Before these practical revolutionists, those "moral suasion" agitators,
the Northern Abolitionists, made no great show. Garrison with his logic,
Burritt with his languages, Douglas with his magnificent eloquence, were
as naught to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and that soldier of the
fine old Cromwellian type--Stonewall Jackson. The "institution" was
pronounced in Parliament "not so bad a thing, after all," and the
pathetic "Am-I-not-a-Man-and-a-Brother" of Clarkson, became the Sambo of
Christie and the "Quashee" of Carlyle. In the midst of this ill-feeling
on one side, and sore-feeling on the other, the rash act of a U. S. Naval
Officer, in boarding the British steamer _Trent_ and seizing the
Confederate Envoys, Mason and Slidell, gave England cause, had our
Government endorsed that act, for open hostility. So ready, so eager did
the English Government seem for a war with America, that it did not wait
for an apology, before making extensive military preparations. With that
brave but cool-headed Captain on our Ship of State, Abraham Lincoln, and
that prudent helmsman, William H. Seward, we could not easily have been
driven into a war with England at this time; but we might have been
humiliated even more than we were, by the peremptory demands of Lord
Palmerston--might have been obliged to eat a piece of "humble pie," so
big, hot, and heavy, that it would have remained undigested to this day--
had it not been for the prudence, the courtesy, good sense, and admirable
tact of the Queen and Prince-Consort in modifying and softening the tone
of that important State paper, the demand for an official apology, and
the liberation of the Confederate Envoys.
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