Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/220

186 themselves in the press and in private correspondence and conversation, and in stating the results of that observation I do not speak of Spain alone, but of France, England and Germany as well.

It is my conviction, and I consider it a duty to communicate to you, that the sympathies of the liberal masses in Europe are not as unconditionally in our favor as might be desired, and that, unless the war end soon or something be done to give our cause a stronger foothold in the popular heart, they will, in the end, not be decided and powerful enough to control the actions of those Governments whose goodwill or neutrality is to us of the greatest importance.

When the struggle about the slavery question in the United States assumed the form of an armed conflict, it was generally supposed in Europe, that the destruction of slavery was to be the avowed object of the policy of the Government, and that the war would in fact be nothing else than a grand uprising of the popular conscience in favor of a great humanitarian principle. If this opinion had been confirmed by the evidence of facts, the attitude of Europe, as determined by popular sentiment, could not have been doubtful a single moment. But it was remarked, not without a feeling of surprise and disappointment, that the Federal Government, in its public declarations, cautiously avoided the mentioning of the slavery question as the cause and origin of the conflict; that its acts, at the beginning of the war at least, were marked by a strikingly scrupulous respect for the sanctity of slave-property, and that the ultimate extinction of an institution so hateful to the European mind was most emphatically denied to be one of the objects of the war. I do not mean to question the wisdom of the Government under circumstances so difficult and perplexing, but I am bearing witness to the effect its attitude produced upon public opinion in Europe. While the impression gained