You will not do this. I have faith in you.
Impartial history will tell that, when your statesmen were hostile or
coldly neutral, when many of your rich men were corrupt, when your
press--which ought to have instructed and defended--was mainly written
to betray, the fate of a continent and of its vast population being in
peril, you clung to freedom with an unfaltering trust that God in His
infinite mercy will yet make it the heritage of all His children.
* * * * *
AMERICA.
V.
LONDON, JUNE 16, 1863.
[On June 16, 1863, a public meeting was held at the London Tavern, at
the instance of the Union and Emancipation Society, in order to hear an
address from Mr. M. D. Conway, of Eastern Virginia. Mr. Bright was in
the Chair.]
If we look back a little over two years--two years and a half--when the
question of secession was first raised in a practical shape, I think we
shall be able to remember that, when the news first arrived in England,
there was but one opinion with regard to it--that every man condemned
the folly and the wickedness of the South, and protested against their
plea that they had any grievance which justified them in revolt--and
every man hoped that some mode might be discovered by which the terrible
calamity of war might be avoided.
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