Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/270

236 beaten, our prospects looked hopeless and to the current running against us we had to offer no counterpoise. The nations of Europe looked across the ocean with anxious eyes, and asked: “Will not now, at last, the great blow be struck against the most hideous abomination of this age? Are they so in love with it that they will not even destroy it to save themselves?” For you must know every enlightened European is a natural anti-slavery man. His heart, although burdened with so many loads, has not been corrupted by the foul touch of that institution, which seems to demoralize everything that breathes its atmosphere. And when they saw, to their utter astonishment and disgust, that at first slavery was not touched, their hearts sunk within them, and they began to explain the reverses we suffered by the moral weakness of our cause.

At last the emancipation proclamation came. A shout of triumph went up from every liberty-loving heart. Once more the friends of freedom in each hemisphere joined in a common sympathy. Once more the cause of the American people became the cause of liberty the world over. Once more our struggle was identified with the noblest aspirations of the human race. Once more our reverses found a response of sorrow in the great heart of mankind, and our victories aroused a jubilant acclaim which rolled around the globe. Do you remember the touching address of the working men of Manchester? While the instincts of despotism everywhere conspired against us, while the aristocracy of Great Britain covered us with their sneering contempt, while the laboring men in England began to suffer by the stopping of the cotton supply, and the nobility and the princes of industry told them that their misery was our fault, the great heart of the poor man rose in its magnificence, and the English laborer stretched his hard hand across the Atlantic to grasp that of our President and he said: All hail,