The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-29 00:00:00

LETTER TO LORD SHAFTESBURY BY
HRS. HARRIET BEECHER STO WE.

The following letter appeared in the Freeman last Wed-
. nesday :
, My Lord,—The very pleasant acquaintance which I had
with your lordship, my remembrance of your life of Chris-
tian and philanthropic labour, and especially the part which
you took in originating that address of the women of Eng-
land to the women of America on the subject of slavery,
which first reached this country through me, have moved
me to address you as the fit representative of that portion of
the Christian public in England on whom we have most
relied for moral support during our long and desperate con-
flict with slavery.
It is not to be disguised that one unfortunate result of
• our American crisis has been a weakening of national con-
fidence in England and a feeling of great sensitiveness and
soreness in our relations with the country.
Did this exist alone in the minds of politicians, it would
be less to be regretted, but I am sorry to be constrained to
say that it probably lies deepest in the minds of that Chris-
tian and philanthropic class who have hitherto been the
closest affiliating bond between the two countries. In this
class the feeling has the intensity of wounded friendship
and disappointed confidence so that they were little pre-
pared to act the part they hate for years pursued of peace-
makers. It is not to be disgtised tlaat they regard them-
selves as suddenly abandoned in the very crisis of a battle
by the moral forces of those brethren on whom they had
relied as undoubtinglyae on themselves, and the possibility of
whose failure had never enteed into their most distant cal.
culations. It is also most utfortunate that this failure of
moral support comes at a monent when the moneyed inte-
rests of England appear to bethreatened by our course, and
therefore the impression fez t liable to go ft.rth that finan-
cial Interest-IT:111W ii?`-evedrecriTier moral
It is not principally by the Governmental course of the
English nation that this class among us feel aggrieved. It
is not with that that they principally concern themselves.
GovernmentaZ action, as your experience, my lord, must
have made son fully aware, is the last expression of that
cultivation and training which the national conscience re-
ceives from the energetic labour of men whose lives are
directed by high moral and Christian aims. It is the power
that lies behind the Government in the minds and opinions
of the Christian people of England that is the subject of our
chief anxiety. To suppose that all this class in England,
fresh in the traditions of Clarkson and Wilberforce, so high
in metal position in other respects, so various and rich in
their contributions to the progress of Christian civilisation,
has suddenly become blinded by interest on a great vital
question relating to the cause of universal humanity, is not
possible. Such a supposition would be too near to a general
bankruptcy in all faith inhuman virtue. We have therefore
but one alternative. Our cause must have been misunder-
stood. By false representations and false issues, our friends
in England have been blinded to the real significance of
the sublime movement which the American nation has
just commenced.
Allow me, then, my lord, through you, to define to our
friends in England, what we, the Christian men and women

of America, understand by this war.
We consider this struggle to be the direct result of the
conscientious agitation which has been carried on during
the course of the last century by the united forces of the
anti .slavery people of England and America. We consider
it as the great decisive issue of the slavery question in the
civilised world. The causes which brought on this war
first began to work when Clarkson began to give up all
earthly prospects, an! devote his life to enlightening the
conscience (.1 the world on the slave-trade. Then was set
in motion a stream d activities, that first abolished slavery
and the slave trade in England, and then in the free States
of the North, and bat since has been acting with yearly
increasing force on the slave institutions of the Southern
Si ates, till at last they have been driven to endeavour to
destroy our national organisation as the only means of pre-
serving peaceably this institution.

We consider that this war is a great Anti-Slavery War,
not is form, but in fact ; not in proclamation, but in the in-
tense conviction aid purpose of each of the contending par-
ties, and still mor3 in the inevitable overruling indications
of Divine Providence.

The distinct issue made in President Lincoln's election
was "no more slave territory." This was confessed both
by North and South, and whatever the North understood
by it, the South certainly considered it as equivalent to the
destruction of slavery. Accordingly, in the Southern
election the success of Lincoln was always spoken of as the
overthrow of the slave-power. Not all the tranquilising
speeches of conciliating politicians, not even the pledge of
the prospective Administration to respect all the constitu-

tional rights of the slave. owners, for one moment blinded
them to the conviction that if this election were carried the
doom of their peculiar institution was sealed. In view of
this issue, every free state, vitLout exception, voted against
him.

It was the first time in oar national history that such a
division ever occurred, and it was a decisive indication of
what was understood by the movement on both sides.
As soon as Lincoln's election was proclaimed, the con •
spiracy, long secretly meditated, and only waiting for this
moment to devolve itself, was openly organised.
The slave-party finding that they could no longer use the
Union for their purposes, resolved to destroy it. They
formed their Confederacy ; aid Vice-President Stephens
declared to the world in bcld unequivocal terms that
theirs was the first Governaent in the history of the
world based upon the right to enslave the weaker races. He
proclaimed with a blasphemous adaptation of words
applied once to the great Liberator of the oppressed,
" This stone which was rejected by the builders has become
unto us the head of the corner."
The Confederacy which thus commenced by proclaiming
in the face of Christendom the right and purpose of robbery
and piracy was carried on by kindred means. During the
time that elapsed between the election of Lincoln and its
inauguration, officers of this Confederation robbed the Trea-
sury, forts, and arsenals of the United States of millions of
property which, by oaths of oce, they were sworn to pro-
tect; and subsequently they have repudiated en masse all
obligations of commercial honesty to Northern creditors.
When this Confederacy fired upon our national flag, and
trampling it in the dust boasted that they had humbled the
banner of our Union, then the free state rose as one man.
Such a sublime uprising of such masses, in such a cause, I
will venture to say, the worli has never seen before.
The issue was more than the liberation of any specific
number of men. It was for vital principles of free society
to endure to all generations.
The two Confederacies sent their armies to the field ; the
one founded on the right of the strong to enslave the weak,
and claiming the right of out-voted minorities to secede
from the authority of governments whenever it so suited
them. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all
the great privileges of the Anglo-Saxon liberty, were prac-
tically repudiated ana denied by this party. On the other
hand stood the American Union, founded on the declara-
tion that all mon have equal rights to life, liberty, and pur-
suit of happiness—resting government on the will of the
majority, and allowing to the minority the right only of
such redress of grievances as they could gain from free
speech, free press, and the general liberty of moral influ-
ence.

That this war has not been proclaimed a war for the
emancipation of the negro specifically, was because the ex-
tent and magnitude of the issue transcended the wants of
any particular race, and had to do with the very existence
of free society. A deep thinker and popular lecturer well
embodied his view of the issue in a lecture delivered at the
time, which he entitled " Civilisation at a Pinch." Such
was what we understood the issue to be.

It is no fiction, my lord, when we say that our Govern-
ment is the government of the people ; and our people of
the North are a sober and thoughtful one, and not in the
least given to demonstrative enthusiasm and inconsiderate
expenditure. Yet so well did every man in the community
understand this to be the issue, that the Government has
been literally flooded with men and money. The strife for
office that usually wages at Washington was nothing to the
strife of regiments pressing their claims to be called into
service—and every regiment was in like manner embar-
rassed with volunteers pleading to be enrolled. All parties
were united as one man. Though national existence, and
not negro emancipation, was the announced battle-cry—yet
existence in this case was felt to mean the extinction of
slavery.

The philanthropist with a robber's pistol at his throat
must think of his life first if he means to help the poor—
and a nation threatened with national extinction must live
if she means to emancipate slaves.

There is one party in this country, my lord, who have
made the abolition of slavery the sole thought and purpose
of their lives. They are distinguished from all other
anti-slavery men in America by the fact that they have
confined themselves to this one single idea, and for its
sake given up every other interest, political or ecclesias-
tical. They have abandoned all connection both with
Church and State that they mightfeel free to give themselves
to this alone. This party, represented by the well-known
names of Garrison and Wendell Phillips, whatever their
peculiarities on some points may have been, certainly
merits the confidence given to men who have abandoned
all things for a cause which they love better than them-
selves. Their instincts have always been an unerring in-
dication of what made for the anti-slavery interest im this
country.

For 20 years this small party has met every movement
in Church or State with what often has appeared to be un-
reasonable criticism, on account of alleged deficiencies
toward the slavery cause.

For the first time since the anti.slavery struggle began,
this body of men at last stands shoulder to shoulder with
their whole country in a popular movement.
In a late speech at an anti-slavery gathering, Mr.
Phillips thus defends their position :
" I feel satisfied that the end of the slave system has

come. I have no doubt that we begin to touch the end.
MY reason is this. The age of discussion is over. We
have had 50 years, more or less, of what is called agita-
tion, discussion, and party divisions. Now a new act has
opened. It is the hour of fight—the age of bullets. That
never lasts very long. It does not take as much time for a
nation to fight itself clear as it does to talk itself clear, only
it is necessary that the talk should precede such a fight.
it is only necessary that the mind, the substratum of pur-
pose, should be deliberately formed. think it has been. I
do not mean to say that the whole North is anti-slavery,
much less for abolition; but I do mean to say this, that
the South has fully come to the conviction that unless she
can use the Union to support slavery, the system is gone:;
and I think the North has come to this conviction, that the
Union never shall be used to sustain slavery. I think,
so far, the public mind is made up. Ido not mean
that the popular mind objects specifically to certain
constitutional provisions, that men have made up their
minds not to return fugitive slaves; but I think there is a
prevailing and unconscious, perhaps, but assured sentiment
and purpose of the North, that the Union neither does or
shall mean liberty in the end.
" Some friends criticise me because I seem to them to
have surrendered my favourite plea of disunion, and wel-
comed this war. But let such remember, that no man
should flatter himself he can mould the world exactly in his
method. He must consider it rare success if his contem-
poraries adopt substantially his purpose. I have advocated
disunion for 15 years, because I thought it a practicable and
peaceable method of freeing the North from the guilt of
slavery, and of planting at the South the seeds of early and
entire emancipation—wringing justice from a weak and
bankrupt South. But it has pleased the nation to seek that
result in a different way. The majority about us, starting
with thirpthieiple that- *WS-was a nation, not a partner-
ship, have constantly claimed that the cornerstone of our
Government, the spirit of '76, was the full liberty of each
and every human being, ' They waited with what they
thought brotherly patience, with what the South fancied
was selfish fear, for the whole nation to acknowledge this
theory. The half success of Fremont, the election of Lin-
coln, were the handwriting on the wall.
"The North replies—' We should have preferred debate
—a free press—education--ballots ; but if you choose bul-
lets, agreed I The Stars and Stripes meant liberty in '76,
and shall now.' I myself should have preferred peace and
argument, but the twenty millions have chosen otherwise.
I have only to accept the Red Sea through which God wills
to lead His people, and I rejoice still that Canaan is beyond.
If we are to serve our age, we must serve it in the way it
chooses. When the people, thoroughly awake, and as well
taught as the times allow, deliberately choose any honour-
able way of reaching an object of pressing importance, the
duty of an honest man is to aid them all he can in their
effort. Hence I bow to the masses, and welcome emanci-
pation by war."

In opposition to such a mighty tide of influence, all
sweeping in one direction, it seems to the friends of the
anti-slavery cause but a slight abatement that individual
generals have promised to put down slave insurrections, and
that slaves have been in isolated instances returned from
Federal camps. Such instances have always met with a
prompt and energetic rebuke on the part of the Northern
people ; and already the number of slaves liberated by our
army is counted by hundreds, while the number returned
have been the rare exceptions. The refusal of the North
to enlist negro regiments has also been criticised in Eng-
land, as showing a want of proper feeling to the race. But,
my Lord, it has been the desire of our Northern States, as
brothers, as Christians, as men of humanity, to avoid, as
long as possible, raising the awful whirlwind of conflicting
races. While we hold in our hand the match which might
ignite that powder magazine, an awful pity and fear stays
us. Any other way is better for the slave himself than the
way of blood ; and if onee this deadly strife is precipitated,
this war will become one of barbarities hither unknown in
civilisation. It has been the object of our Government to
preserve our army free from all impulses of vindictive pas-
sion, and to make it an instrument of preserving order and
tranquillity in all the region where it moves. A negro in-
surrection would be the most unfortunate thing possible for
that injured race, whose freedom is coming on the wings
of every hour. Untaught and furious, they would perpe-
trate deeds which would check the rising sympathies of the
world, and needlessly complicate the majestic movement
which we trust is destined at last to humble and destroy
the power of their oppressors. Our army is followed by
the prayers of slaves who find no difficulty in understand-
ing that our success means good to them. Let our friends
in England, who gallantly laboured with us in the moral
struggle which brought on this crisis, now understand its
high significance, and aid us with their prayers.
Even as I write, my Lord, the great decisive battle is
waging, our troops are leading the assault, the telegraph
brings hourly report, and we know not who amongst our
bravest And dearest may be offering their lives this moment
in this litiy cause. Yet no heart faints, no voice falters,
there is not a thought nor shadow of regret at the sacrifice
we are making, for now, if ever, we have a country that is
worth dying for, and a cause in which we count nothing
too dear.

My Lord, I am yours in the great fellowship of Christian

11. B. STOVE.