The darkest crisis of the whole war was in the summer of 1862.  I slipped away for a few weeks of relaxation to Europe, sailing on the Cunarder China, the first screw steamer ever built by that company.  She was under the command of Captain James Anderson, who was afterwards knighted by Queen Victoria for his services in laying the Atlantic cable, and is better known as Sir James Anderson.  There was no Atlantic cable in those days, and our steamer carried out the news of the seven days’ battles before Richmond, which terminated in the retreat of General McClellan.  We had a Fourth of July dinner on board, but between seasickness and heart sickness it was the toughest experience of making a spread-eagle speech I ever had.  After landing at Queenstown I went to Belfast and thence to Edinburgh.  I found the people of Edinburgh intensely excited over our war and the current of popular sentiment running against us like a mill-race.  For instance, I was recognized by my soft hat on the street; a shoemaker put his head out of the door and shouted as I passed:  “I say, when are you going to be done with your butchering over there?” The Scotsman was hostile to the Union cause, and the old Caledonian Mercury was the only paper that stood by us; but it did so manfully.  On the day of my arrival a bulletin was posted in the newspaper offices and on Change that McClellan and the Union army had surrendered.  The baleful report was received with no little exultation by all who were engaged in the cotton trade.  I sat up until midnight with the editor of the Mercury, helping him to squelch the rumor and the next morning expose the falsity of the news in his columns.

Dr. John Brown, the immortal author of “Rab and His Friends,” had called on me at the Waverly Hotel, and that morning I breakfasted with him.  At the breakfast table I made a statement of our side of the conflict and Dr. Brown said:  “If you will write up that statement, I will get my friend, Mr. Russell, the editor of the Scotsman, to publish it in his paper.”  I did so and sent it to the care of Dr. Brown.  On the following Sabbath afternoon I attended the great prayer meeting in the Free Church Assembly Hall, and Sir James Simpson was to preside.  There was a crowd of over a thousand people present.  Simpson did not come, and so some other elder occupied the chair.  During the meeting I arose and modestly asked that prayer might be offered for my country in this hour of her peril and distress.  There was an awful silence!  In a few moments the chairman meekly said:  “Perhaps our American friend will offer the prayer himself.”  I did so, for it was evident that all the Scotchmen present considered our cause past praying for.

On the morning of our departure my letter appeared in the Scotsman accompanied by a long and bitter reply by the editor.  Within a week several of the Scotch newspapers were in full cry, denouncing that “bloody Presbyterian minister from America.”