The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-03 00:00:00

MB. 10.RSTER, ySQ., M.P., ON TIE

AMERICAN WAR.

On Tuesday night a lecture was delivered in the
theatre of the Bradford. Mechanics' Institute, by
W. E. Forster, Esq., M.P., " On the Civil War in
America ;" James Law, Esq., president of the insti-
tute, was in the chair, and there was a numerous
attendance.
Mr. FORSTER, M.P., having been introduced by
the President, began his lecture by alluding to the
peculiar interest which attached to the civil war in
America. This terrible war, so far as it affected the
feelings of the people of this country, was like no
war which had happened for a long period. It was
almost like a war. in England itself. It was a war
between people of a common origin with ourselves,
and there was hardly a street in Bradford, or a vil-
lage in Yorkshire, the inhabitants of which had
not relations in America, while some of them had
material interests most grievously affected by the
war. He referred to the injurious effects which the
war had upon the mercantile and manufacturing
interests of this country, especially Lancashire, by
being deprived of its supply of cotton ; and the
worsted district of Yorkshire, by being deprived of
a market for its manufactured goods. But even if
the case were otherwise it was a war of intense
interest, because he conceived that it was a war to
solve the problem whether a nation of civilised men
in this age of the world could, in peace and safety,
keep millions of their fellow-beings in slavery, and
treat them as though they were beasts. They
often, in reading, found this war described as not
only a terrible and calamitous war, but as being a
causeless war. Now, a terrible and calamitous
war it undoubtedly was. Civil war was terrible
under any circumstances, but it was still more ter-
rible when carried on amongst a race of men of
such strong passions as the Anglo-Saxon race.
It was a grievous punishment to the people of
America for one-half of them having gone on with-
out trying to diminish slavery but to increase it,
and the other half for having connived at this;
and it was also a punishment to England for having
left the legacy of slavery to them. They ought
not, therefore, to wonder at or complain if we were
suffering from that state of things. But although
a calamitous, it was not a causeless war. He should
show that evening that it was the natural crisis of
that evil which had been born with the American
Commonwealth, and grown with it, and which was
now testing the very life of the Commonwealth.
It appeared almost puerile to state any other cause
except slavery as the cause of this war, when they
had been wondering year after year that this state
of things could go on without a convulsion. It
seemed strange that the war should be attributed
to anything else ; yet an able writer had taken a
contrary view, on the ground that the South would
never, as a question of slavery, break up that
Union which virtually made the whole of the States
the prison of the slave, and every officer a gaoler,
and draw the line within its own territory over
which the slave might escape to freedom much more
easily than he could at present into Canada. It was
argued, therefore, by such writers that there must
be something behind, and it was suggested that
that something was protection. But let them look
at the facts, and in doing so they must judge men
by their actions, not by their motives—events de-
pended upon what men did, not upon what they
intended to do. (Hear, hear.) How did the
Republican party. come to exist ? What were
called the pure Abolitionists in America were a
very small party, though not politically an unim-
portant party. The two leading, parties were
similar to the Whig and Tory parties of this coun-
try—the one seeking to weaken the central power
and to strengthen the State power, and the other
to support the central power and to maintain the
Union. Both parties, however, agreed to taboo the
question of slavery ; they were afraid to undertake
it, and preferred letting it alone until it should
sweep over them like a deluge. For a long
time it was impossible to moot the question of
abolition, either in public meetings, or in Congress,
and, indeed, it required all the prestige of John
Quincy Adams to establish even the right of peti-
tioning Congress upon the subject. When that
could be no longer refused, it was attempted to
prevent discussion by outrage and violence, of which
they had an instance in the case of Mr. Sumner.
They could not, however, keep the question quiet,
for public opinion would express itself, and then
sprung up a democratic party of a new school, who
maintained not only that the Southern States should
deal with slavery, but also that they should rule
over the Union for the purposes of slavery, thus
making the Union a great pro-slavery Common-
wealth, for the support and extension of this system.
It was under these circumstances that the Repub-
lican party arose. They found that this rule of the
slave power for slavery purposes was affecting every
question. The foreign policy of the States was
framed to answer this object, and thus they sought
to obtain Cuba—the judicial bench was made sub-
servient to it, and thus the highest judicial court
was led to pronounce the abominable decision
which took from every coloured man the right of
citizenship. (Hear, hear.) To maintain this rule
there was an alliance between the slaveholders of
the South and the lowest classes of the population
in the great cities, and in this way it was that the
votes of the mob in New York were secured for the
Democratic party of the South. It had been said
in England that this was a proof of the failure of
free institutions in New York, but such was not the
fact ; it was merely a proof that they were con-
trolled by slavery. (Applause.) The Republican
party said, "We cannot put up with this any
longer, we have no objection to the Slave States
keeping their slaves until they like to free them,
but we will not be bound up with them, and be
made the means of extending their power." They
nearly elected Fremont at the presidential election
before the last, and they succeeded in electing
Lincoln. Having elected their man, they must
have a policy—what they called a platform. That
platform was not the abolition of slavery, bnt
simply its limitation. They did not propose to in-
terfere with the South in its management of slavery,
but seeing how this system desolated the lands
where it existed, they declared that they would
not have it carried as a matter of right into the
new territories or colonies of the Union. (Cheers

The party, therefore, passed a resolution to the
effect that Congress had no power to establish
slavery in any territory until its inhabitants had
formed themselves into a State, and declared for
themselves whether or not they would have slavery.
(Hear.) This was not the kind of anti-slavery
movement which they understood in this country,
and a great mistake had arisen here in supposing
that there was only one kind of slavery abolition.
The Republican party did not feel that sympathy
with the negro which they ought to do, but they
did feel that slavery was doing a great deal of harm,
and, as patriotic men, they wished to prevent its
extension ;—with them, the question was one not so
much of philanthropy as of patriotism. This policy
of the Republican party was received by the South
as involving abolition as much as though ib had
declared it at once. Not only was this so, but
whilst this new party was rising in the North there
was a great change in the South. The old school

of slaveholders believed that slavery was an evil
and looked forward to its extinction. This might

be proved by extracts from the speeches of Jeffer-
son and other great men, and the word slave was
never mentioned in the Constitution. Finding
themselves, however, pressed by the growing pub-
lic opinion, not only of America but of Europe, the
slaveholders did that which men had always done
under the same circumstances. When they found
the system attacked, they declared that not only
was it not an evil but that it was a great good, and
this they did until they actually believed what they
said. They had most fanatical defences of slavery.
De Bow's Review for Aray, the organ of the South,
went so far as to state that " the social condition of
England would be infinitely better if the labouring
classes were domestic slaves." (Ironical laughter.)
Having determined that slavery should last it was
necessary that slavery must rule, or there was no
security for the retention of the slaves. Public
opinion, however, was against them, and the
press, therefore, must be gagged, legislators
must be gagged, and there must be no expres-
sion of opinion in public meeting. They t