Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/199

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Again, older readers will remember with what fear and trembling they opened their morning papers for many months, fearing to read that England had accorded "belligerent rights" to the Confederacy. They will have a vivid recollection of the eloquent orator, Henry Ward Beecher, as he plead, as no other man could, the cause of the Union in English cities. He was backed up by old John Bright, the descendants of Penn, Gurney and Wilberforce, and the old-time enemies of human slavery. But it took them all to stem the tide. At one time it even seemed that they had won over Gladstone to their interests.

While the great masses of the English people were in sympathy with the Union cause, the moneyed men and commerce sided with the Confederacy: "Cotton was King." They had been struck in a tender place—their pockets and bank accounts. But suppose England had owned Oregon and its great interests, who don't see that all the danger would have been multiplied, and our interests endangered? There is in this no extravagant claim made that all this was done by Marcus Whitman. The Ruler of the Universe uses men, not a man, for its direction and government.

Going back upon the pages of history, the student sees Whittier in his study, and listens to his singing; he sees Mrs. Stowe educating with