expressive of his warm appreciation of the sentiments it contained, and of its recognition of his constant solicitude for the maintenance of the general peace.

THE AMERICAN WAR OF SECESSION, 1861.

No record of Henry Richard's labours in the Cause of Peace would be complete without a reference to the persistent, and from his standpoint of consistent opposition to the great struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America, based as it was on his undeviating hostility to all War, and all exercise of force in national or international affairs. In the first place a brief reference to the causes which precipitated that great War is necessary.

The culminating point of the American crisis was the Presidential Election, at the close of the year 1860, of Abraham Lincoln, and this choice by a majority of the American people drew a direct line of demarcation between the Northern and Southern States, as it was stated that not a single Southerner voted for, and not a single Northerner voted against him. The Abolitionists of the North not satisfied with the results of their victory, indulged in exasperating language towards the Pro-slavery party of the South, and the latter, smarting also under the injustice of a prohibitive tariff, looked upon the Union as a tremendous evil, and resolved to exercise what they considered their lawful right to secede, and to declare their independence.

The feeling in the South was decidedly opposed to the commercial policy of the North, which was prohibitive, for it pressed heavily on the commercial classes, but the social and political question of slavery was the chief cause of contention; for the Southern States clung tenaciously to it, and were alarmed at the feeling of hostility displayed by the press and political parties in the North.

This conflict of opinion was brought to a test in Congress by the vexed question, whether slaveholding territories should be admitted into the Union, and on its being decided in the negative the Southern representatives withdrew, and the Secession followed, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia taking the lead, and their first act was to seize the Federal arsenals and fortresses in the disaffected States.

On the 9th January, 1861, the first shot was fired from the batteries of Fort Sumpter against the Federal Fleet, which was in effect the declaration of disruption and War, and on the 18th February, Mr. Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederate States, on which accession he declared:

:

"We have entered on a career of independence, which must be inflexibly pursued through many years of controversy with our late associates of the Northern States."

On the 4th March Mr. Abraham Lincoln delivered his inaugural address as President of the dis-United States, in which he declared:

"A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold that in the eye of universal law, and of the constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual."

At the onset of this terrific conflict Mr. Richard promptly sounded the note of alarm in the columns of the Herald of Peace, and he justified his intrusion in the controversy on the grounds :

"That we on this side of the Atlantic are better able to form a clear and correct Christian judgment of American affairs than the American people themselves, whirled about as they were in the mad mäelstrom of the fierce political excitement which seems to have sucked almost everybody into its vortex."

During the four years that this fierce tornado raged in all its fury from "the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main," Mr. Richard strenuously opposed and vigorously condemned the

policy of the North and of the Federal Government at Washington to maintain the Union by force; and whilst dissociating himself and his friends from any sympathy for slavery, but on the contrary avowing "a strenuous, consistent, and persevering" hostility to that abomination, yet he declared that infinite as is the iniquity of slavery, to attempt to abolish it by War is only an attempt to cast out devils by Beelzebub, the Prince of the Devils. He considered that the anti-slavery party in America committed two capital errors of policy and of principle.

66 First, the act on the immoral and unchristian axiom that in order to punish or to destroy crime we are at liberty to commit another; * * * * but they forget that the two spring from one source, muster under one banner, and are intimate allies. * * * And they commit this other error, they accept as of Divine origin and sanction events merely because they occur. They see the universal outbreak of the war spirit in the North against the South, and they straightway exclaim, 'This is of God.' What indications are there about this uprising of the North that should entitle them to trace it to a Divine source? Has it sprung from sympathy with the oppressed, from righteous indignation against wrong? They know, none better, that it is, to a large extent, the mere offspring of national pride, and bellicose passion, and if they trust to this as a means of abolishing slavery, as sure as they are living men they will find that they are trusting in the staff of a broken reed."

Mr. Richard sincerely believed that the object of the war was not the abolition of slavery, though remotely it might be the cause ;—

"But that the great bulk of men who are now swelling the war-cry, and rushing into the ranks to fight, are men who despise the nigger' and hate the abolitionists as cordially as

ever.

6

* * * * *

In truth it is difficult for us who look at the matter calmly from a distance, to resist the impression that the fierce war excitement, now raging in the North, is far more a matter of pride and passion than of any principle whatever."

As early as May 1861 Mr. Richard penned an Address on behalf of the Peace Society to the United States of America, of earnest sympathy and respectful expostulation on the perilous crisis, which in general terms, boldly declared that

the worst of all solutions that can be attempted is a fratricidal war; "and it appealed to the friends of peace" to avoid the fatal mistake of imagining that you can decide questions of disputed right by conflicts of brute force; and especially it appealed to the Christian Churches of all denominations, and emphatically to the Ministers of the Prince of Peace, to stand between the living and the dead, that the plague be stayed.

This Address and the articles from Mr. Richard's pen in the Herald of Peace condemnatory of the War and the action which the Anti-Slavery Party who had hitherto professed the principles of peace were taking, roused their vehement indignation, especially from the pens of W. Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and others.

"Nothing" said Mr. Richard "that has occurred since will induce us to recall or qualify the words that we then employed. What we say is that the moving impulse which has heaved the great mass of the community into such violent agitation is not the question of slavery at all but the preservation of the Union, the constitution of 1787, the insult offered to the American flag."

In support of this position Mr. Richard quotes from the last message of President Lincoln, who declared that the North is fighting to bring back the South into Union with the North.

"The simple fact is," writes Mr. Richard, “with regard to our ardent anti-slavery friends in America they can only see one evil in the universe and that is slavery." * * Heaven forbid that in saying this, we should seem to try to extenuate the enormities of slavery, for we believe it to be an abominable and accursed thing which degrades man and dishonours God. But then we say precisely the same thing with yet deeper emphasis of War. * * * And is it to be supposed that we can look with pleasure when we see men whom we honour so blinded by their hatred of one sort of wickedness as to rush with open arms into the embrace of another equally atrocious?"

At the commencement of the war Mr. Richard strenuously supported the action of the British Government in the question of the recognition of the South as belligerents, action which was severely condemned by the North, and cordially approved by the South; and the argument and

facts arrayed by Mr. Richard in support of the declaration of Lord Russell "that the Southern Confederacy must be treated as belligerents" was, he considered, historically and juridically correct, and if any Government was responsible for the unfortunate dilemma in which the great Maritime Powers were placed, undoubtedly the Federal Government at Washington were alone and severely to be blamed.

Prior to the Congress which met at Paris at the close of the Russian War, all the Maritime Powers of the world recognised and exercised the right of privateering, and the issuing of Letters of Marque to any Neutral Nation to equip and arm privateers, to capture and confiscate the mercantile marine of the belligerent Nation.

But at the Congress at Paris in 1856, it was declared by all the Powers assembled, that "Privateering is, and remains, abolished;" and the protocol further bound the Governments "to bring the declaration to the knowledge of the States which have not taken part in the Congress of Paris, and to invite them to accede to it;" but unfortunately the invitation to the United States was rejected, on the ground that it was not compatible with its interests; but it made a counter proposal that private property at sea should be totally exempt, unless contraband, from seizure during war, not only by privateers, but by the navy of belligerents; and the proposal being rejected by England, although accepted by the other European Powers, the original proposal in accordance with the Declaration of Paris was only binding between those Powers who had acceded to it, and thus the practice of privateering by the United States remained a part of the recognised laws of War.

When, therefore, President Lincoln issued his proclamation declaring the South in a state of revolt, Mr. Jefferson Davis replied by issuing "letters of marque" for privateers to prey on the merchant-marine of the North, and the South were thereupon declared to be pirates by the North, a declaration that the British Government could not accept ;