. Lincoln to proclaim emancipation?" We both agreed to go before the
week was over, but could not before. On the Wednesday of that very week
the Battle of Antietam was fought, and on the Friday morning we opened
our papers and read President Lincoln's first Proclamation of
Emancipation. The great deed was done; the night was over; the morning
had dawned. From that day onward our cause, under God, was saved; but
that proclamation saved the Union. No foreign power dared to oppose us
after that, and Gettysburg sealed the righteous act of Lincoln, the
Liberator, and decided the victory.

At the beginning of this chapter I described the thrilling scenes at the
opening of the conflict; let me now narrate a still more thrilling one
at its termination. The war began by the surrender of Fort Sumter by
Major Anderson, April 13, 1861; the war virtually ended by the
restoration of the national flag by the same hand in the same Fort, on
April 14, 1865.

I joined an excursion party from New York, on the steamer _O