Henry Ward Beecher and the english press of 1863∗

Abstract

HISTORIES of oratory place alongside Demosthenes' triumph over Aeschines in ancient Greece the triumph of Henry Ward Beecher over hostile newspapers and unsympathetic ruling classes in England in 1863. How interesting it would be to study the newspaper editorials on The Oration, on the Crown if there were such. Fortunately, we do have the newspaper editorials on Beecher's addresses to the mass' meetings in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. To date these editorials have not been explored to discover their attitude toward Beecher and his cause. In some respects Beecher's conquest calls forth more admiration from the student of oratory than the ancient classic. For one thing Beecher was on foreign soil, away from all those who might be sympathetic to him because of past associations. And for another, Beecher had a press that was, with few exceptions, hostile to the North, and, finally, Beecher was not defending himself but his country. The attitude of most of the newspapers of oligarchic England in 1863 towards Henry Ward Beecher and his cause will be made clear if the lines of current thought in 1863 are reviewed. The primary cause of the war, as we know, was slavery; the secondary cause was Union. Lincoln in prosecuting the war thought it best to emphasize the political cause rather than the moral. In America, this emphasis fooled no one, but in England the ruling classes, which were more familiar with European than with American policies, believed that the cause of the war was political. On the other hand the masses of British people who had relations in America were informed through letters of the true situation. And there were men like John Bright, Richard Cobden, Forster, Goldwin Smith, Leslie Stephen, and the Duke of Argyll, who understood the conflict, who helped the unenfranchised masses to proclaim their sympathy with freedom across the Atlantic. But to men like Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell the political cause was not sufficient to coerce the South-