From
Lincoln in Caricature by Rufus Rockwell Wilson
The cartoon, by Tenniel, Scene from the
American “Tempest,” appeared in Punch, January 24, 1863. News of the
emancipation of the slaves by Mr. Lincoln had reached England earlier in the
month, and Punch, for once showing good will for the Union cause, depicts the
President, clad in the uniform of a Union soldier, handing a copy of his
proclamation to a grinning negro, who points to a glowering Confederate in his
rear and says: “You beat him nough, massa! Berry little time, I’ll beat him
too.”
Approval of Mr. Lincoln’s action by English
champions of freedom for all races and conditions of men took other and more
impressive forms. The Non-conformists now earnestly espoused the Northern cause,
and Spurgeon, then the most popular of their preachers, made the thousands
congregated in his Tabernacle pray together: “God bless and strengthen the
North; give victory to their arms. Bondage and the lash can claim no sympathy
from us.” Richard Cobden, who had seen some striking popular movements in his
time, wrote of a great meeting in Exeter Hall: “I know nothing in my political
experience as striking,’’ while in March, 1863, John Bright, addressing the
trade unions of London in St. James Hall, pointed out with lofty and compelling
eloquence the inner and permanent meaning for the common people of England of
the contest being waged in America. “I wish you to be true to yourselves,’’ he
told his hearers. ‘‘Dynasties may fall, aristocracies may perish, privilege will
vanish into the dim past; but you, your children and your children’s children,
will remain, and from you the English people will he continued to succeeding
generations.”
“You wish for the freedom of your country,”
he continued. “You strive for it in many ways. Do not then give the hand of
fellowship to the worst foes of freedom that the world has ever seen, and do
not, I beseech you, bring down a curse upon your cause which no after-penitence
can ever lift from it. 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 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.”
The passage of the years has confirmed the
force and truth of the great Quaker’s vision.