The North are fighting for
supremacy and the South for independence, has been the voice.
Independence? for what? to do what? To prove the doctrine that all men
are _not_ equal; to establish the doctrine that the white may
enslave the negro!
In the beginning of our struggle, the voices that reached us across
the water said: "If we were only sure you were fighting for the
abolition of slavery, we should not dare to say whither our sympathies
for your cause might not carry us." Such, as we heard, were the words
of the honored and religious nobleman who draughted this very letter
which you signed and sent us, and to which we are now replying.
When these words reached us we said: "We can wait; our friends in
England will soon see whither this conflict is tending." A year and a
half have passed; step after step has been taken for liberty; chain
after chain has fallen, till the march of our armies is choked and
clogged by the glad flocking of emancipated slaves; the day of final
emancipation is set; the border States begin to move in voluntary
consent; universal freedom for all dawns like the sun in the distant
horizon, and still no voice from England. No voice? Yes, we have heard
on the high seas the voice of a war-steamer, built for a man-stealing
Confederacy, with English gold, in an English dockyard, going out of
an English harbor, manned by English sailors, with the full knowledge
of English government officers, in defiance of the Queen's
proclamation of neutrality! So far has English sympathy overflowed.
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