Preface to the English Edition.
Few better evidences of the deep interest which most of the leading minds in America take in the question of slavery can be afforded than are contained in this book. The ablest men and women of the country have here set their hands to a solemn protest against its enormities. Mrs. Stowe, who has achieved a reputation as widely extended as it is well earned,—who has, both in this country and in the United States, aroused thousands to a sense of the guilt and wrong of slavery who never spent a thought upon it before,—has her name side by side with that of Horace Mann, one of the most brilliant orators in the Union. Whittier, whose sweet strains have delighted thousands wherever the English language is spoken, finds himself in company with Frederick Douglass, who has experienced all those horrors whose bare recital has made us shudder; and with the Earl of Carlisle, who is setting an example full of promise to the men of his order; and with the son of the immortal Wilberforce. Widely differing as these do upon the majority of public questions, there is not a shade of difference in their opinions as to the iniquity of slavery.
Linked as we are with America by the ties of kindred, commerce, language, literature, and political sympathies, upon nothing which affects the destiny and progress of the Union can the English people help looking with the deepest interest. There is not a man of intellect or judgment on either side of the Atlantic who does not acknowledge the fearful importance of the slavery question, even if it be considered in a political point of view only, and laying aside all thoughts of its guilt and immorality. Italready threatens to cause the disruption of the great American confederation, upon which we all look with so much hope and pride; and there exists not a doubt, that, sooner or later, all the wrongs it has caused will be atoned for by a terrible social convulsion, if not remedied by the timely and peaceful concession of the rights of the negro race. We can hardly wonder, then, that the whole subject should possess such momentous importance in the eyes of all earnest-thinking, patriotic men and women in America. Assuredly, if in the face of the tremendous difficulties, deeply rooted prejudice, self-interest, and a host of base passions, which beset them in arguing the cause of the slave, they occasionally commit errors of judgment, or make use of means which we, farther removed from the scene of action, may deem inexpedient or ill-timed,—no Englishman should regard their self-denying efforts with any other feeling than one of deep sympathy. Nay, we should look upon their struggle with the greater admiration, when we know that the church in America has abandoned its post, and is unfaithful to its mission; that the clergy, who, of all others, should be the last to recognise any inequality in men as men, have sought to hide the abominations of slave-holding under the cloak of Divine sanction. We all know the vast moral power which England possesses in the United States, and we may readily conjecture how comforting it must be for those who are battling for the rights of a down-trodden race, in the face of a hostile senate, a hostile press, and a hostile aristocracy of slave-holders, to hear a cheer of encouragement from those across the water who feel that the position of the Anglo-Saxon race in the future of the world, depends upon the respect it now shews for the sacred rights, and the inherent nobility of humanity.